New York Yankees sluggers: Mantle, Maris, Jackson and Judge

I asked my 22 year old nephew, a Long Island college student, what he thought were the biggest New York sports stories of recent years. He mentioned "Lin-sanity", Jeremy Lin's remarkable debut with the New York Knicks in 2012. Lin was unstoppable in his first 12 games and electrified the long-suffering New York basketball world. I said, "how about right now?" My nephew answered, "Judge." Aaron Judge, New York Yankees new arrival in right field. Judge at 6'7" has the dimensions to be a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. He has already stunned the hearts and minds of the most cynical New Yorker by hitting 30 home runs in his rookie year before the All-Star game. Judge broke Joe DiMaggio's home run's by a rookie record and it only took him half a season! Aaron Judge struggles now with a slump, but already set the tone for kicking Yankee baseball and New York sports to a higher level of excitement.

So, just how do you become a New York Yankee legend? The best way is by belting home runs-- long home runs, hitting clutch home runs and doing so year-after-year in a New York uniform. After the heroic Babe Ruth, the template for transcendent sluggers, you get Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggion brings us to Post WWII era, the modern era of sports.

Top 3 Modern Sluggers creating Yankee history:

Mickey Mantle-- 18 years with Yankees (competition with Roger Maris-- 1961)
Roger Maris-- 7 years with Yankees (broke Ruth's record-- 61 homers in 1961)
Reggie Jackson-- 5 years (Mr. October, World Series champions 1977&1978)

Certainly other great power hitters have come down the pike for the New York Yankees. Alex Rodriguez arrived on the scene in 2004 and brought high hopes. His home run production happened mainly during the regular season and was marred by poor post-season performance and steroid use.

Mickey Mantle had many transcendent moments in his career-long tenure with the Yankees, including a Triple Crown season in 1956. Longtime Yankee fans will never his mano-a-mano competition with Roger Maris to reach or surpass Babe Ruth's record on 60 homers. Though Mantle came in second, with 54 homers that year, the drama playing out between two teammates to enter the rarefied air of Babe Ruth kept fans transfixed to the scene unfolding in Yankee stadium. The sustained drama, covering an entire season, makes Mantle the most legendary home run hero of the modern era. Roger Maris's relatively short stay with the Yankees, along with the fall-off in production in every other year with the Yanks, leaves him behind "The Mick." Maris will forever be honored as a pioneer, the first player willing to dare tread on the legacy of the Bambino.

Reggie Jackson may be the greatest clutch hitter of all-time, certainly the greatest clutch home run hitter of all-time. His nickname, "Mr. October," says it all and maybe that's the best nickname every bestowed upon an active player. Reggie lead the team to two world championship in 5 short years, along with a third World Series appearance. Jackson's amazing feat of hitting 3 home runs in game 6 of the 1977 World Series stands as a transcendent moment, never to be forgotten by the Yankee faithful. Jackson had a flair for the dramatic off the field-- and his charged relationship to manager Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner adds fuel to Jackson's charged baseball reputation in the Big Apple. Reggie could handle pressure of all types and the big moment appealed him to him, the spotlight pulled the best out of Mr. October.

Aaron Judge stunned the baseball world with an amazing Home Run Derby this season-- poking 57 home runs out of the park. The achievement seemed to throw him off. He created his own monster in terms of expectations for future performance. He immediately slipped into a hitting funk. Judge has the admiration of his fellow players and fans. This differentiates him from Alex Rodriguez. Mickey Mantle had a self-deprecating, country boy,.... "aw shucks" sense of humor about himself. Mickey kept a sense of balance despite the New York pressure cooker. Alcohol was Mickey's demon, maybe his way to decompress. Somehow, heavy drinking and all, he kept the New York Yankees in good competitive stead and grew his legend through it all.

Sports Heroes-- How to Get the Monkey off the Back?

Sportswriter do not like the psychological aspect behind athletic achievement. They much prefer statistics. Sportswriters and most fans misinterpret athletic performance as if players were as predictable as machines. Joe Blow has 50 home runs and so he is an important player to have in the batter's box at the key moment in the bottom of the ninth inning. Players are not machines. They are subject to psychological hang-ups, some of which derail their careers. Great athletes sometimes get overwhelmed and I'll give you a few examples of players who have struggled:

1) Peyton Manning-- cannot perform in NFL playoff games. Brother Eli does much better.
2) Alex Rodriguez-- powerful performer in regular season games, big bust in the playoffs.
3) Tony Romo-- wonderful athlete and good guy, but hates the playoffs. Lost this year to Aaron Rodgers of Green Bay and Aaron was playing on one leg.
4) Prince Fielder-- great hitter but hates the playoff environment.


And it can happen to coaches as well:
1) Rick Barnes-- coached University of Texas basketball for 17 seasons and made one Final Four.
2) Roy Williams-- got the North Carolina job for college basketball but now falters in the NCAA tournament.

You can bet against these guys in big games and make a fortune. I prefer not to bet on sporting events, but have watched them fail with clockwork regularity.

I have seen a couple of players overcome this Monkey on the Back of fear. The Monkey keeps you from achieving success at the very pinnacle of success. Do these players have a fear of success-- are they afraid to become absolute superstars? It goes deep and they could all benefit from psychological counseling. Every guy mentioned above is a fantastic athlete.

Two who overcame their fears:
1) Dirk Nowitski-- brought the Dallas Mavericks to a NBA Championship after faltering for years in the big moment.
2) Lebron James-- despite his other-worldly talents, Lebron took off after he beat the demon back and won an NBA championship. Much well-deserved success followed this accomplishment.

And, Tiger Woods, is an athlete with two careers-- pre-sex scandal and post sex-scandal
Tiger obviously played with the awesome consistency of a golfing robot till the scandal hit. He must have felt so guilty about the tawdry cheating stories that he never has recovered. He never made a thorough confession to his misdeeds. He should have gone on Oprah and spilled the whole truth. He could have continued his career as the best golfer ever. Instead, he grew a Monkey on the Back.

A-Rod in the Wrong Pond

Read the New York Times recent piece on Alex Rodriguez's struggles with the New York Yankees. A-Rod was a big league ballplayer for nearly ten years, 1994- 2003, when he moved his baseball skills to the town that never sleeps. Rodriguez was signed away from the Seattle Mariners. Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks  signed A-Rod to an enormous $252 million dollar contract to play, a deal that as "big as Texas" and maybe the beginning of the end for the one of the greatest athletes to cross the the chalk white lines. I saw A-Rod play a few times in Arlington in the 2001-2003 seasons. Tom Hicks would position himself just a row or two back from the batting circle but the scrutiny did not effect Rodriguez in a negative way. A-Rod averaged 52 home runs per season and played an extremely graceful shortstop for a guy standing 6 ft. 3 in.. Rodriguez later admitted to taking steroids during the Rangers years but the enormous skills cannot be denied. What has happened in the years since has the feel of a Greek tragedy.

Rodriguez hungered for baseball immortality and legends are built in places like Yankee Stadium. The Yankees always hunger for the best that money can buy and they took the pricey contract off Tom Hicks's hands and brought the superstar to New York. Derek Jeter, a Yankee legend not to be displaced, played shortstop and so A-Rod became the starting third basemen in what should/could have been a great run of Yankee championships. Instead, the Yankees won a single championship in the near decade Rodriguez has been with the club. So what went wrong?

Alex Rodriguez does not flourish under post-season playoffs pressure. The allows two options: 1) play for a second tier team that rarely gets into the playoffs, 2) play for a dominant team like the Yankees and please fans and writers during the regular season but draw their ire during the post-season. The psychological explanation for why a player performs at unbelievable high levels during the regular season but folds into a mockery of his usual capable self is very complicated. Everybody has their level of optimum performance and many people hit a wall of fear, and possibly a collapse, a Peter-principle level of failure. The Peter-principle, though, is based on the notion that we get promoted to our level of incompetence and stay there. A-Rod's talents seems to belie any possible level of incompetence; the guy has skills unmatched by his peers. The problem, though entirely in his head, is very real.

I remember attending a Cooperstown traveling show, a little mini-version of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame museum being exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. The most interesting baseball object was the thick spiral notebook compiled by baseball uber-agent Scott Boras on behalf of Alex Rodriguez, the notebook that may have closed the deal on the $252 million dollar contract. Boras compiled three entire sections of the notebook to a comparison of Alex Rodriguez's statistics to the other American League shortstops-- 1) Alex Rodriguez vs. Nomar Garciaparra, 2) Alex Rodriguez vs. Derek Jeter and 3) Alex Rodriguez vs. all other Shortstops. A-Rod, no doubt, dwarfed all the others in terms of numbers, but numbers do not tell the whole story.

Hopefully there is a happy conclusion to the enigma that is A-Rod. He may have arrived on the American baseball scene at the worst possible time-- a perfect storm of obscene money, horrible drugs and a society too focused on results. The golden years of modern Yankees history- the Fifties and Sixties with Mantle, Maris, Berra, Whitey Ford, culminating in 1961, occurred at the birth of television way before the ESPN era of sports fetishism. A-Rod maybe would have struggled with success in 1961. The Yankees had Tony Kubek at shortsop, surely no A-Rod, but he got the job done. Maybe A-Rod would have been better with an Ernie Banks career, a fantastic personal record played on the fringes of the spotlight. He could still be respected and admired, even if under-represented in World Series history. Under the present circumstances he has a Sisyphus-like struggle trying to roll a massive baseball uphill against the squawking of social media, lame-stream media and whatever psychological pressures are self-implosed. Maybe he will find a way back to a smaller pond and play another five years of a game he likely once enjoyed.