Here’s a question for you:
What would hap pen, do you think, if the following scenario played itself out? The Yankees beat the Angels in the American League Championship Series, they face the Phillies in the World Series, and the two teams battle each other to the point of exhaustion over seven games, the Yankees winning three and the Phillies winning three, setting up a dramatic Game 7 at Yankee Stadium.
What if the Phillies jump to an early lead in the game, then are forced to preserve that one-run lead over the course of five or six dramatic innings. For kicks, let’s say Pedro Martinez drags himself out of the bullpen in the seventh inning, bases loaded and two outs, and he strikes out — picking a name out of a hat here — Robinson Cano to keep the Phillies alive.
Now let’s jump to the ninth. With two outs, the Phillies pitch very, very, very carefully to Alex Rodriguez (who had hit a home run earlier in the game, of course). They walk him on a 3-and-1 count, the tying run now on first base, the crowd whipped into a frenzy. Joe Girardi — who no doubt learned his lesson by the relentless second-guessing he endured at the end of Game 5 of the ALCS against the Angels — chooses not to pinch run for Rodriguez. Up steps Hideki Matsui.
On the first pitch, Rodriguez takes off from first.
Carlos Ruiz rises from his crouch, throws a perfect peg.
Jimmy Rollins puts down the tag.
And Rodriguez slides into it. Game over. World Series over. Season over.
Can you even begin to imagine what would happen then? Can you even begin to fathom how loud the boos would be trailing A-Rod off the field, how vast the anger on talk radio would be within seconds of Country Joe West (or whoever the second base umpire might be) raising his thumb and calling A-Rod out? Could the world’s most brilliant mathematician even start to calculate how quickly the Yankees would be forced to exile A-Rod, even if it meant only getting a nickel back on the dollar?
What a crazy, ridiculous story, you say.
Only, it happened. You just have to do some subbing: 1926 for 2009. The Cardinals for the Philllies. Grover Cleveland Alexander for Martinez, Tony Lazzeri for Cano, Bob O’Farrell for Ruiz, Tommy Thevenow for Rollins and Bob Meusel for Mastui.
And Babe Ruth for Rodriguez.
Yes, it all happened exactly that way. If you have even a passing knowledge of baseball history, you know all about Alexander stumbling in from the bullpen and fanning Lazzeri, even though he had thrown a complete game in Game 6 the night before and had, according to legend, enjoyed a complete night of whiskey later on. Now, the fickle mistress that history is, that story is often mistold, and many still believe that forever moment occurred in the ninth inning, not the seventh.
It’s almost as if history wants to protect Ruth, because no other postseason series, ever, has ended on this kind of play, the kind of play that would turn the masses apoplectic and might cause Girardi to pass out.
In truth, there may never have been another player in baseball history who should be more grateful that the internet, talk radio and dyspeptic sports columnists weren’t yet invented in his day, because Ruth might have spent less time as the unquestioned idol of the Jazz Age and more time as a popular target of pundits and furious long-time-listeners, first-time-callers.
Ruth, after all, could be primarily blamed for the Yankees losing three of the first World Series they ever played in. There is the bad judgment on the basepaths detailed above. There was the 2-for-17, one-RBI disappearing act he’d pulled in the 1922 World Series against the Giants, making him 7-for-33 with only one homer and five paltry RBIs in the Yankees’ back-to-back losses to the Giants in 1921 and 1922.
As suspect as A-Rod’s Yankees Octobers before this one may have been . . . was he ever as bad as that?
Which, I suppose, raises one last question: What do you suppose has changed the most, big athletes being humbled by the biggest stage . . . or our willingness to forgive them for it?