I was talking to Chuck Daly one day in the early ’90s, when what was really such a wonderful basketball life had finally brought him to New Jersey to coach the Nets, and the subject was Shaquille O’Neal, who had exploded into the NBA out of LSU at the same time Daly had landed in Jersey.
Daly wasn’t just talking about O’Neal’s talent on this day, and what a wonder to behold he was because of his size and strength, he was talking about O’Neal’s appeal, which has extended all the way into his career on television and in the media.
“This country has always liked great big action heroes,” Daly said.
It’s a comparison that has been made before, but might as well be made right now, because of the month Aaron Judge just had for the Yankees, his return to what his real job is supposed to be, which means Great Yankee. It is Judge who is that kind of great big action hero for baseball, because of his size in a sport where he does stand out like Shaq; and because of an ability to hit baseballs so hard he does everything except split them in half.
Judge and the Yankees, who haven’t lost a series in the month during which he hit 14 home runs and knocked in 27, were in San Francisco on Friday night to play the Giants. So, it’s very much worth remembering that there was at least a chance that Judge could have ended up with the Giants when he became a free agent after the 2022 season when he hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth ever had in one season, or Roger Maris, or Mickey Mantle. So, of course, Judge showed up in San Francisco and hit two more out of the park.
We’ll never know how strongly Judge considered leaving, or what it would have taken for him to finally leave the Yankees and leave New York and go back to California, the state in which he grew up. But there was at least a chance. Maybe if Judge had wanted to play things all the way out, he could have gotten even more money from the Giants than the $360 million over nine years that he got from the Yankees. But it never got that far. The Yankees signed him to the contract to which they should have signed him before that ’22 season and saved themselves a ton of money in the process.
Judge stayed with the Yankees. He came back and then he got hurt again. That has been part of his Yankeeography, too, all the injuries he’s endured, even though a couple of the big ones — broken hand, torn ligament in toe — weren’t due to his big body breaking down, just bad luck. He missed two months last June after he ran into that door at Dodger Stadium and when he came back, he could still hit big flies. But in the end, it was a lost season for him and even more of a lost season for the Yankees. He still hit 37 homers in 106 games, and feel free to game those numbers out over a full season, but the Yankees ended up 82-80 and so once again there was no chance for Judge to be a Great Yankee in October.
Now, he has come roaring back the way he has since he was hitting .197 with six homers almost one month ago exactly. Now, he came into the weekend with over half as many home runs as he hit all last season by the first of June. In the world of Shohei Ohtani, who got off to the best start of his career, and in a season when Juan Soto has made the kind of difference he’s made for the Yankees batting ahead of Judge, it is No. 99 who has once again become the most dangerous at-bat in this world, on what might turn out to be the best Yankee team on which he has ever played.
“A special player doing special things,” is the way Aaron Boone described Judge after he’d hit another home run on Thursday night against the Angels.
“That’s why he’s the captain,” Carlos Rodon said after the same game.
“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Judge said. “Like I’ve been saying, it doesn’t matter how you start. You’re always going to have good months, bad months. You just try to stay consistent and it’s all going to work itself out. It’s been a good month with a lot of wins, so I’m happy about that. We’ll keep it rolling in June.”
In addition to everything else Judge did in May, hitting all those home runs and raising his batting average 80 points on his way into Oracle Park on Friday night, he also had a total of 26 extra-base hits across the month, the most for a Yankee since Joe DiMaggio had 31 in July of 1937.
He kept saying he would be fine when he didn’t look anything like himself in April, and Soto was the one doing the most to carry the Yankee offense. Then he started to hit and doesn’t look as if he is going to stop anytime soon. And we are reminded what he looks like when he is blessed with good health, and once again makes you think that the very next at-bat is the one when he is going to try to hit another ball to the moon.
And his body, at least so far and fingers crossed, has withstood him playing as much center field as he has. There is no guarantee that this will be a workable plan over the long haul. Judge would get a lot more time at DH if Giancarlo Stanton, who has no real position at this stage of his career, weren’t around, but Stanton is still very much around, is still a home run threat himself, and isn’t going anywhere, at least not anytime soon.
For now, and happily, Judge remains the face of the Yankees, the heir to Derek Jeter not just as captain but as the most popular player they have. There is no telling how long his prime will last, and how long his body will stand up, but we should appreciate it, in full, while we can. Remember: Judge turned 32 in April. Like so many other baseball stars, you have to know he is being paid for what he will do over the early part of his contract, and not the player or hitter he will be at the end of it.
Still: We have been reminded lately exactly what the Yankees have in Judge, what we all have as his career continues to play out in real time. Aaron Judge. Great Yankee. Again. Scott Boras called Soto a “centurion” the other day. Let’s see No. 22 of the Yankees ever have a year like Aaron Judge already had in ’22.
KYRIE CHANGES THE SUBJECT, GREAT TO HAVE NAOMI BACK & METS NEED TO EMBRACE THE POLAR BEAR …
There is another high-profile athlete doing pretty well in the month of May, and at the same age as Aaron Judge, and that is Kyrie Irving.
He is playing at a level, both of basketball and creativity, that only a handful of guards in his sport can fully understand.
At his best, Irving is that good.
And sure is proving that as long as you do perform like this, on the biggest possible stage, you have the ability to change the subject on all the times in your career when you got in your own way, or just plain acted like a bonehead.
The media didn’t do that to him.
Irving did it to himself.
Just because he’s a great teammate now to Luka Doncic doesn’t mean he always was, in Boston and in Brooklyn.
There’s one other thing worth mentioning, as everybody talks about what a perfect wing man he is to Doncic:
This is the second time in his career when he’s the wing man to the best player in the entire sport, the same way he was with LeBron in Cleveland.
It doesn’t diminish what he’s doing, or the way he’s playing.
But you have to say it’s nice work if you can get it.
One more thing about the Mavs:
Their coach, Jason Kidd, looks like as brilliant a point guard as he ever was, even just standing on the sideline.
It was a pretty cool thing the other day at the French Open to see Naomi Osaka look as if she is all the way back, even if she couldn’t finish the job against Iga Swiatek in what was the match of the year so far in women’s tennis.
Here is a pro tip for the people in charge of the Mets, if they’re even considering trading Pete Alonso, on his way to being the greatest home run hitter they’ve ever had:
Mets fans like the Polar Bear much better than they like the people in charge of the Mets these days.
It was announced the other day that 57-year-old Mike Tyson was postponing his fight with Jake Paul because of an ulcer, and I was frankly kind of surprised that it wasn’t gout.
There is nothing that Gerrit Cole could have done so far for the Yankees that Luis Gil hasn’t.
I was waiting for grief counselors to actually show up in the Fox News studio after the verdict.
It’s always a fluid situation with this particular title, but for now poor Megyn Kelly has become the Queen of Unintended Self-Parody.
It’s only taken a couple of months, but if Soto doesn’t think it’s a strike I don’t, either.
No one would have thought this at the start of the NBA season, or even halfway through this NBA season.
But the best possible NBA Final is the one we’re about to get.
Can’t we just have Charles and Kenny and Ernie and Shaq move over to ESPN for Mavs vs. Celtics?
