Post by Admin on Oct 5, 2022 16:14:41 GMT -4
As everything changed around him—the baseball itself, specially switched out so the league could authenticate it more easily; the crowd reaction, soaring to a gasping, echoing roar that made Globe Life Field sound almost like Yankee Stadium; and the American League home run record, which after 61 years is no longer 61 but 62—Aaron Judge stayed the same.
After it was over and the Yankees had enjoyed what must be the most joyful loss, 3–2, in franchise history, he told reporters that he was excited, largely because he gave his team a 1–0 lead over the Rangers. But he was also relieved.
“As the leadoff guy, I gotta get on base, and I hadn’t been doing that,” said the AL single-season home run king, adding that he tries to be “a table-setter.”
This is a man who hit his 60th home run of the season two weeks ago and berated himself as it flew for not doing it a few innings earlier, when there were men on base. He added that as his attempt to chase down Roger Maris for the AL crown dragged into the season’s final days, as he walked and singled and doubled but failed to homer, he worried that he was letting his teammates and fans down. Judge said he was glad “everyone can finally sit down in their seats and watch the ballgame.”
If this is an act, Judge has been committed to it for at least a decade. When he attended Fresno State, the Bulldogs’ baseball team enforced a rule: Anyone who used I or me boastfully had to pay a fine. In three years there before the Yankees took him in the first round of the 2013 draft, Judge never slipped up.
So let him deflect. His teammates understood the significance of the moment. They were perched at the dugout rail, willing him on, as they had been for weeks. (“Every fly ball, we’re screaming with the fans,” lefty Nestor Cortes Jr. said recently.) They coiled as Texas righty Jesús Tinoco hung a slider. They exploded onto the field as Judge walloped it to left field. They gathered at home plate to wait for him, offering hugs and handshakes and high fives when he jogged past them.
“It was emotional for all of us,” ace Gerrit Cole told the YES Network afterward. “There were some watery eyes out there.” (Cole set a record, too; his 257 strikeouts are the most by a Yankee in a single season. How will he celebrate? “I just want to hang out with Aaron, really,” he said.)
The fans went nuts, too, cheering Judge as if he were one of their own. They knew what a tremendous season he has had. They knew how gracefully he had handled the attention. They probably did not know that shortly before the game, Judge had texted his personal hitting coach: He believed he had identified a problem with his swing.
Judge, 30, has a chance at something we might call the Decuple Crown: He leads the league not only in home runs (perhaps you’ve heard) and runs batted in (131), but also in wins above replacement (10.7), on-base percentage (.425), slugging percentage (.686), OPS (1.111), runs scored (133), walks (111) and total bases (391), and he could overtake the Twins’ Luis Arraez on Wednesday for batting average (Judge sits in second at .311).
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Judge’s performance is the environment in which he is accomplishing it. Pitching is more devastating than it has ever been, the baseballs themselves seem to fly less far this year than in the past few seasons, and the league tests for performance-enhancing drugs. Fly balls have not left the park less often since 2012.
“He’s doing it in an era that is very tough to hit. Let’s put it that way. I’ll leave it at that,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who played when Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were jockeying for the lead in the late 1990s and early 2000s, told reporters last month. “The separation between him and the rest of the players is huge.”
