Yankees player who was most vulnerable Apple TV+ World Series doc 'Fight for Glory' won't surprise you

When we last saw our heroes, the New York Yankees were defeated by the Los Angeles Dodgers in a five-game World Series that both was much closer than that sounds and felt like a disaster anyway. Don't get all Nestor Cortes'd about it; the Yankees lost, and they lost hard, facing down the agony of defeat distilled in a five-run fifth inning for the ages in Game 5.

So, as the season begins and most of us are ready to cauterize that wound, it might be the wrong time for AppleTV+'s remarkably cinematic World Series rewatch, "Fight for Glory," to drop on the platform on Friday, March 28. Or it may be the perfect time.

After all, the Yankees and Dodgers added a modern chapter to their historic rivalry last fall, and it already feels like ancient history. The rosters don't even feel real anymore. Who's "Juan Soto"? With that in mind, the time is fresh to both turn the page and look behind the scenes, taking in the action like a movie rather than a real-time, up-for-grabs battle with consequence.

Emmy-winning director RJ Cutler spoke with Yanks Go Yard this week about what he poured into the three-part documentary series (Game 1, capped with as cinematic a moment as you'll ever see occur naturally in baseball, stands alone as its own episode). After the requisite waiting period to let things settle, Cutler reached back out to a number of Yankee protagonists in the New Year, who were all finally ready to address what had gone down two months prior.

Aaron Judge opens up in Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series documentary series "Fight for Glory" in AppleTV+

"Nobody wants to talk about the difficulties in their life the moment they're happening," Cutler told Yanks Go Yard. "And we understood that and we respected that. We didn't even really approach the Yankees until we'd given them some time to attend to their wounds and enjoy the holidays with their families."

"And the Yankees were incredibly generous. The fact that Aaron Judge sat down and talked with us was meaningful and significant. We had been warned people weren't going to want to talk in the wake of losing, and we were empathetic ... You see, in the later episodes, when Aaron is talking ... it's great stuff."

Cutler, a Mets fan, knows heartbreak, and is able to stand two levels removed from it unfolding last November to appreciate the blood, sweat and tears it took for the Yankees to reach that point, and the resulting soul-searching that may make them stronger, but will never leave them.

So why would a Yankees fan dare to tune in to experience the agony of defeat? Even though this isn't the World Series film catered explicitly to the victors, it's still hard to avoid the crushing blows. Judge did need two months to cool off, after all.

"One of the driving themes of this three-part film is how humbling a sport this can be, and how difficult it can be to achieve greatness at it," Cutler stated. "Aaron Judge, who has statistically the greatest right-handed hitting season in Major League history, can hit a three-game slump where he's hitting .077, and if those three games are the first three games of his first World Series, his team's going to be in trouble.

"But it doesn't mean he can't come back in Game 4. And it doesn't mean he can't hit a two-run homer in his first at-bat of Game 5."