Demons and Angels

Aaron Judge said that the 2024 World Series will haunt him for the rest of his life. Losing a baseball game, especially an important game like the World Series, should affect you, but not haunt you for the rest of your life.  Killing somebody is something that should haunt you for the rest of your life, not an error on a pop fly.   I understand how Aaron Judge feels though.  He’s an MVP player and he took his eye off the ball for a split second to look at the baserunner. It led to a disastrous 5th inning in a World Series game that the Yankees desperately needed to win to stay alive in the series.

So, what should he do?  Wear a hair shirt for the rest of his life?  No.  He made an error.  Nobody died.  Sure, millions of people were disappointed, but shit happens.  Just minutes before that play, he made a sensational catch crashing into the centerfield wall. He, certainly, didn’t miss the next shallow pop fly on purpose.  It was an error. He was trying to make the play and keep an eye on the baserunner, too.  Looking back on it, he should have kept his eye on the ball, but you don’t play baseball looking backwards.  You play it in real-time, and, in real-time, shit happens. It’s the law, Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.

Aaron Judge makes $40 million a year.  He signed a $360 million contract for 9 years.   He could probably eke by for 9 years on just $320 million, and not have to really give up anything.  So, I’ve figured out how he can turn something really bad into something really good.  He can donate his entire $40 million 2024 salary to New York charities, or he could start his own charity.  That much money, would feed a lot of the hungry, clothe a lot of the naked, house a lot of the homeless, and heal a lot of the sick.  He can turn a World Series game gone bad into something that make the world much better for a lot of people.  Maybe, management and others on the team might want to chip in something, and be part of helping to turn a lost World Series Ring into a ringing victory for New York City.  The shortstop who made the bad throw to third, and the pitcher who didn’t cover first base, both played their asses off for every other moment of the game.  They each made just one mistake, but those mistakes will probably haunt them, too, for the rest of their lives, like Ralph Branca’s homerun pitch to Bobby Thompson, or the ground ball that went through Bill Buckner’s tired old legs at first base. Their small errors will take on mythical proportions, unless they can exorcise the demons quickly. They can do that by turning those demons into angels, angels of mercy.  I’ll bet that the Yankee players and management could easily raise $100 million and, if their charity had a catchy name, the multitude of Yankee fans might easily match that amount. Right now, I’m leaning towards naming the charity something like, the Call to the Field, or the ’24 Challenge, or The World Serious Fund.

The damned Yankees of 2024 can rise up like a Phoenix from the ashes of the World Series.  Instead of letting something haunt them for the rest of their lives, they, and their fans, can use the moment to do things that will make them positively proud of themselves for the rest of their lives, something worthy of a ticker-tape parade. It could positively benefit the lives of many thousands of New Yorkers, probably enough people to fill a baseball stadium.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl