My wife is always giving me hard time about playing the sliding doors game. She thinks it’s a waste of time. I had a colleague who once gave me a t-shirt that reads: “What if there were no hypothetical questions?”. And one my favorite books is Mike Pesca’s anthology, “Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs In Sports History.” (As an aside, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to pick up a copy. The Muhammad Ali and Tom Brady stories alone are worth the cover price.)
Last week I streamed “Fight For Glory,” the three-part Apple TV documentary about the 2024 World Series. It is an incredible watch, as the cameras and microphones were able to see and hear so much that we as viewers of just the Fox telecast could not. Having cameras in Freddie Freeman’s house, being with his family, and then in the training room with him prior to a game, gives us fans an entirely different vantage point and appreciation for what he went through to become a World Series hero.
The documentary does a fantastic job of interweaving actual game footage and various broadcast feeds. And whether it was Joe Buck on Fox, or Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman on WFAN, or Steven Nelson and Rick Monday AM570, there was one consistent theme we heard over and over as the World Series progressed: “If and when Aaron Judge gets hot, he can carry this team to a championship.” As the documentary makes clear, each broadcaster said this nearly every time Judge came to the plate over the first four games.
As a reminder, through the first four games (well, through his first three at bats of Game 4), the eventual AL MVP was 1-for-13 with seven strikeouts and seven runners left on base. In the first three games of the Series, Judge swung and missed 18 times.
In the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 4, Judge laced a 107.8 MPH single to left. That at bat, that swing, that hit, felt different. He would end game 1-for-3, but he had to be feeling good about coming to the plate four times and not swinging through any pitches.
Judge’s first at bat of Game 5 resulted in a 108.9 MPH missile to right center for his first home run of the Fall Classic. On the Fox call, Joe Davis proclaimed: “Sleeping giant has awoken.”
Two at bats later he hit a ball 101 MPH to deep left for a fly out. Then in the eighth, he hit a 100 MPH double to left. At that point, it was clear to everyone watching that Judge was locked in and doing damage. Unfortunately for Yankees fans, Judge never got another at bat in the series. As we all know, the Dodgers came back to win Game 5 and with it, the World Series.
But what if the Yankees had not lost Game 5. What if they had not choked away a no-hitter and a 5-0 lead? What if they had held on to their 6-5 advantage late in the game? What if the series went back to Los Angeles, with Yankees having won three straight and having all the momentum and with the Dodgers on the ropes? Well, we will never know.
The Dodgers never had to throw another pitch to the six-time All-Star, two-time MVP, American League single-season home run champ, the man who had hit 196 home runs the previous four seasons combined, while still batting .300 with a 1.056 OPS and a 191 OPS+. In a different universe, there would have been two more World Series games. How would Judge have fared? It is impossible to know for sure, but we can speculate based on his next two official games.
On Opening Day (which would have been Game 6), Judge went 1-for-4 with a double, striking out twice. The next day, the Yankees second game of the 2025 season (what would have been Game 7), Judge went ham. How about 4-for-6 with three homers, eight RBI, and 14 total bases. What would that have looked like in Chavez Ravine, on the biggest stage, in a deciding game, on national television?
Just for kicks, Judge hit a home run the following day as well, while walking three times and scoring four runs.
Would the Judge of early 2025 (.417/.481/1.167 with five home runs through his first six games) have been who the Dodgers would have contended with in the final two games of the World Series? Probably not. But they would have had to contend with the guy whose previous seven World Series at bats went like this:
- 92.8 MPH fly out
- 107.8 MPH single
- 108.9 MPH home run
- Walk
- 100.9 MPH fly out
- Walk
- 100.1 MPH double
Does anyone think that the shaky Dodgers rotation and/or bullpen wanted to face that version of Aaron Judge with the title on the line? Does anyone think that Judge wouldn’t have had at least a couple of memorable at bats in Games 6 and/or 7? Does anyone think that the Dodgers weren’t thanking their lucky stars that they came home with the Commissioner’s Trophy rather than trying to figure out how to get the suddenly red hot Aaron Judge out eight or ten more times?
Sliding doors. They are fun to think about.
PLAY BALL!!
