Aaron Judge WBC trolls just reignited the most tired Yankees narrative

The New York Yankees have never won a championship in the modern era of Twitter-based fandom. And if the stars ever align and they manage to ascend the mountain, the result will be more disingenuous, toxic sneering than you could ever imagine. In case you needed a reminder of what it’s like to root for Aaron Judge and the Yankees in an era when poison-pilled randos can make $8 every time they post garbled, biased gibberish straight from the Hater’s Guide to Being Boring, Friday night’s Team USA win over Brazil was an excellent (?) example.

Judge, deemed Captain America after being Mark DeRosa's first call for a revamped Classic lineup, is either the greatest or second-best player in baseball and the game's best hitter. The 2026 season will officially qualify him for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He'll sail in on the first ballot. The only remaining question about his legacy, unless you are one of the millions of people who will fight their own bodies and impulses so as to never outwardly appreciate the skills of a Yankee, is whether or not he'll someday win a World Series championship.

But, of course, we now know that simply winning a ring won't be enough for the masses, either. In this NBA-ified world, he'll have to do it the right way. During the Yankees' 2024 run to the Fall Classic, in which they won several pitch-perfect, seat-of-your-pants October games over the frisky Guardians, the team's success was disqualified for being an easy path. Even those who gave the Yankees credit managed to further exclude Judge from the narrative. His empty ALDS and clutch ALCS home run in a game Luke Weaver eventually blew combined to cement his contributions as separate from the group project.

And the Yankees didn't win the championship, making the job of the dullards even simpler. With the series all but decided already, Judge dropped a fly ball that became the singular image that defined the Fall Classic (sorry, Freddie Freeman).

Even Judge's biggest supporters will admit that a championship to which he thunderously contributes is the main missing ingredient in his remarkable menu. The detractors and scholars are in alignment there. In the meantime, anyone who just wants to watch the potentially greatest right-handed hitter in MLB history show off his superhuman strength has to deal with unbearably granular critiques, whether he succeeds or fails. It just doesn't matter.

Judge got the scoring started on Friday night by depositing a breaker into the upper reaches of Daikin Park. The pitch was a mistake; he destroyed it. The trolls knew their mission before the ball even landed. Unable to post about how Judge had failed in the spotlight, they had to move on to claiming his success had come too easily.

Aaron Judge's World Baseball Classic home run came off a hanging breaking ball, so it didn't count (per fans)

If he doesn't homer, it's an historic failure. If he does homer, we have to check how he homered before we decide whether it was worthy of praise.

Was it hit off a hanging 3-0 breaking ball from a low-level World Baseball Classic competitor? In that case, hit the snooze. No need to clap. The pitcher was so terrible and the home run was unworthy.

You have to assume all his teammates homered, too. They didn't? Well, that's alright. None of them are Aaron Judge. They're not in the same conversation.

Did it come off a 99 MPH cutter from Emmanuel Clase? That's impressive - unless the team loses, of course. Then it's just clear he doesn't have the juice. What is "the juice"? It's that indefinable quality that ensures your closer performs well about a half-hour after you handed him the lead in dramatic fashion, of course.

Judge provided a 2-0 lead Friday night at a time when Roman Anthony was busy stranding two men in scoring position with a dribbler in the very same inning. The entire team seemed oddly stranded offensively, kept at bay by the 17-year-old son of Jose Contreras, who sawed off Judge's bat and got him to ground into a bases-loaded double play. Certainly, that earned Contreras (a Vanderbilt commit, not a nobody) plaudits rather than Judge resounding demerits, right? Eventually, Brice Turang of the Brewers finally delivered the three-run double that broke the game open. Thank goodness Team USA has someone like that in their lineup. He was able to provide three runs. Judge, with his pathetic grin, could only provide two. Everyone else who was a total zero is absolved.

Hey, did you see Shohei Ohtani's grand slam against Chinese Taipei starter Hao-Chun Cheng’s 2-1 curveball? Wow. Poise. Power. Panache. He really knows how to put on a show for the home crowd. Oddly, I haven't read any miles-deep Twitter critiques about Cheng's unimpressive spin rate and Ohtani's invalid contribution. I'll have to keep looking.