Yankees Aaron Judge Already Impacting Mickey Mantle’s Legacy

There are certainly special, perhaps magical, qualities to baseball. For instance, baseball is ruled by talent and will. That is not true in soccer, hockey, football, or basketball; they are governed by the clock. You cannot win a Yankees baseball game by having the ball last, and you cannot run out the clock. You can only win by being better than I, and I have something to say about that.

Now, you could say that is true in sports such as golf or tennis, and you’d be right. I want to stick to the right weight class, though, and limit the comparisons primarily to the other major team sports. But the point is worth mentioning, if for no other reason to show that even those quality has some sports equivalents.

But the Home Run is different. There is something special about the home run, something Yankees fans understand innately. And it’s the final and most important magical quality to the game itself, that thing that sets it apart from all the other Big Five, and beyond.

It is the home run, you see, that shows how limitless baseball is. And, by comparison, how constrained and limiting the other sports are, even golf and tennis.

What is the longest touchdown pass the greatest quarterback can ever throw? It can only ever be from the back of one end zone to the back of the opposite one, roughly 140 yards. A mighty heave indeed but one that can be equaled by others. The same happens in all the sports. Soccer fields forever limit the longest goal, as do the rink and the court.

And even in golf, the man who swings the mightiest blade can still only sink a hole in one a par five; there are no pars nine, ten, or eleven.