They are still the Yankees, which means they are and always will be Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (for a few minutes) and then Donnie Baseball and Derek Jeter. But they have never had a greater hitter than the hitter Aaron Judge is right now, and not just because he showed this kind of finishing kick over the past week and once again put 60, the magic number of them all around here, back into play.
Here is exactly how great Judge has been this season: He has been even better than Shohei Ohtani has been having his own season for the ages on the other side of the country. All the magic of this baseball season, and there has been plenty of it, starts with these two: All Rise and The Shohei Kid, the Yankees and Dodgers, New York and Los Angeles, first place for the Yankees again and first place for the Dodgers because it always is first place for them.
Both Judge and Ohtani have hit more than 50 home runs. Ohtani has creating a brand new club, for all of baseball history and for himself, someone hitting more than 50 and stealing more than 50 in the same season.
And with all that, this has been more Judge’s season than his. Does Judge have Juan Soto hitting in front of him now? He sure does. But Ohtani has Mookie Betts, now that Mookie is healthy again, hitting behind him, and Freddie Freeman behind him, and Teoscar (Home Run Derby) Hernandez lurking behind all of them. Did Ohtani just up and decide to be a big base stealer this season. He did, and then made stealing bases look as easy as everything else he does on a ballfield.
But Judge has not just hit all those home runs, and knocked in all those runs, and once again become the most dangerous hitter in this world. He has also played center field, what is still the glamour position at any Yankee Stadium, old or new, while Ohtani — recovering from the Tommy John surgery that prevented him from being a starting pitcher in his first year at Dodger Stadium — has been a DH.
If there were just one MVP award in baseball instead of one for each league, Judge would be better than Ohtani there, too. Do we routinely compare Ohtani to Babe Ruth, because Ruth was a starting pitcher before he got to New York? We do. But Judge has become the Ruth of this time for the Yankees. You wonder if he hadn’t started out so slowly in April and then had his recent home run slump, if he might not be chasing 70 home runs right now.
This season in New York baseball has been a lot. We have had Soto being everything he was advertised to be, even if he doesn’t stay, and even though the Padres have been better without him this season than they were with him. We have had Francisco Lindor having one of the best all-around seasons any Met has ever had, despite being overshadowed and even overwhelmed by what Judge was doing across town; and despite the fact that Ohtani is now going to win the National League MVP award going away.
We have had the way the Mets turned everything around after they were 22-33 and became the best team in baseball for the next four months. We have had the way the Yankees picked themselves up after a dreary and dreadful 10-23 stretch that looked as if it might sabotage another season, but in the end did not.
But mostly we have thrilled watching Judge have a season every bit as good and every big as dominating as the one he had two years ago, when he ended up with 62 home runs, when he passed The Babe and Maris and everybody. We have watched him become the great Yankee to replace Jeter in the role of great Yankee, and not just as captain. Does his resume still lack a World Series appearance, much less a World Series title? It does. Maybe this is the season when that changes for him, and for his team.
You still cannot measure what he has done and what he is doing by what he hasn’t yet done in October. Again: Even in real time, as Ohtani is doing what he is doing for the Dodgers, even the way Ohtani had that 6-for-6 and 10 RBI night when he hit his 50th home run, it is Judge who has stood taller than even him this season. Who has been even more of the main event in their sport. Imagine that in a year like Ohtani has had and is having. Just imagine how much Aaron Judge had to do to get to a place like that.
But he has. Two years after 62, he is probably a better hitter now and just as much of a slugger as he was then. Now he has gone past 50 himself for the third time. We were never going to have another home-run hitting center fielder like Mickey, but now here is Judge, twice hitting more home runs than Mickey did in his best seasons.
The Dodgers never had a 50-home run guy until Ohtani, in either Brooklyn or L.A., not even Duke Snider in the glory baseball days in the 1950s in New York, when it was Willie, Mickey and the Duke, legends of the game that Terry Cashman wrote and sang about in “Talkin’ Baseball.” They were all in one city, of course. Now Judge is here and Ohtani is Out There and in the end, it has been Judge who pulled away from Ohtani, at least with homers, at the end, when he once again started hitting them every day.
There has been everybody else’s baseball season, and there has been the season of Judge and Ohtani. And Judge’s has been better. Imagine that.
DID KNICKS MAKE ONE MOVE TOO MANY? WELCOME TO MR. RODGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD & AL’S STILL GOT HIS FASTBALL …
So the Knicks swing for the fences — again — by making this trade for Karl-Anthony Towns, and sending away Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, one of the ‘Nova Knicks.
It makes them bigger, and maybe better, and maybe gets them closer to the Celtics and even past them.
We will see about that.
But an awful lot of their fans liked the team they already had, the one that lit up the city last spring, and made the Knicks feel big again.
Maybe it’s Towns, once and for all, who turns out to be the missing championship piece the way the great Dave DeBusschere was a hundred years ago, when he came here from Detroit and not Minneapolis.
Or Leon Rose has made one move too many, for a very nice player who didn’t do enough last spring when his former team had a chance to win it all.
What, nobody had the Weather Channel in Atlanta this past week?
The Yankees lose two straight to the Orioles and suddenly the coverage is all pearl clutching.
Then they turn around and pound the O’s and Gerrit Cole looks like Gerrit Cole and we’re back to, Look out, American League, here come the Bronx Bombers!
Until further notice in the New York/New Jersey football season, it’s Aaron Rodgers’ world, the rest of us are just living in it.
And you know who looks like a genius in Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood?
Pat McAfee, is who.
It’s only a few games, but already Jayden Daniels is looking like this year’s version of C.J. Stroud.
If you were watching Giants vs. Cowboys Thursday night, it didn’t take too very long into the second half to figure out that the Giants weren’t going to win with field goals.
Now that the Giants have field goals back in their playbook, that is.
This really does need to be the October when No. 99 shows up the way Giancarlo Stanton has at this time of year for the Yankees.
Sometimes it seems that the Yankees remain stuck on the idea that getting Alex Verdugo was a decision from Brian Cashman touched by the baseball gods.
You can’t have listened to Al Michaels on Thursday night, and all the fun he had with Flag Day, and tell me he’s lost anything off his fastball.
Chris Russo is a riot on “First Take.”
And while we’re on the subject — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — but Zach Lowe is a bad loss for the World Wide Leader.
Stephen Vogt has done a wonderful job of managing the Guardians this season, but how can A.J. Hinch, whose Tigers are the hottest team in the world, not at least be in the conversation after the job he’s done.
Just when you’re about to stick a fork in the wounded Rams, they come back the way they came back last Sunday against the 49ers.
Put it this way:
I know an awful lot of Jets fans who would be willing to pick up Davante Adams at the airport.
I don’t care how Rodgers tried to clean it up after the Patriots game, but that moment when he decided not to hug it out with Robert Saleh sure looked like this to me:
Let’s try to act as if you’ve been there before, Coach.
There are a lot of bad owners in sports, but there isn’t one that I know about, currently, worse than John Fisher, the guy who owns the A’s.
If you’re a “Law and Order: SVU” fan the way I have been for a long time, the good news is that Kevin Kane has been promoted to series regular.
You’re going to love the new Harry Bosch/Renee Ballard novel from the great Michael Connelly, called “The Waiting” and out in a couple of weeks.
This better not be turning into one of those late Septembers for the Mets.
As a No. 2, J.D. Vance is the political version of Zach Wilson.
