The grand-slam-home-run trot on September 13.
Photo: Balazs Gardi
Friday the 13th, and Aaron Judge was in a slump — or, rather, what passes for a slump in this epic 2024 season of his. He hadn’t homered in 16 games, his longest dry spell in the majors. The superstitious chatter around the clubhouse held that he’d appeared on a kiddie show in late August and, through some inchoate psychic mechanism, had his mojo sapped. This Friday-night game was the second in a four-game series against the Red Sox, and in the bottom of the seventh inning Boston was up 4-1. After throwing two called balls, the Sox reliever Cam Booser had to get one over, and he did approximately what he’s supposed to do: keep it low and away. It wasn’t low or away enough. Judge dug his bat under and lifted the ball 368 feet, over the Canon ad in left field. Grand slam, Yankees take the lead. Judgemania — mounting all summer, held in tension during two weeks of merely good hitting — exploded yet again. Final score: 5-4.
These moments, in the 2024 season, have become almost expected from Judge, named the team’s official captain two years ago after serving unofficially in the role for a while. Offstage, he is an undramatic public character, by either temperament or media training. If Reggie Jackson once called himself “the straw that stirs the drink,” Judge, at six-seven and 282 pounds of mostly shoulder muscles, is about as interesting as the stainless-steel refrigerator you’d store the drinks in (pretty square, pretty chill). As he steps out of the on-deck circle, however, there’s nothing but excitement in the park, including chants of “M-V-P! M-V-P!”
As of publication time, he was hitting .321 with 53 homers (first in the league by a mile) and an OPS of 1.142 (ditto). Those stats roughly correspond to mid-career years that Willie Mays and Ted Williams each had, and they line up quite closely with those that Mickey Mantle (one of his center-field predecessors) put up in 1961, that fabled season when he and Roger Maris were chasing the home-run record.
In the 21st century, the most directly comparable numbers in baseball have mainly been turned in by (a) the megahitters of the steroid years and (b) Hall of Fame shoo-ins like Vladimir Guerrero and Jim Thome. Despite their firepower, those two guys never won a World Series, and neither has Judge. Yet.
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