Fox broadcaster John Smoltz is a Hall of Fame pitcher and a man who, I believe, usually knows what he is talking about. However, last Wednesday, I thought his praise of Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole was a bit excessive. He said Cole’s effort in Game Five of the World Series was the greatest pitching performance he had ever seen. No, it wasn’t. Cole was only a great pitcher that night. As a ballplayer he came up short. The principal job of any pitcher is to get rival batters out. But that’s not the pitcher’s only function. Sometimes he has to back up home plate or third base. Sometimes he has to cover the plate when the catcher has to leave his position to chase an errant pitch or a pop foul. And — gulp — sometimes when a ground ball is hit to the right side of the infield, the pitcher is responsible for covering first base. Cole failed to do that important task on Wednesday and the gaffe undid all of his mound brilliance. It was a night when the Yankees needed his brilliance. The rest of the team was struggling. The batters left 12 runners on base and went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. The fielders contributed three errors. That’s baseball. Every team suffers through a game like that once in a while. In the regular season they shrug it off as a bad night. In the World Series there’s no shrugging. It’s a disaster. It will live in infamy in baseball history. It didn’t have to be that way. Despite all the miscues, the Yankees could have and should have won that game. They probably would have if Cole had covered first base properly on a routine ground ball to first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Smoltz didn’t have much to say about it, but the whole ballgame hinged on that gaffe. It happened in the fifth inning. With the help of two errors, the Dodgers had loaded the bases with none out. Smoltz’s high praise seemed justified when Cole had bulled his neck and struck out the next two batters, one of whom will soon be crowned as the National League’s Most Valuable Player. Then, with two out, Mookie Betts hit a grounder directly to Rizzo, who was playing very deep and wide of the bag. He gloved the ball and prepared to flip it to his pitcher only to discover, to his horror, that his pitcher was nowhere to be found. That ball should have been the third out. The Dodgers should have posted a zero for their fifth-inning effort. But that’s not what happened. Betts reached first without a play being made. The next two batters got hits and, instead of zero, the Dodgers took five out of the inning. They went on to win the game, 7-6. You do the math. Sure, the errors and the lack of timely hitting certainly contributed to the loss, but those were physical failures. Nobody bats 1.000. Nobody plays in the field without making an error sometime. Physical failures have to be tolerated if the player committing them is giving his all. But a mental mistake or a failure-to-hustle mistake should never be condoned, and that’s what this was. Cole tried to explain himself, claiming to have taken a bad angle towards the ball because he misjudged its speed. Once he recovered, he said, neither he nor Rizzo was in position to beat Betts to the bag. Bad angle? What in the name of Euclid is he talking about? This was a routine ground ball to the first baseman. Harvey Haddix in his prime could not have fielded it. The only angle Cole should have taken was 45 degrees — from the mound to first base. And he had to do it promptly. There was a very fast runner coming down the line and he was hustling all the way. He knew, or should have known, that Rizzo could not field the ball where he was positioned and then out-run Betts to the bag. Rizzo was never fast afoot, and by now was in the twilight of his career. His only choice was to use his pitcher, and Cole’s absence from the bag removed that choice. For Cole to attempt to shift some of the blame to Rizzo is nonsense. He owns 100 percent of the misplay. Metaphorically, that was the horseshoe nail that cost the Yankees their kingdom. A FEW POSTSEASON STATISTICS: The Dodgers scored 25 runs in the World Series. Twelve were driven in by Series MVP Freddie Freeman. Five of the remaining 13 were produced by sacrifice flies … The Yankees stole nine bases in the Series and were not caught even once … Yankees relief pitcher Clay Holmes appeared in all five Series games and finished with an ERA of 0.00. This happened on the heels of an ALCS in which he pitched four times and was saddled with a 10.13 ERA … The Yankees blasted 22 homers in 14 postseason games … The Phillies, Braves, Astros and Orioles finished with postseason batting averages under .200. None of those four won a series … Tanner Bibee of the Guardians faced 68 batters in the postseason. He got four of them to ground into double plays … Max Muncy of the Dodgers suffered through an 0-for-16 World Series in which he did not drive in a run or score one. In his first two rounds of the postseason he drove home five runs and scored eight … Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers suffered an arm injury on a slide into second base late in Game Two of the World Series. He played the remaining three games but was 1-for-11 … Alex Versi appeared in four World Series games for the Dodgers. Even though only 24 of his 44 pitches were strikes, he walked only one batter in 2 2/3 innings … Austin Wells of the Yankees struck out 22 times in 50 postseason at bats … The time for Game Two of the World Series was 2:53. The other four games all exceeded three hours. Former Hall of Fame voter Jay Dunn has written baseball for The Trentonian for 56 years. Contact him at [email protected]