Whether you’re a Yankee or a Dodger fan, anyone who watched the 5th game of the 2024 World Series is wondering what happened in the fifth inning.
With the Yankees ahead 5-0, Yankee ace pitcher Gerrit Cole was dominating the Dodgers with a nearly flawless performance. Yankee super star Aaron Judge has finally awakened, hitting a home run in the first, and making a miraculous running catch in the fourth. Everything was falling into into place in Yankee Stadium, “The House That Ruth Built.”
But then the inexplicable occurred in the fifth inning. Aaron Judge missed an easy fly ball, followed by Anthony Volpe, the second basemen, making a throwing error. Then Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo both misread an easy ground ball which allowed another hit.
Within minutes what looked like a sure win for the Yankees, resulted in one of baseball’s most epic meltdowns. These three errors were so egregious that they can be compared Boston’s Bill Buckner error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series against the Mets.
So how does one attempt to explain the Yankee fifth inning errors made by Judge, Volpe, Rizzo, and Cole?
Were they infected by something akin the The Curse of the Bambino which hexed the Boston Red Sox for 86 years. The Curse of the Bambino refers to the ill advised trade that the Red Sox made, selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Could the ghost of Babe Ruth be influencing the Yankees themselves?
Of course not. These four mishaps will be attributed to a weakness in Yankee fielding and a failure of fundamentals. The solution will be to spend more time catching fly balls and infield throwing drills. That makes sense and it ought to be s addressed but it still doesn’t explain how four of the most highly talented players in the major leagues would make simple fielding errors at the worst of all possible times.
We must go back to Freud and his essay titled “”Those Wrecked By Success” to help explain this nightmare inning.
Freud noticed that when many people are on the verge of success they find a way to sabotage their success with accidents, injuries or illness. As a practicing sport psychologist I see this happen to my patients every day. When they are on the edge of success they either get injured, get sick or find some other way to avoid success. They become, as Freud said, “wrecked by success”.
Many people have conflicts with success because of childhood experiences called oedipal fears. When a boy is about to win his mother’s love, there is a simultaneous fear that the father will retaliate. This is called castration anxiety. This buried anxiety is activated when victory is approached and the athlete will then undo success or choke.
It’s possible that the entire Yankee team has this fear of success as they close in on the only thing that really matters, winning the World Series.
The legacy of the Yankees include names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Derek Jeter. These ghost-like figures loom large inside the unconscious of every player on the team and these ghosts are like a wall that must be gotten through. The mystic that is the Yankee magic, is the very same thing that must be overcome by its own players.
The Yankees franchise is the most valuable in the majors and worth about $7 billion. It’s time they try something new to get their talented team over the hump.
Rest assured, no one including Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman, Aaron Boone or Aaron Judge will take my psychoanalytic formulation seriously. But the outcome of their organization wide denial will produce more years of frustration. Such is the power of the unconscious, a force that produces errors, miscues and failure when golden victory is in sight.
“To Know Thyself” was the maxim inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in 500 B.C. and that truth stills hold true today. And to not know oneself is a costly thing indeed.
