Yankees Aaron Judge is already superior to Red Sox’s Ted Williams

You Can’t Start a Fire without a Spark

This is magnified as Judge could have struck out on the swing. But he took a chance that he might flail and fail because it could, and did, help spark the team to victory.

You could argue that the hit was not that significant as Didi’s home run. Had Judge walked or hit, the score would have been the same. And that’s true. But baseball is about percentages, small ones at that. When a player runs hard to first but is thrown out anyway, do you say his effort was a waste?

No, because you know that in baseball, your best efforts only pay off 30 percent of the time if you’re lucky. But when they do late in the season or in the playoffs, it can mean the difference between winning and losing.

The Era of His Ways

That might be true for the Williams-era Red Sox. Why didn’t one of the greatest players of all time ever lead his team to a World Series victory? In fact, why didn’t he lead them to more than one World Series appearance?

Instead, his teams finished second, three of his first four years in the AL, and five of his first 11 years. And the one time they made the WS in 1946, Boston lost to the Cardinals.

Please, do not think this is all about the Yankees, either; they finished behind the Sox in ’48 but Boston still finished second.

Bostonians might argue that Williams’ struggles in that WS are why they lost, and everyone can have a bad week. I agree. But why didn’t his team respond to Ted’s struggles with a, let’s do it for our perennial MVP candidate who got us here, type-attitude?

And why were they only once able to find what it took to overcome the first place teams, usually the Yankees?