This one on Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, one that even had the great Joe Torre in the house, was what the Yankees want Game 1 to look like in October. Really, this is how the Yankees want to look in any big postseason game like the ones Torre used to know. Aaron Judge hit another home run and Giancarlo Stanton hit one and Gerrit Cole, hired for big money to pitch games like this in October, once again was the guy who won the Cy Young a year ago.
This is what the Yankees looked like early this season, when they looked like the best team in the game, and before they somehow went 10-23 after the middle of June. This is what they want to look like late; look like more than one more Yankee team who doesn’t have what it takes late. This is what the Yankees want to be and need to be in a season when the big question never changes and never goes away and won’t go away:
If not now – meaning if not the World Series now – than when?
The Guardians beat up the Yankees in extra innings on Tuesday night. Now the Yankees have beaten them up twice since then. The Guardians, unless the wheels come off, will be a playoff team. The Yankees are a lock to be a playoff team, and may have a clear shot at ending up with the best record in the American League if the Orioles continue to pitch the way they’re pitching, especially turning one ninth inning after another into a minefield the way they just did against the Mets.
So this did look like the way the Yankees want the playoffs to look, in all ways. This is the team the Yankees want to be, which means one that is finally more than just good enough, even when it makes it as far as the American League Championship Series. Of course that’s the place where they always lose to the Astros. These are the same Astros, by the way, aren’t going anywhere after being in last place earlier this season, after being 34-40, after not getting above .500 until June 30; and who may be lurking again this October like the bogey man.
At least just once, these Yankees want to do what Torre’s Yankees did four times, and really could have done more than that. It was when Derek Jeter and Mo Rivera were two of the great stars the Yankees have ever had. Now these Yankees have Judge and Juan Soto and Gerrit Cole.
But as tremendous as Soto has been, in what still might be his only season in pinstripes, the one to watch is Judge. He is the captain of the team the way Jeter was, a homegrown Yankee the way Jeter was, once again making you not want to miss a single at-bat. For sure you are surprised when Soto doesn’t get on base, or hit one out himself, in this season when he still has an outside shot to hit 50 himself in a season when Judge is gunning for 60 again; a shot to make he and Judge the only Yankees since Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle to ever hit at least 50 in the same season. At the very least, Judge and Soto are going to both hit more than 40, something only Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig did in the same season until the home run summer of Maris and Mantle in ’61, when Mickey stopped at 54 and Roger went all the way to 61.
Roger Maris beat The Babe by one. Two years ago, Judge beat both of them when he hit 62. He hit No. 48 on Thursday to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. It has reached the point where you are shocked when he doesn’t hit another one out if he gets his bat on the ball. Torre’s Yankees had so much going for them when they were winning the World Series. They didn’t have someone like No. 99.
Do the Yankees have enough starting pitching and enough of a bullpen to go all the way? We will find that out in October with a team that has been ultimately pitching-challenged since the last time it made the World Series 15 years ago, something that truly is starting to feel like 150 to Yankee fans. That is when, if there is enough pitching, we’ll see if Soto and Judge, Judge and Soto, can slug them back to the Canyon of Heroes. Hard to do in October, and then into November, on home runs alone. But maybe if any two guys can do it, No. 99 and No. 22 can. Only two other times in history have the Yankees had two guys like this hitting back-to-back, and belly-to-belly, as John Sterling used to say.
It was Ruth who made 60 a magic number in baseball, one that didn’t again become magic until 34 years after he hit his 60 for the ’27 Yankees. Then it was again with Judge, when we all stopped to watch every at-bat in September of ’22. Now he is on pace to do it again, all set up to get to 50 before we arrive at another September in baseball.
Aaron Judge made it to Game 7 of the ALCS, back in 2017. Made it to Game 6 two years after that. When he made it back to the ALCS in 2022, again facing the Astros after he’d hit his 62, his team got swept. Now he is 32, as big a star as ever, as big a star as we have in sports until pro football starts up again. But even he knows you can never be the biggest possible Yankee star without a World Series on your resume.
We’re long way from that, and from October. Doesn’t change that he and the Yankees had themselves a day on Thursday. Game 1 day at the Stadium.
