Yankees Aaron Judge Already Impacting Mickey Mantle’s Legacy

But Baseball, baseball provides for unlimited success, for infinite glory. A player can hit a ball out of the park, or the stadium—or the world—if he’s a mind to. He can do as much as he can do and be as big as he can be. And the longer the ball flies, the longer it threatens to fly off into the night, the longer does it carry us along.

We are carried along in our imaginations as we wonder how far it might fly, and we fly along with it. And, perhaps more importantly, we are taken along in our souls. We are reminded that a person can do more than any man ever has, and perhaps so can we, or I.

And we remember that there are still places, on this Earth and inside each of us, that are not bound by the laws of man or trappings of the past, where it is just you versus heaven. There, we can still be as big as our imaginations and reach higher than any man ever has. These places are as unbounded, and filled with as many possibilities, as a man’s soul.

Tomorrow Aaron Judge might just hit a ball farther than any Yankees player has ever hit one. He will not be defended, and he will not be restricted by lines on a court or field. In baseball, you can be as great as your will and talent allow. That is one of two places where that is true, and daily life is not the other.

And that is what greatness is all about. It’s not about being the best at something: it’s about doing things that defy imagination; it’s about performing at an inspirational level. I was standing behind Aaron Judge when he hit that home run in the sixth on that fateful Friday night, and I can tell you there was something different about it.

The players have talked about how that homer, which still left the Yankees down by five runs, was inspirational. I know that it struck those of us watching it the same way. It did make you think the Yankees could come back, which a moment ago seemed ludicrous. But that hit, that lightning bolt to the bullpen, made all things possible.