Judge vs. Ohtani is a gift: How the universe converged to produce a dream World Series showdown
-
Jeff Passan, ESPN
WHATEVER FINALLY BROUGHT Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge together, be it fate or kismet or financial might or a lucky draw or some combination therein, understands the power of delayed gratification. For the past seven years, Ohtani and Judge have existed in the same baseball universe, dominating their peers wholly and incontrovertibly — trains moving faster than everyone, only set on parallel tracks. Never, for anything meaningful, did their paths converge. Neither had reached the biggest stage, together or individually. They were monoliths. Their greatness lived in realms of their own.
What if, though? It was always the optimistic question. What if, at some point in this game that so often makes no sense, everything aligned with purpose? What if Ohtani joined a team worthy of his excellence, and what if Judge’s failures of Octobers past receded, and what if these two men who have bent a sport to their will finally met for something more meaningful than awards or records?
Each owns plenty of hardware. Judge has won one MVP award, is about to win another, made six All-Star teams, collected three Silver Sluggers and was Rookie of the Year. Ohtani’s résumé is nearly a carbon copy: two MVPs with a third on the way, four All-Star Games, two Silver Sluggers and a Rookie of the Year plaque. Ohtani and Judge have coexisted in the same way as light and darkness, silence and noise, truth and lies: They are here, undeniable, grand forces of nature, but never together.
Now they are united at last, a blessing of synchronicity. It feels almost miraculous to find a moment like this, when the two men who, more than any, have evolved the sport to a new place face off with one another for the only prize that matters.
We have no idea what kind of baseball is in store in the World Series that begins Friday between the Dodgers and Yankees, between Los Angeles and New York, between Ohtani and Judge. In no way should that diminish the excitement. The matchup takes something already special — the first time in 41 years that the Dodgers and Yankees, the two most famous franchises in the sport, battle for a championship — and infuses it with jet fuel. As much of a turn-off as the pairing of two financial behemoths that regularly carry payrolls in the $300 million range might be to all of the fans whose organizations refuse to spend half that, now is not the time to lament baseball’s inequity. This is a rare gift of two historically unique talents.
Until Judge arrived, no man who stood at least 6-foot-7 and weighed more than 280 pounds had taken a single major league at-bat. Until Ohtani came from Japan, no MLB player since Babe Ruth nearly a century earlier had attempted to pitch and hit full-time simultaneously, let alone done so with aplomb. These are imaginary beings manifested as men.
Because the ulnar collateral ligament in Ohtani’s right elbow failed for a second time, he will not stand 60 feet, 6 inches from Judge, ball in hand, specimen against specimen. But Ohtani and Judge will share the same field, breathe the same air, play in the same games, strive for the same goal, and for now, that is plenty.
This World Series will mark the first time ever that opposing players coming off 50-home run regular seasons face one another. The first time home run champions from the American and National League clashed since Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider in1956. The first time players with at least nine wins above replacement squared off in a World Series since Ted Williams and Stan Musial in 1946.
Opportunities like this come along only every so often for baseball. The how and the why can be left to the cosmic, the unknowable. All that matters, really, is that they are here.
OHTANI’S PATH BEGAN more than 5,000 miles away from Dodger Stadium. For years, he was Japan’s secret, its treasure. Maybe the best pitcher in the world — and he could hit. As Ohtani prepared to leave Nippon Professional Baseball after the 2017 season and join MLB, big league scouts weren’t convinced he could do both. They were wrong. From the right arm whirling around his 6-foot-4, 230-pound frame, Ohtani thrust balls with uncommon speed and spin. And not only could he hit, he did so like few others. The ball soared off his bat as if propelled by gunpowder. Before his arrival in MLB, only two players could generate batted balls like Ohtani. One was named Giancarlo Stanton, and he won the NL MVP award in 2017. The other was the AL Rookie of the Year that season: Aaron Judge.
When Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels, the baseball industry cocked a collective eyebrow. The Angels were backbenchers in Southern California, terminally misrun. The skepticism was proven well-founded: Ohtani spent six seasons in Orange County and played for teams that went a combined 401-469, finished in fourth place in the AL West five times and never made the postseason. For a team to pair Ohtani with Mike Trout for more than half a decade and never muster a winning record takes festering institutional rot.
Relevance awaited 30 miles north. When Ohtani reached free agency last winter, the Dodgers pulled out every stop to convince him to abscond Anaheim for L.A., including a video the late Kobe Bryant had recorded when the Dodgers tried to sign Ohtani in December 2017.
The Dodgers, admired by players for their generous payrolls, made a pitch to Ohtani that went beyond money (though they were fully amenable to his request: 10 years, $700 million, with $680 million of it deferred, 65% more guaranteed dollars than baseball’s previous record deal, the $426.5 million extension Trout signed in 2019). The organization shares Ohtani’s obsessiveness with the game. The Dodgers promised he would be surrounded by like-minded people on the hitting and pitching sides, ones who spend as much time thinking about baseball as Ohtani does.
They welcomed his curiosity and whetted his appetite for knowledge. He could take batting practice off the Trajekt pitching machine that can replicate every major league pitch thrown this season. He could hone his swing with HitTrax, another piece of tech that measures batted-ball profiles. He could work with a medical staff that mapped out a plan for him to rehabilitate his elbow while chasing history.
Beyond that, the Dodgers planned to tap into something the Angels never fully could: the power of Ohtani in Japan. He is baseball’s biggest star in at least a generation, maybe longer. His reach extends across oceans. If in his time with the Angels he managed to establish himself as inimitable in the same way as Ronaldo and Messi, LeBron and Steph, Brady and Mahomes, continuing with the Dodgers would exponentially increase the size of his stage.
More than that, they were winners, something Ohtani had been starved for in Anaheim. The Dodgers had captured the NL West title 10 of the past 11 years. Their success is a foundational element of the franchise, which will make its 22nd World Series appearance this week.
Ohtani chose the Dodgers on Dec. 9, spent spring training weathering all of the attention that came with the marriage of iconic player and organization and navigated the delicate dance of integrating into a clubhouse full of set-in-their-ways veterans while bringing with him the eyeballs of a country of 125 million people.
“You would never guess he’s Japanese Justin Bieber,” Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow said. “He’s got a very young soul. He seems very innocent.”
Following Ohtani’s first game as a Dodger, everything changed. After inquiries from an ESPN reporter about a multimillion-dollar gambling debt, Ohtani’s interpreter and closest friend, Ippei Mizuhara, stood in front of the team and said he had an addiction. Based on information provided by Mizuhara, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told the team Ohtani had helped cover the losses.
The story didn’t add up to Ohtani, who speaks and understands English but not fluently. Hours later, the Dodgers fired Mizuhara, who later would admit in court to stealing nearly $17 million from a bank account of Ohtani’s to which he had access. Questions about Ohtani’s involvement — which were answered in a federal complaint that point-by-point laid out the case against Mizuhara — nonetheless hung over the Dodgers. Mizuhara’s guilty plea to bank fraud and tax fraud in June, carrying a sentence of up to 33 years, did little to satisfy the conspiracy theorists convinced he was protecting Ohtani.
All the while, Ohtani kept hitting. He entered June with 14 home runs and an OPS of nearly 1.000, and he proceeded to hit a dozen home runs that month. He added 12 stolen bases in July, then followed by homering another 12 times and swiping 15 more bags in August. When September arrived, the specter of Ohtani becoming the first player ever to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season looked possible. He reached both marks Sept. 18 in arguably the greatest individual game in baseball history: 6-for-6 with three home runs, 10 RBIs and two stolen bases. The 50th home run ball sold at auction for $4.392 million on Wednesday.
Ohtani didn’t stop at 50/50. A day later, he hit his 51st homer, and two days after that, out went No. 52, a colossal shot on a 92-mph fastball from Colorado starter Kyle Freeland that was above the strike zone and on the inner third of the plate — a seemingly impossible pitch to hit where he did (slightly to the left of center field) and how hard he did (110 mph).
“Going backside in Dodger Stadium is not easy,” Dodgers Game 1 starter Jack Flaherty said. “Left-center off a lefty? Really not easy. Do it on that pitch, up and in, and hit it as far as he did on a pitch that’s a ball? Damn.”
Ohtani ended his age-30 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases for the team with the best record in baseball — the essential validation for his free agency decision. What the Dodgers sold him on — that they would help make Ohtani the best version of himself — came true.
“What was so surprising for me is no matter how he’s doing, good or bad, he’s the same,” Glasnow said. “Every single person I’ve played with has ups and downs. You can tell when things are going well. It helped that he was having a dominant season, but he never seems too overwhelmed.
“People who get too consumed with it — it adds more stress. He doesn’t seem to carry it with him. It doesn’t seem like he’s overly stressed out ever.”
October offered the potential for that. And just like in April, when Ohtani answered questions about his ability to withstand scrutiny, he displayed rare imperviousness. Ohtani homered in his second playoff at-bat. He reached base 17 times in the NLCS, a Dodgers postseason-series record. He continued a laughable jag dating back to the regular season in which he hit safely in 18 of his last 23 at-bats with runners on base.
And somehow none of it seemed altogether absurd. Because this is who Ohtani is. Impossible is a goal, inconceivable an aspiration. It is the rarest quality in sports. And there’s only one other player in baseball right now who can come close to matching it.
JUDGE’S PATH BEGAN nearly 3,000 miles from Yankee Stadium. He was the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2013 draft, a Fresno State outfielder whose size and the lack of comparable players concerned most teams. New York considered this a feature, not a bug. No franchise understands the value of a star like the Yankees, and they gladly went big, appreciating the boom-or-bust nature of prospects with tools like Judge’s.
He arrived in the Bronx on Aug. 13, 2016, batting eighth for a Yankees team barely over .500. On the fourth major league pitch he saw, Judge hit a towering home run to center field, one of two hits that day. He homered the next day, followed that with two more hits and added another pair in his fifth game. For the previous 2½ seasons, Judge had tantalized the Yankees with his raw talent. What they saw in the first five games of his major league career went a long way to justifying their excitement.
That he followed the early slice of substantiation with the worst slump of his career — in Judge’s final 22 games that year, he hit .121/.213/.227 with 36 strikeouts in 66 at-bats — did not disillusion the Yankees. They believed in the person, the work, as much as they did the player.
Even so, what Judge did in his first full season — .284/.422/.627 with 52 home runs, 114 RBIs and a league-leading 128 runs, 127 walks and 208 strikeouts — dwarfed expectations. Greatness in baseball scarcely reveals itself so quickly. When it does, its trappings can ensnare even the most careful. Never did Judge find himself caught. He was big and moved in gorgeous fashion, his swing honed over thousands of hours, his twitchiness typically seen in men 6 inches shorter and 80 pounds lighter. When he played, he thrived. And though injuries ate at chunks of his next three seasons, Judge always produced when healthy, settling into a position held by few: a true, undeniable New York sports star.
“Judgy’s just such a consistent person,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “You can’t hide that or fake that. That’s what’s so impressive about him. You can’t tell if he is flying high, which he normally is, or if he’s 2-for-14, striking out for a few days.”
Judge understood the duties of serving as the heir to Derek Jeter, the longtime Yankees captain who retired in 2014: accountability above all. To the team. To the fans. To himself. Baseball is a cannibal of a sport, capable of eating at the psyches of even the most gifted players. Judge could not succumb to its vagaries, and he didn’t, and over time Boone’s awe morphed into admiration. He trusted Judge, still green by baseball standards, for wisdom and input.
“Over the years, I’ve brought him in more,” Boone said. “I’ll ask his opinion on something I’m thinking about with the team. But I love it when he stops by my office after a game. He’ll just pop in late, an hour after a game, and just check in. Maybe it was a big win or something. And he’ll say, ‘Good stuff, skip. Hey, how’s everyone doing? How are we looking?'”
When something goes wrong, on the field or otherwise, Judge will give Boone a knowing glance, ball up his fist and tap himself on the chest, as if to say: That’s on me. And as much as Judge understands his apologies won’t be accepted — “More often than not,” Boone said, “I’m just like: ‘Stop it’ ” — he still takes it upon himself to offer them. If things are really going sideways, Judge will forgo the sign language for verbal affirmation.
On July 24, 2022, about two months before he would hit his 62nd home run and break the single-season AL home run record Roger Maris had held for more than six decades, Judge struck out in his first at-bat against Baltimore right-hander Dean Kremer on a curveball that nearly hit the ground. He returned to the dugout, looked at Boone and said: “I got you.” In his next at-bat, Judge hit a Kremer curve 456 feet. As he rounded third, he extended his index finger and pointed at Boone in the dugout.
For all of Judge’s brilliance that season, he went 1-for-16 as the Houston Astros swept the Yankees in the ALCS. They had lost the previous year in the wild-card game to Boston. And in the 2020 division series to Tampa. And the season prior to the Astros in the ALCS. And before that to the Red Sox in the division series. And in his first postseason, his rookie year, when three home runs and seven RBIs weren’t enough to oust an Astros team later punished for sign-stealing that extended into October. As much credit as Judge is due for his regular-season radiance, the lack of a World Series appearance until now was an indelible dark spot.
“It eats at me every time we don’t finish the job,” Judge said. “I take a lot of responsibility for that, being on the team, and if we don’t win it all, I feel like it’s my fault.”
The Yankees re-signed Judge to a nine-year, $360 million contract in December 2022, thwarting the San Francisco Giants‘ attempt to lure him back to California. New York proceeded to miss the postseason in Judge’s first year of the deal, and the organization, keenly aware of the need to surround him with better players, acquired star right fielder Juan Soto in a trade. Fourteen consecutive seasons without a World Series appearance conferred a particular sense of urgency on the Yankees, as did the acknowledgement that at 32 years old, Judge’s best years might be behind him.
April stoked such fears. Batting just .179 with two home runs 21 games into the season, Judge was booed at Yankee Stadium. Judge didn’t begrudge them. With his contract came the Yankees’ captaincy and its responsibilities. Even the most productive hitter in the world can slump, and New York offers no mercy.
“There’s been a lot of legends that played here that have been booed,” Judge said. “It’s just part of it. You can’t focus on that. You’ve got to go out there. They want to see you win. They want to see you do well. You’ve just got to focus on what you can control. What I can control is what I do in the box and what I do on the field.”
When Judge talks about his process or taking things one at-bat at a time or creating a plan and needing to execute on it or controlling what he can control, the words are neither idle nor trite. He homered 14 times in May. He hit .409 and drove in 37 runs in June. He added another dozen home runs in August. He fell off slightly in September and still managed an OPS over 1.000 for the month. Though Judge’s 58 home runs this season fell short of his record, his best all-around season yet helped the Yankees improve by a dozen games over 2023. New York captured the top seed in the AL, toppled Kansas City in the division series, bounced Cleveland in the ALCS and booked the ticket to their 41st World Series and Judge’s first.
All of it came with Judge still not performing like himself in the postseason. He finished the division series 2-for-13 and the ALCS 3-for-18, far from the sort of production expected of Judge by his team and himself. But as when his cold spring gave way to a blistering summer, Judge heats up fast. And if the Yankees can make it to the World Series without him hitting, imagine what they’ll look like if he does.
NOW THEY MEET, the superstars who weren’t supposed to be what they are because how could anybody be that, at the intersection of unspeakable talent and fanatical work? If Ohtani and Judge were on expansion teams, it would be a championship bout compelling enough to watch. Add in the backdrop — the 11 previous World Series between the franchises, the two biggest cities in America, the two best records in MLB — and it’s challenging to envision a World Series that appeals more to the masses.
MLB’s expanded postseason has reduced even further the likelihood that the best team in each league would play in the World Series, which is why this feels so special. These aren’t wild cards that got hot at the right time. They’re very good baseball teams with truly great players. The parade of stars beyond Ohtani and Judge — Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, Giancarlo Stanton, Freddie Freeman, Gerrit Cole — bolsters the argument in favor of this being a World Series for the most casual of fans.
If you love baseball — hell, if you just like it — this series is a privilege in the same way it was the last time we saw Ohtani playing meaningful baseball. That was March 2023, when the Japanese national team he captained opposed Team USA in the finals of the World Baseball Classic. (Judge declined joining Team USA to focus on his goals in New York.) With Japan leading by one run, Ohtani came on to pitch the ninth. He secured two outs, and up stepped Trout, the only other person who understood on his level what it meant to play for the Angels. To be that best version of himself, Ohtani needed these sorts of moments, challenges, stakes. On a 3-2 pitch, he threw a vicious sweeper that crossed all 18 inches of the plate and more. Trout swung through it. Ohtani exulted.
No one in the United States had seen that side of him. At 21, he won the Japan Series with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, and it left him hungry. By the end of last season, Ohtani was famished. If baseball is a game he’s trying to solve bit-by-bit, a championship run in the world’s best league might as well be the final boss. And it’s the one area in which Ohtani allows himself leeway for the moment to penetrate his rhinoceros skin. This, to Ohtani, isn’t simply important. It’s everything.
“Playing a regular-season game and playing a playoff game is different,” Ohtani said. “And I think a lot of players end up showing their emotions. So I feel like I’m part of that.”
Judge is not, though he sees the stakes as no less do-or-die than Ohtani does. Stoicism is Judge’s superpower, and to change that now, because he is four wins from his first ring, would be a betrayal of self. Discipline got Judge here, and he refuses to cave to the notion that October contrasts with September or August or July in any meaningful way.
“All I’m doing is trying to treat it just like the regular season,” Judge said, “go out there and whatever the situation calls for, go out there and do it and help the team win a game.”
At the end of this series, one of baseball’s two titans is going to win four games and his first championship, gilding his legacy. The other will skulk away, heartbroken, wondering where it went wrong, lamenting what he could have done. It doesn’t matter that their pitching staffs are both stretched thin, that the grind of a 162-game season is compounded by an October where every pitch matters. The way Ohtani and Judge’s minds work, they could bat 1.000, and if they lose, they still won’t have done enough.
And that’s what makes this all so damn good. At 8:08 p.m. ET on Friday, inside a packed Dodger Stadium, seven years in the making arrives. The delay ends. The gratification beckons. Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, each one of one yet still in so many ways the same, ushering in something only they can. An epic for a new epoch.
As we approach the one-month mark of the 2025 college football season, the state of quarterback play among the contenders (and pretenders) across the country is becoming clearer.
LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier, Penn State’s Drew Allar and Texas’ Arch Manning — all for different reasons — have followed hefty preseason hype with relatively slow starts this fall. Elsewhere, Josh Hoover (TCU), Haynes King (Georgia Tech) and Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt) are looking very much as expected, and some of the nation’s biggest offseason question marks, including Oregon’s Dante Moore and Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed, have emerged as surprise stars.
Week 4 was a big one for transfer passers as Joey Aguilar (Tennessee), Carson Beck (Miami), John Mateer (Oklahoma), Fernando Mendoza (Indiana) and Beau Pribula (Missouri) all built on impressive starts with their new programs. Meanwhile, fellow portal quarterbacks Jackson Arnold (Auburn), Devon Dampier (Utah) and Jake Retzlaff (Tulane) experienced their first stumbles in their new uniforms Saturday.
With four full weeks of college football in the books, here’s our take on the Top 25 and how early-season quarterback situations are developing across the country. — Eli Lederman
Previous ranking: 1
Freshman Julian Sayin is off to a terrific start through three games, having replaced national championship-winning quarterback Will Howard. Sayin ranks 29th nationally in QBR (77.2) and is completing almost 79% of his throws. Sayin didn’t put up big numbers in Ohio State’s season-opening 14-7 victory over then-top-ranked Texas. But he was accurate and avoided any big mistakes (sacks or turnovers), which allowed the Ohio State defense to salt away the win. In Week 2’s 70-0 victory, Sayin set a school record with 16 straight completions to begin the game. Then, in Week 3, he passed for 347 yards as the offense got rolling against Ohio in the second half after a slow start. Some big tests loom ahead, most notably on Nov. 1 against Penn State and in the regular-season finale at Michigan. But Sayin has impressed so far with his poise and precision. — Jake Trotter
Previous ranking: 3
Carson Beck has helped lead the Hurricanes to a 4-0 start following a 26-7 win over Florida on Saturday. Though his performance against the Gators was not up to his standard — Beck went 17-of-30 for 160 yards with one interception — he is still completing 73% of his passes on the season and has helped position Miami in the top five as a CFP contender. Beck has shown an ability to make big plays in the passing game with his receivers, who are skilled at going up and making acrobatic catches or coming down with jump balls. Following an open date, Miami plays Florida State in Tallahassee, and Beck said he is looking forward to playing in Doak Campbell Stadium for the first time. — Andrea Adelson
Previous ranking: 2
The Ducks continue to boast one of the most balanced offenses in the country as they totaled 305 passing yards and 280 rushing yards in their 41-7 win over rivals Oregon State Saturday. One slight difference about this week’s performance, however, was that they let quarterback Dante Moore loosen his arm a bit more. Whether it was by design or not, it worked; Moore threw 31 passes for 305 yards and four touchdowns, all season highs. It was another reminder that no matter how good the Ducks have been this season, Moore still has more in the tank. Even if he doesn’t have the kind of off-the-charts pop that others at his position might boast, the sophomore has proved he can be efficient, explosive when needed and, most importantly, capable of managing Oregon’s offense to perfection so far. — Paolo Uggetti
Previous ranking: 4
After a slow start to the season due to a torso injury, Tigers quarterback Garrett Nussmeier again looked like one of the best passers in the FBS on Saturday, albeit against FCS program Southeastern Louisiana. And with a trip to Ole Miss coming up next, it couldn’t have come at a better time for LSU. Nussmeier completed 25 of 31 passes for 273 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in 2½ quarters of action against the Lions. It was the first game in which he threw for more than 250 yards this season. “This week was big about trying to find our rhythm and getting in stride heading into SEC play,” Nussmeier said. LSU coach Brian Kelly thought Nussmeier did a better job seeing the field and throwing in rhythm. — Mark Schlabach
Previous ranking: 7
Veteran Drew Allar is off to a bit of a slow start statistically. He ranks 111th in QBR (38.4) and has thrown just four touchdowns over three games. But the Nittany Lions have yet to be pressed, as they coasted past Nevada (46-11), Florida International (34-0) and Villanova (52-6). The spotlight, however, will be on Allar and Penn State next weekend when Oregon visits for a prime-time, “White Out” showdown. Allar admitted over the summer that the time has come for the Nittany Lions “to get over that hump” against big-time opponents. Under coach James Franklin, Penn State is 4-20 against teams ranked in the AP top 10 — and Allar has only one career top-10 win (Boise State last year) as Penn State’s starting quarterback. Beating the Ducks this time around would be a huge statement for Allar and the Nittany Lions. — Trotter
Previous ranking: 5
Any lingering quarterback concerns that Georgia fans had about Gunner Stockton were probably put to rest after his performance in a 44-41 overtime victory at Tennessee on Sept. 13. The sophomore completed 23 of 31 passes for 304 yards with two touchdowns and ran 13 times for 38 yards with another score. It was a much better performance for Stockton, who struggled to get the ball down the field in a 28-6 victory against Austin Peay the week before. He led the Bulldogs on four touchdown drives of 72 yards or longer, including one near the end of regulation that resulted in his 28-yard scoring pass to London Humphreys on fourth down. Georgia’s offensive line needs to get better, and Stockton needs to improve at keeping his eyes down the field while scrambling. — Schlabach
Previous ranking: 8
So far, things could not have gone better for the Seminoles with transfer quarterback Tommy Castellanos, who has been a perfect fit for the offense and the team in general. Castellanos has thrown for 594 yards and three touchdowns this season, completing 71% of his passes, while adding 139 yards rushing and three scores. Florida State has not had to rely on the passing game just yet, as the Seminoles have steamrolled their opponents on the ground. Castellanos did have a bit of a scare in a 66-10 win over Kent State when his leg got rolled up on, but he said afterward he was “all good.” — Adelson
Previous ranking: 9
Washington State transfer John Mateer has delivered on the hype that followed his offseason arrival in Norman. Through four games, he has already taken care of his principal objective: stabilizing a Sooners offense that finished 113th in total offense a year ago. But Mateer has also brought with him a brand of playmaking ability Oklahoma hasn’t had at the quarterback position since Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts rolled through the program in the late 2010s. Following Saturday’s 24-17 win over then-No. 22 Auburn, Mateer ranks sixth nationally in passing yards (1,215) and tied for second among Power 4 quarterbacks in rushing scores (five). He was far from perfect facing an SEC defense for the first time, and Mateer’s turnover tally (four) and propensity for working himself into trouble are worth keeping an eye on as Oklahoma stares down ranked matchups in six of its final eight games of the season. But there’s no doubt that Mateer has significantly raised the floor for the Sooners’ offense. The question now is just how high the ceiling can be this fall. — Lederman
Previous ranking: 6
The Aggies had a bye week, a fortuitous break after an emotional trip to Notre Dame where they won on a fourth-down touchdown with 13 seconds left. It was A&M’s first road nonconference win against a ranked team since 1979 and first road win against any ranked team at all since 2014. Marcel Reed was just 17-of-37 in that game but threw for 360 yards, and KC Concepcion and Mario Craver have provided the 3-0 Aggies with the big-play threats they lacked last season. Last year, A&M got off to a hot start, beginning 7-1, including a win over No. 8 LSU. Then, a slide started, beginning with a road loss to South Carolina followed by a 43-41 triple-overtime loss to Auburn. The Aggies get the Tigers at home next week, who are coming off a road loss to Oklahoma, to try to keep this year’s momentum rolling. — Dave Wilson
Previous ranking: 20
Although Indiana retained many of its top players from its 2024 CFP team, it needed to replace standout quarterback Kurtis Rourke. The team plucked one of the top available transfers in Cal‘s Fernando Mendoza, who joined his younger brother and fellow quarterback Alberto Mendoza at IU. How would Mendoza adjust? The answer came Saturday with a near-flawless performance, as Mendoza had three more touchdown passes (five) than incompletions (two), finishing with 267 passing yards and finding four different teammates for scores. He became the second FBS player with five passing touchdowns and 90% completions against an AP ranked opponent in the past 30 years, joining Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud in 2021 against Michigan State. Mendoza could end up being an upgrade from Rourke. — Adam Rittenberg
Previous ranking: 12
After four games, Rebels coach Lane Kiffin has a good problem on his hands. Ole Miss has two quarterbacks who are more than capable of running the offense. Starter Austin Simmons won the job in camp and has thrown for 580 yards with four touchdowns and four interceptions. Simmons injured his ankle in the fourth quarter of a 30-23 win at Kentucky on Sept. 6, and backup Trinidad Chambliss has played even better in his absence. In Saturday’s 45-10 rout of Tulane, Chambliss passed for 307 yards with two touchdowns and ran for 112 yards on 14 attempts. In the past two wins over Arkansas and Tulane, Chambliss threw for 660 yards with three touchdown passes and no interceptions, while running for 174 with two scores. With LSU going to Oxford, Mississippi, next week, Kiffin faces a difficult decision. “I’m not saying he’s Russell Wilson, don’t get me wrong, but there’s some similarities in that kind of in the ‘it factor’ and how he moves and holds himself, you know, that I’ve kind of said that since he’s gotten here,” Kiffin said of Chambliss, who won two Division II national championships at Ferris State in Big Rapids, Michigan. — Schlabach
Previous ranking: 17
Behren Morton took some rough hits on Saturday, including a hit to the head that knocked him out of the Red Raiders’ road test at Utah. But Texas Tech did not miss a beat when backup Will Hammond stepped in to replace him. The redshirt freshman threw for 169 yards, rushed for 61 yards and led a 21-0 scoring run in the fourth quarter for a massive 34-10 victory against then No. 16 Utah. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said Morton will be fine, and a bye week is arriving at a good time for this team. But Hammond, who put up the second-best QBR (96.3) in FBS during Week 4, has done more than enough to prove he’s ready to help this team win if called upon. — Max Olson
Previous ranking: 10
A tuneup against 0-4 Sam Houston might have been what the doctor ordered for several scuffling Longhorns who had yet to find their stride this season. Arch Manning accounted for five touchdowns — three passing and two rushing — and completed 14 passes in a row a week after the Longhorns’ offense got booed after 10 straight incompletions against UTEP. Saturday, Manning finished 18-of-21 for 309 yards, including two touchdown passes of 53 and 13 yards to Ryan Wingo, who had just nine catches and one touchdown in the first three games, and edge rushing star Colin Simmons recorded his first solo sack of the year. The Longhorns head to Florida on Saturday hoping to keep building momentum in their SEC opener against the 1-3 Gators before facing Oklahoma, which beat Auburn to move to 4-0, in Dallas the following week. — Wilson
Previous ranking: 16
Joey Aguilar and Tennessee faced a unique test this week, needing to get back on track after a devastating loss to Georgia last week. Safe to say, they passed it. Aguilar threw for 218 yards and three touchdowns and needed to play only one drive in the second half as the Vols broke out to a 42-7 halftime lead and cruised 56-24 over UAB. The Vols are averaging 53.5 points per game through four games, and Aguilar has 1,124 passing yards and 12 touchdowns. They have an explosiveness that they lacked with Nico Iamaleava at quarterback last season, and the defense has been fine against teams not named Georgia. Starting next week at Mississippi State, however, the Vols embark on a run of three road trips in four games. We’ll see if Aguilar’s solid early form travels. — Bill Connelly
Previous ranking: 13
The Cyclones were idle this week ahead of next week’s home game against surging Arizona. At 4-0, Iowa State is off to a promising start, but it has to turn in a comprehensive win against an FBS opponent as all three such wins have come by one score. Quarterback Rocco Becht is finding a way to help pull these games out, but Iowa State needs more explosive plays from its offense if it expects to seriously compete for the Big 12 title. — Kyle Bonagura
Previous ranking: 15
Ty Simpson had to wait years to win Alabama’s starting job, and his tenure began as inauspiciously as possible with a dire loss at Florida State. Simpson has been almost perfect since, however, completing 41 of 46 passes for 608 yards and seven TDs against UL Monroe and Wisconsin. The Tide rolled in both games, setting the table nicely for an enormous and potentially season-defining trip to Georgia next Saturday. If Simpson looks good in a Tide win, he enters the Heisman discussion and Alabama’s CFP bona fides get a nice boost. If he struggles and Bama loses, the CFP starts to seem like a pipe dream. — Connelly
Previous ranking: 19
Beau Pribula has had it pretty easy early in his tenure as Mizzou’s starting quarterback. He has completed 72% of his passes with an 8-to-2 INT-to-TD ratio, he has been a solid scrambling weapon at times, and he has been able to turn around and hand the ball off to Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts. They’ve taken it from there. The running back duo rushed 35 times for 214 yards and two touchdowns in Mizzou’s 29-20 win over South Carolina on Saturday night. Despite missing left tackle Cayden Green, Mizzou had 285 yards rushing, Pribula took only one sack and Mizzou went 7-for-13 on third downs. Only some third-down brilliance from the Gamecocks’ LaNorris Sellers kept this one competitive, but the Tigers moved to 4-0 by finishing the game on an 11-0 run. With a buy game against UMass and a bye week coming up, it looks like Pribula will lead an unbeaten team against Alabama in Columbia in a couple of weeks. — Connelly
Previous ranking: 18
Saturday’s win over Temple wasn’t exactly pretty, but then again, things rarely are for the Yellow Jackets. QB Haynes King likes it that way. Few quarterbacks in the country have proved their toughness more than King, who added three touchdowns in Week 4’s 45-24 win over the Owls. King’s ability to make plays with his legs is what sets him apart, but he has also been stellar as a passer — a big question coming off last season’s shoulder injury. Georgia Tech’s next two games are against Wake Forest and Virginia Tech — two of the ACC’s bottom-feeders — meaning he’ll have a shot to pad his stat line even more before a showdown at Duke on Oct. 18. — David Hale
Previous ranking: 21
Freshman phenom Bryce Underwood earned his first Big Ten road victory on Saturday with a 30-27 win at Nebraska. He didn’t put up crazy stats on the day — 105 passing yards, 61 rushing yards, one TD — but didn’t need to while the Wolverines’ run game overwhelmed a top-10 scoring defense with 292 rushing yards on 9.1 yards per carry (excluding sacks). Interim coach Biff Poggi loved the poise Underwood brought to the sideline and huddle that gave his team no doubt it’d win. The young QB’s developmental trajectory through four games remains extremely exciting to watch. — Olson
Previous ranking: 22
Diego Pavia fought for an extra year of eligibility in 2025 and is absolutely making the most of it. The sixth-year senior avenged last year’s upset loss to Georgia State with a 70-21 rout on Saturday night that has Vanderbilt off to a 4-0 start for the first time since 2008. Pavia has dramatically raised his completion percentage from 59.4% last season to an SEC-best 73.9%, ranks among the top 10 in QBR (85.7) and is powering a top-10 scoring offense that’s putting up 47.5 points per game. The Commodores have one more nonconference tuneup against Utah State before an epic October schedule against four of the SEC’s best in Alabama, LSU, Missouri and Texas. — Olson
Previous ranking: 25
The Horned Frogs played a bit sloppy but never panicked against SMU in a 35-24 win, the last iteration of a rivalry that dates back to 2015. Josh Hoover threw for 379 yards and a career-high five touchdowns, and a stacked receiving room saw Eric McAlister become this week’s star, with eight catches for 254 yards (second best in school history) and three touchdowns, narrowly missing two more, one on an interception that was wrestled away from him and another on a possible TD catch that was ruled incomplete and wasn’t reviewed by officials. The defense held SMU to 384 yards, 4-of-13 on third down and the Mustangs’ fewest points all season. The Frogs, who snuck into the AP Top 25 at No. 24 this week, head to Tempe to take on defending Big 12 champs Arizona State on Friday night, a test that could start to reveal if TCU is back on its 2022 trajectory. — Wilson
Previous ranking: NR
If there wasn’t much talk about Jayden Maiava‘s season so far, then let the chatter begin. The Trojans’ quarterback was impressive against Michigan State in a 45-31 win, looking as comfortable as ever in Lincoln Riley’s offense. Maiva completed 20 of 26 passes for 234 yards (and crossed the 1,000-yard mark for the season) while adding three passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns too. It’s not clear yet just how good USC is and can be in the Big Ten and beyond this season, but through four contests, there’s no doubt that the explosive offense the sport has come to expect when Riley has a dynamic quarterback in tow is alive and well with Maiava under center. In fact, after putting up 517 yards of offense against the Spartans, the Trojans’ average yards per game for the year (604 per game, tops in the country) will go down. At the center of it all has been Maiava. — Uggetti
Previous ranking: 24
When the season opened, the biggest question looming over Notre Dame was at quarterback. It took until late in fall camp before CJ Carr won the job, and the Irish — fresh off a trip to the national championship game — might’ve reasonably been concerned about putting their fate in the hands of a QB with no starting experience. Turns out, Carr has been fine — throwing for 223 yards and two touchdowns in a 56-30 win over Purdue on Saturday — and Notre Dame’s Achilles’ heel has been the area the Irish might’ve felt best about: the secondary. Purdue threw for 303 yards and three touchdowns Saturday, and the battered and struggling defensive backs in South Bend showed little ability to adjust. Notre Dame might have its QB1, but the job now is stopping the other team’s quarterback. — Hale
Previous ranking: 11
When the Illini slogged through the first half Sept. 6 against Duke, struggling along the line of scrimmage, quarterback Luke Altmyer kept the team on track, avoiding major mistakes and buying enough time for a second-half surge. But Altmyer had no chance to be a hero at Indiana, which swarmed him all night, recording five sacks in the first half and seven in the game. Other than a 59-yard touchdown pass to Collin Dixon, Altmyer was limited to 87 passing yards on 13 completions and constantly faced pressure. He certainly can play better and will need to beginning this week against USC. But Altmyer was far from Illinois’ biggest problem in the Indiana debacle. He has given the Illini a veteran presence who, when given time, can pick apart defenses. — Rittenberg
Previous ranking: 14
The celebration in Utah about a revived Utes offense was premature, it turns out. Utah and Texas Tech were locked in a defensive tussle for much of Saturday’s 34-10 Texas Tech win before the Red Raiders finished the game with a flurry of touchdowns in the fourth quarter. The Utes struggled in both phases on offense, managing just 101 yards rushing on 31 carries (3.3 yards per carry) and only 162 yards through the air. The ineffectiveness of the offense was compounded by four turnovers that served as an unpleasant reminder of the past two seasons. — Bonagura
-
Alyssa Roenigk
LITTLE FALLS, N.J. — Yogi would have loved this.
Hundreds of people, young, old and wearing matching commemorative T-shirts, just finished dancing the “YMCA” on the field at Yogi Berra Stadium at Montclair State University. Little League teams, former MLB players and local politicians laugh and clutch their gloves as volunteers hand out souvenir baseballs. Yankees organist Ed Alstrom plays “Charge!” from a stage in center field, and the crowd responds on cue.
“Yogi loved bringing people together,” says Yankees great Willie Randolph, who played for Berra from 1976 to 1988 and later coached the Yankees and managed the Mets. “He made everyone feel like they’re family. He would have been ecstatic. I think he’s looking down on this field and is so proud.”
They have all come here on a Sunday afternoon, from as far away as California and Florida, to celebrate a man who treated every interaction much like a game of catch. Berra cared as much about what he tossed into a conversation as how he received what was thrown his way. So, what better way to honor him than by playing the biggest game of catch? Ever.
The current record is 972 pairs, set eight years ago in Illinois. On its face, breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest game of catch sounds simple: Gather a couple thousand people, pair them up and ask them to toss baseballs back and forth for five minutes. Doing it, however, is anything but easy.
When Eve Schaenen, the executive director of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center at Montclair State, approached Guinness with the idea, adjudicator Michael Empric, who is overseeing the day’s process, told her that many mass-attendance record attempts fail.
“That’s part of why we wanted to do this,” Schaenen says. “There are stakes. Yogi played a game where you could strike out. You could lose. That doesn’t mean you don’t try. He was told he couldn’t so many times and look at what remarkable things he did with his life.”
Berra was born 100 years ago and died before many of the kids gathered here were born. He made his MLB debut in 1946, retired as a player in 1965 and stopped coaching in 1989. Yet, everyone here on this day has a story about a time they were touched by his life. Berra connected deeply with people. It didn’t matter if he was talking to a teammate, a waiter, the president or his postman. With Berra, everyone got the same guy.
That this record attempt is taking place one day before the anniversary of his death (and his MLB debut) on Sept. 22 might have elicited him to create one of his popular Yogi-isms. “Well,” he might have said, “we’re a day early, but right on time.”
TO BASEBALL FANS, Yogi Berra is a legend. An MLB Hall of Famer. A man who played in 75 World Series games and won 10 rings — both records unlikely to be broken — and was one of the best “bad ball” hitters in history. The image of Berra leaping into the arms of Yankees pitcher Don Larsen after calling the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956 is indelible in the minds of baseball fans.
“All Yankees fans are Yogi fans,” says Paul Semendinger, a retired principal and adjunct professor at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey. He is wearing a replica 1939 Lou Gehrig Yankees jersey. “But you can be a Yogi fan without being a Yankees fan.”
Case in point: Semendinger, 57, is here with his 26-year-old son, Ethan, and 87-year-old dad, Paul Sr., “the world’s biggest Ted Williams fan.” (Paul Sr. is wearing a Red Sox jersey.) “You could root for Yogi even if you’re not a fan of his team,” Paul Sr. says, “because he was a good person.”
Semendinger and his son run a Yankees blog and play on a softball team together. He and his dad still meet up a few times a year to play catch in the backyard. “For 87, he still throws a pretty good knuckleball,” Semendinger says.
When Josh Rawitch, the president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, was 10, he sent Berra a baseball card from his home in Los Angeles and asked him to sign it. “It came back with his signature in this perfect penmanship,” Rawitch says. “I was a big fan of baseball history and although I was a Dodgers fan, he was Yogi Berra.” Over the years, Rawitch met Berra multiple times and became a fan of him as a man. “For someone with 10 rings, he never took himself too seriously,” he says. “He had such humility.”
Rawitch is here to display Berra’s Hall of Fame plaque, which a museum employee drove nearly 200 miles from Cooperstown, New York, to Little Falls on Saturday. It’s the first time the plaque has left the Hall since Berra was inducted in 1972.
“It’s rare that we do this,” Rawitch says. “But we knew we wanted to be a part of something so special.”
Anthony “Uncle Tony” Stinger turned 90 this year. He was in the right-field grandstands at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 22, 1946, when Berra made his MLB debut. “It was a Sunday, the second game of a doubleheader against Philadelphia,” Stinger says. “I took the 4 train from Harlem to the stadium, and the Yankees called Yogi up that day. He could hit anything, even a ball a foot off the ground. They didn’t know how to pitch to him.”
Stinger has lived in the Bronx for 53 years and came here with his nieces. Although he’s only spectating, he says he wouldn’t have missed this event for the world. “Yogi would be amazed,” he says, looking around the stadium.
TO MANY, BERRA was a war hero. The St. Louis native signed with the Yankees in 1943 but delayed his MLB career to enlist in the Navy on his 18th birthday and served as a gunner’s mate in World War II. He provided cover from a rocket boat for the troops who landed on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He was wounded by enemy fire and earned a Purple Heart, although he famously never received the medal because he didn’t fill out the paperwork. He didn’t want his mother to worry.
Daniel Joseph Clair joined the Marines in 1966 and earned a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam. He’s here to play catch with his wife, a lifelong Yankees fan. “I met Yogi outside the stadium once,” Clair says. “He took the time to talk to me before he got on the bus.”
To many of the players he coached, Berra was a lifetime friend and confidant.
“I’m getting goose bumps talking about him,” Randolph says, rubbing his arms. “Some of my best memories as a young manager are sitting in my office before games and talking baseball with Yogi. When I think about being the first African American manager in New York history, which I am very proud of, Yogi was very instrumental in that. He taught me so much. I miss him every day.”
Two months after his death, Berra was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for his military service as well as his civil rights and educational activism, although he would balk at being called an activist. He would say he was just treating people equally, as he would want to be treated.
Berra grew up on The Hill, a heavily Italian area of St. Louis, and later faced prejudice and ridicule for being Italian and not looking like a typical ballplayer. Throughout his life, whether by crossing racial lines or through his work with Athlete Ally on LGBTQ equality — an organization he joined in his 80s — he wasn’t trying to set an example, yet time and again, he did.
Berra befriended Jackie Robinson in 1946 when they played on opposing teams in the International League. The next year, Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier. Before games, Berra would walk across the field at Yankee Stadium to find Robinson and chat with his friend. “I don’t think he was doing it to make a statement, but 60,000 people saw him talking to Jackie,” Berra’s eldest granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, says. “This was 18 years before the Civil Rights Act. He was making a comment, whether he knew it or not.”
When Elston Howard became the Yankees’ first Black player in 1955, Berra began grooming him as his replacement behind the plate. During spring training in segregated Florida, Howard couldn’t ride on the same bus, eat in the same restaurants or stay in the same hotels as his white teammates. So, Berra often joined him at his.
TO PEOPLE WHO never watched baseball, Berra was a cultural phenomenon, a “Jeopardy!” answer, a man they quoted sometimes without knowing who they were quoting.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
You can observe a lot by watching.
If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
Berra was the personification of a cartoon bear, a Yoo-hoo pitchman and, as Wynton Marsalis once said while touring the museum, “the Thelonious Monk of baseball.” He was world famous and as recognizable as any figure in sports, yet he was also the guy his three sons would find downstairs in the mornings having coffee with the postman, garbage man and a few of Montclair’s finest.
Tommy Corizzi is too young to have seen Berra play or coach. In fact, he was born just one year before Berra died. He’s here with his “pop pop,” Tom Corizzi, who loved the idea of spending a Sunday afternoon connecting with his grandson and his favorite team. “Yogi was cool,” Tommy, 11, says. “I want to be in the world record book with him.”
Thirteen-year-old Jake Esarey Elmgart is here with his baseball team. He donated the $2,500 he raised for his bar mitzvah project to this event to help pay for kids with special needs to attend.
Just last week, a local woman handed Lindsay a letter she said she found in a drawer recently. The woman’s son, now in his 30s, wrote the letter to Berra in 2000 — 35 years after he retired — but never sent it. “You were in your car and while you were driving, you pointed at me and put your thumb up,” Justin LaMarca, then 8, wrote in pencil and in cursive. “I yelled to you and said you are my favorite player in the world.”
TO ME, BERRA was my best friend’s grandpa.
I met Lindsay in 2002 when I joined the staff at ESPN The Magazine in New York City, where she worked at the time. We became fast friends. Her family became mine in the way that happens when you live far from your own. Grammy Carmen was chic and sentimental. Grampa Yogi was funny and grumpy and warm and honest, and I think of them every Christmas when I hang the oversized red ceramic ornament they bought for me at New York’s 21 Club. Or at Halloween, because they always answered the door for trick-or-treaters in the same costumes: Grammy Carmen as an adorable witch and Grampa Yogi as Yogi Berra.
A half hour before the record attempt, I’m standing outside the museum with my dad, Fred. We came here in May 2012 to celebrate Berra’s 87th birthday. We toured the museum and watched the Yankees beat the Mariners from a party suite at Yankee Stadium. My dad remembers watching Grampa Yogi interact with fans and former players, singing him “Happy Birthday” and eating pieces of a pinstriped cake.
The previous night, my dad watched a few innings of a game with him in Berra’s living room. “Here’s your chance to ask him anything,” I told him.
My dad was 12 when Berra retired as a player. He grew up on a Belgian horse farm outside of Pittsburgh and never had the chance to see him play in person. He had few opportunities to watch him play on TV because the networks carried only local games back then, plus the Game of the Week on Saturdays. He does, however, remember watching the Pirates beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. “I was 7,” he says. “I’m not sure if I remember it as much as I remember the photo of Yogi standing in left field watching Bill Mazeroski’s homer go over the fence. That’s an iconic Pittsburgh picture.”
At the top of the ninth inning in that shocking game (if you’re a Yankees fan), Berra hit a grounder to tie the score 9-9. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Mazeroski hit a walk-off homer to seal the series for the Pirates. “Yogi said the worst day of his life was watching the ball go over the fence at Forbes Field,” my dad says. (I did tell him to ask the man anything.) “Imagine all he’d experienced in his life, and he said that was his worst day.”
Grampa Yogi died three years after that visit. That weekend was one of many times I watched my best friend share her grandpa with the world. Lindsay had watched her grandmother do so graciously throughout her life, listening with care as people told her how much they loved her husband. But Lindsay didn’t understand how people who had met her grandfather for only a moment, if at all, could feel the same kind of love toward him that she did. After his death, as tributes poured in from around the world, she realized that though their love might not be the same as hers, it is just as real. And it is flowing through this stadium now.
I’M STANDING ON the field precisely 3 meters across from my dad, a baseball glove on my left hand. My dad tosses a baseball my way. I catch it and look around. Baseballs are flying everywhere. People are laughing and dancing and dropping balls. We’re all singing along to John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”
There’s a mystical quality to the relationship that develops between the two people on either end of a game of catch, and it’s happening for all of us now. Maybe it’s how attuned we’ve become to each other, to subtle shifts in our partner’s body position and the message those movements communicate. I’m ready. Send it my way. Maybe it’s the meditative rhythm of the back-and-forth and how quickly the world narrows to the space between us. Or maybe it’s as simple as the eye contact and focus the act requires.
My dad doesn’t remember the first time we played catch together. I don’t, either. But being here on this day, tossing a baseball methodically with him, I’m transported to a Little League field in Cape Coral, Florida. I am 11, wearing an oversized blue Expos jersey and stirrup socks, and warming up with him before a playoff game. The last time we played catch, I was likely in high school and playing shortstop for the CCHS Seahawks.
Lindsay is playing catch with her boyfriend, Peter, surrounded by her family. She remembers the first time she played catch with her grandpa. “My earliest memories are playing wiffle ball in the front yard at holidays,” she says. “Uncle Dale had broken a window at a neighbor’s house, so we played with something safer.” The real baseballs came out when her grandfather was asked to throw out a first pitch. “He’d call each of the grandkids until someone was available to come up to the house and play catch with him,” Lindsay says. “He didn’t want to embarrass himself on the mound.”
When Berra’s boys were young, he was coaching and away from home during baseball season, so they never had the chance to play catch with their dad. Dale says that while Berra loved to toss the football or shoot baskets with him and his brothers, he believes his dad never wanted them to feel pressure to play baseball. “When I signed with the Mets in 1972, I warmed up with him during spring training,” Larry says. “That’s the only memory I have of playing catch with my dad. But I feel him today.”
Larry is playing catch with his son, Andrew. While Empric watches from the stage, volunteers walk the neatly spaced rows of participants looking for rule breakers: people who are on their phones, rolling the ball rather than throwing it or too young to meet the cutoff (age 7). When the five-minute clock runs out, everyone hoots and cheers and high-fives.
“If Dad were here, he’d probably ask, ‘Why would all these people do this? They don’t have to be here,'” Larry says. “He never understood the impact he had on people just by saying hello, by waving, by inviting them in for coffee. He always said, ‘I just played baseball.’ He never understood the aura he created.”
After several excruciating minutes, Empric walks to the podium to deliver the result. “I can now announce that today … in Little Falls … New Jersey … USA … you had a total of … 1,179 pairs,” he says, and hands Schaenen an oversized plaque, which she thrusts into the air. The crowd erupts. “It’s a new Guinness World Record,” Empric says. “Congratulations! You are officially amazing.”
For a while, no one moves. For nearly an hour, many people stay on the field and soak up the magic flowing between the baselines. Some continue to play catch, others chat with the people they stood next to during the attempt. This is what today was all about. Yogi was many things to many people, and today, he brought us all together.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment12 months agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024