Jake Bauers looked history right in the eye and spat dead on its cornea. But that’s what great non-pitcher pitchers do. And when they do it on a late-model recreation of the biggest stage of all, it is all the more, well, more.
Bauers, the Milwaukee Brewers’ backup first baseman, was looking Saturday morning at a relatively relaxing afternoon in Yankee Stadium. He wasn’t in the starting lineup and, if things went well, he wouldn’t be needed. Instead, it went galactically not. The Yankees started the game with three consecutive first-pitch homers off Nestor Cortes, a major league record for instantaneous pitcher abuse, and even then it seemed fair to assume that Bauers wouldn’t be needed for defensive or pinch-hitting reasons in a close game. But by the third inning, when 3-0 became 13-3, Bauers’ availability became inevitability. As the Brewers’ designated lost-cause pitcher, he has the responsibility of saving relievers’ arms when a game is declared beyond redemption, and the Yankees had delivered the necessary conditions in near-record time.
More specifically, Aaron Judge had delivered the necessary conditions by his lonesome and his teammates just kicked into the pot. Judge homered three times in the first four innings—including one of the instablasts off Cortes—plus a grand slam in the third and a two-run dinger in the fourth off Connor Thomas. He also doubled in New York’s 18th run off Elvis Peguero and would almost certainly have one more at-bat to give him a shot at becoming the 19th player in major league history to hit four home runs in a game, and the second since the utterly godlike Scooter Gennett.
Like any semi-aware manager, Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy saw this looming possibility for epochal humiliation and inserted Bauers into the game as the first baseman in the top of the eighth, during which he doubled in the Brewers’ seventh run and cut the Yankee lead to a paltry 13. But sensing that Bauers might not get another at-bat and, even if he did, the Brewers were unlikely to bat around three times in the ninth, Murphy sent Bauers to the mound for the eighth so that Joel Payamps could be fully rested for Sunday’s scheduled calamity. Bauers would thus face the heart of the Yankee order—Cody Bellinger, You Know Who His Bad Self, and Jazz Chisholm Jr., who had combined on their own to go 9-for-13 with nine runs scored and 13 RBIs already.
This was supposed to be the moment when Judge would make that history we discussed earlier, but Murphy had done his homework. Bauers had faced the Yankees last year and escaped without lasting damage (he loaded the bases but allowed no runs) in what was eventually a 15-5 Yankee victory. It was Bauers’ first game as a big league pitcher, and he maintained a steady velocity in the mid- to high-50s, including a 38-mph lollipop to Anthony Volpe. Gotta keep ’em on their heels, after all.
He pitched three more times last year, getting roughed up only once, against the Giants in September. Bauers had gotten his velocity up to the mid-to-high 60s by then, but the Giants came first-pitch swinging and doubled three times off him in a 13-2 loss in September. So while Bauers had a book on Saturday’s Yankees (well, Volpe, anyway), the Yankees had a book on him as well. Thus, the eighth inning was fraught with high tension—with a possibility of low comedy on the side.
Bauers navigated his way around Bellinger, then faced Judge with most of the 46,683 people at Yankee Stadium roaring for the fourth home run from their SUV-sized idol. And Bauers had a limited number of choices, as he had cracked 80 mph just twice and 70 five times in his then-78-pitch career. He hadn’t dared dip below 40 since that Volpe at-bat. But he knew well enough not to try to go dead red in this embarrassment-charged situation. All he had going for him was a disarming cheap laugh, really, so he pointed to his ribs as if to say, “I’d rather hit you than you hit me.” Then he juiced up his most agonizing 55-mph curve ball (which the MLB computer called an eephus even though it was just extremely time-delayed), the third slowest pitch of his career.
“I gave him the best curveball I have,” Bauers said. “He still hit it pretty good, but I think he top-spun it, so I knew it was going to stay in.”
And so it, a line drive to left that … wait for it … died a mere 357 feet from home plate and in the glove of left fielder Isaac Collins. History had been dope-slapped, glory had been denied, and Bauers went back to the hotel able to say he was the best Brewer pitcher on a day they hit nine homers and scored 20 runs.
Judge, for his part, went home knowing that he still isn’t as good a power hitter as Scooter Gennett. Baseball is known as a game of failure even on a day of almost unprecedented success, so who knows when he will get another chance. Well, today’s game starts at 1:35 p.m. ET if that’s any help, and Bauers has never pitched with less than 30 days’ rest, so he might not be available to remind Judge just who his pitching daddy is.
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