Aaron Judge's Yankees Uniform, Bat from HR No. 62 Estimated to Be Worth $1M
Oct 5, 2022
ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 4:
Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees watches the ball after hitting his 62nd home run of the season against the Texas Rangers during the first inning in game two of a double header at Globe Life Field on October 4, 2022 in Arlington, Texas. Judge has now set the American League record for home runs in a single season. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
The ball that New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge hit for his 62nd home run is undoubtedly worth a fortune, but it's not the only thing from the historic moment that carries a hefty price tag.
David Kohler of SCP Auctions told TMZ Sports that Judge's uniform, bat, cleats, batting helmet and batting gloves from Tuesday night could all be sold for an eye-popping number:
"Certainly the bat, the tool, the trade that he used yesterday to hit this historical milestone home run. That bat's worth a lot of money and the uniform he wore. Those are Aaron Judge's basically right, so I'm sure he's keeping those, but again if we had those at auction, in our firm, SCP Auctions, that's gonna probably bring, for a pair, probably a million dollars. Of course, his cleats that he wore, his batting helmet of course--all those things are gonna bring big bucks for this very historical moment."
Judge set the American League record when he homered off Jesus Tinoco to lead off the second game of a doubleheader against the Texas Rangers. The ball could be sold for a historic value, though the fan who caught it, Cory Youmans, told reporters he hasn't decided what to do with it.
"This baseball's worth a lot of bucks!" Kohler said. "Our estimate actually, with everything that's gone on in the last week or two leading up to the last game yesterday, our estimate is over $2 million for this baseball!"
Cory Youmans Offered $2M for Aaron Judge's 62nd HR Ball by Memorabilia Company
Oct 5, 2022
ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 04: New York Yankees center fielder Aaron Judge (99) hits his 62nd home run to beat the Roger Maris home run record during the game between the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees on October 4, 2022 at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Matthew Pearce/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Cory Youmans, the fan who caught New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge's American League record-breaking 62nd home run ball, was offered $2 million by a memorabilia company for the prized possession.
JP Cohen, the president of memorabilia company Memory Lane Inc., told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he texted and emailed Youmans the offer.
"I feel the offer is way above fair, if he is inclined to sell it," Cohen said.
Judge led off the Yankees' 3-2 loss to the Texas Rangers on Tuesday evening with a homer to break the all-time American League single-season record, which had been held by Yankees right fielder Roger Maris for 61 years.
Youmans was asked what he planned to do with the ball as he was escorted by security within the stadium.
#Rangers Security whisked away a Dallas man by the name of Corey Youmans who caught Judge’s 62nd home run ball. #62 pic.twitter.com/lP7jequjIJ
MLB Twitter Praises Aaron Judge Breaking Roger Maris' Home Run Record With 62
Oct 5, 2022
ARCHIVO - El bateador designado de los Yanquis de Nueva York, Aaron Judge, celebra el jonrón que disparó en la quinta entrada del partido contra los Cachorros de Chicago, en Nueva York, el sábado 11 de junio de 2022. (AP Foto/Adam Hunger, Archivo)
Aaron Judge has made history.
The New York Yankees slugger blasted home run No. 62 on Tuesday, the most ever hit in one season among American League players.
The previous record-holder was the Yankees' Roger Maris, who hit 61 home runs in 1961. Keeping in the tradition of Yankees holding the record, he had passed Babe Ruth and his 60 homers from the 1927 season.
Judge won't be setting the MLB record for single-season homers, though. He sits just seventh in the all-time list:
Barry Bonds: 73 in 2001
Mark McGwire: 70 in 1998
Sammy Sosa: 66 in 1988
McGwire: 65 in 1999
Sosa: 64 in 2001
Sosa: 63 in 1999
Given that Bonds, McGwire and Sosa were linked to steroids, some consider Judge's achievement the de facto MLB record. Officially, however, Bonds still holds the mark.
My opinion, which nobody asked for but it’s my account: The Bonds, McGwire, Sosa records are tainted and not really the record, but I’m also not that into the Judge chase or whether that’s the record, and that’s what’s sad about the steroid era: It made the records irrelevant. https://t.co/19EzVMEZXK
But Judge holding the record for the Yankees and the entire American League—topping historical figures such as Ruth, Maris, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson, among others—is nothing worth diminishing.
"That's one thing so special about the Yankees organization, is all the guys that came before us and kind of paved the way and played the game the right way, did things the right way, did a lot of great things in this game, and getting a chance to be mentioned with those guys now is, I can't even describe it, it's an incredible honor that's for sure," Judge told reporters after tying Maris' mark.
"I got to believe it's right there with some of the best very short list of all-time seasons," his manager, Aaron Boone, added at the time. "I go back to the context of the season, and the more I look at it and dive into it, it's got to be an all-time great season."
At the very least, it appears Judge will beat out Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani for the AL MVP award. There's little doubt he's compiled a special season for the Yankees as they prepare for an October postseason run.
Why Aaron Judge's 62nd Homer Gives Him MLB's All-Time Best Home Run Season
Oct 5, 2022
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 20: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees hits his 60th home run of the season in the ninth inning during the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 in New York, New York. (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
With 62 in the bag, New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is now the American League's all-time single-season home run champion. Some might also recognize him as the "real" or "true" single-season champ for all of Major League Baseball.
That's a no from us, but it is with zero reservations that we're about to argue for Judge's 2022 season as the most impressive entry in MLB's six-member 60 Home Run Club.
First things first, though. Or rather, 62nd things 62nd.
Having already matched Babe Ruth's old record of 60 from 1927 on Sept. 20 and Roger Maris' subsequent record of 61 from 1961 on Wednesday, it was on Tuesday that Judge finally claimed the all-time AL mark for himself. His 62nd home run was a 391-foot blast off Texas Rangers righty Jesus Tinoco:
Though Judge is still 11 home runs short of the MLB-record 73 that Barry Bonds hit in 2001, Roger Maris Jr. surely isn't alone in his refusal to validate Bonds' mark. After all, the era that contained not only Bonds' 2001 season but also Mark McGwire's 60-plus-homer efforts from 1998 and 1999 and Sammy Sosa's from '98, '99 and '01 can be fairly described as unusual.
The Other 60-HR Players Had Advantages
7 Oct 2001: Barry Bonds #25 of the San Francisco Giants watches his 73rd home run hit against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the first inning at Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, California. DIGITAL IMAGE. Mandatory Credit: Harry How/ALLSPORT
But do you know who doesn't want to hear it? Judge himself.
The Linden, California native and formerly self-professed San Francisco Giants fan has said on more than one occasion that he still holds Bonds' 73 blasts from '01 as MLB's real home run record, including in September in an interview with Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated:
“Seventy-three is the record. In my book. No matter what people want to say about that era of baseball, for me, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers, and that to me is what the record is. The AL record is 61, so that is one I can kind of try to go after. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s been a fun year so far.”
Back before he was Judge's teammate on the Yankees, Giancarlo Stanton had a different take when he was making a run at 60 homers with the Miami Marlins in 2017. As he told Dave Hyde of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, "Considering some things, I do [believe 61 is the record]."
The blanks in Stanton's statement were and still are easy to fill. Bonds, McGwire and Sosa had their homer-hitting heydays during the heart of baseball's steroid era in the late 1990s and early 2000s. So even if MLB hasn't scrubbed their achievements from the record books, there's nonetheless a question about their legitimacy.
Perhaps all the more so given that all three players had strong ties to performance-enhancing drugs. We know for a fact that McGwire used androstenedione. For his part, Sosa reportedly tested positive for PEDs in 2003. Albeit a purportedly unwitting one, Bonds acknowledged, via his lawyer, to being a user in 2011.
There may have also been other home run-friendly factors during baseball's steroid era. Expansion in 1993 and 1998 theoretically thinned out the league's pitching, and a juiced ball might have been in play.
And yet credit goes to Mike Axisa of CBS Sports for making an argument five years ago that still rings true: If you're going to ding Bonds, McGwire and Sosa for having played during the steroid era, then it's only fair to also ding Ruth and Maris for the circumstances under which they chartered the 60 Home Run Club.
Ruth played when the American League and the National League had only eight teams apiece, with no interleague play. He was thus playing against the same seven opponents over and over again. This was also 20 years before MLB integrated in 1947, and the Bambino himself knew all about what kind of talent the league was keeping out.
Though it was 14 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier that Maris surpassed Ruth in 1961, that was an expansion year in more ways than one for the American League. It added two teams and lengthened its schedule from 154 to 162 games.
Judge Has None of These Advantages
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 21: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees reacts from second base after hitting a double during the 1st inning of the game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 2022 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
In the 75 years since Robinson first suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Major League Baseball has only become more diverse as it has been infused with talent from all over the world. In the sense that it hasn't expanded since '98, the league is also pretty well settled.
As for whether Judge could be juicing, suffice it to say there are good reasons seemingly not a single soul actually thinks so.
He hasn't tested positive for anything, and he's about the last player on the planet who would need to even think about taking PEDs to get better at his job. At 6'7", 282 pounds, he's the biggest hitter in MLB history. Accordingly, he hits the ball harder than anyone in the sport.
Aaron Judge is first player in the Statcast era (since 2015) to have 5 batted balls of 110+ mph in a single game
Has Judge nonetheless benefited from playing his home games at Yankee Stadium, where the right field foul pole is famously just 314 feet away?
Yes, but not as much as you might think. The ever-useful Twitter account "Would it dong?" has flagged onlytwo "unicorns"—that is, home runs that would be out at one stadium and nowhere else—for Judge at Yankee Stadium all year. Statcast puts his expected home runs at 61, indicating that his count is right where it ought to be.
If Judge was doing all this amid the extraordinary home run environments of 2017, 2019 or 2020, there would inevitably be talk of juiced balls. Home runs are down in 2022, however, precisely because there are new balls that aren't traveling as far.
There's also a compelling piece of circumstantial evidence that the ball isn't juiced.
If it was, one would expect Judge to have had company in his pursuit of home run history. In actuality, Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber is his closest companion with a relatively paltry 46 home runs. Previously, a home run lead that large was known only to Ruth and Jimmie Foxx.
If Anything, Judge Is Disadvantaged
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 20: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees bats during the 3rd inning of the game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Yankee Stadium on September 20, 2022 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
In addition to watered-down talent pools, PEDs and juiced balls, you know what else is advantageous for home run hitters?
Familiarity.
Hypothetically, the more times a batter sees a pitcher, the more likely they are to adjust to said pitcher. This is quantifiably true within games, as batters fare better against starting pitchers the more times they face them.
Nobody should be surprised to hear that this advantage doesn't apply nearly as much to Judge as it has to other members of the 60 Home Run Club. He's the first one to be stuck with a 60-40 split for his matchups against starters and relievers:
The difference is in how often Judge faces a reliever for the first time in a game in lieu of a starter for a third or fourth time. Those situations are the opposite of conducive to power hitting in 2022, as the average batter is slugging .446 in a third matchup against a starter and only .376 in a first matchup against a reliever.
This, in turn, also helps explain why Judge has seen so many more individual pitchers than any of the 60-homer players who came before him:
And these 254 pitchers? They haven't taken it easy on Judge.
He's seen a higher rate of 95-plus mph fastballs (34.5 percent) than all but nine other hitters, and that's even as he's seen fewer fastballs on a rate basis (49.9 percent) than the average hitter (55.7 percent). Pitchers prefer to feed him sliders, aka the pitch against which he has the highest whiff rate (34.1 percent) out of the breaking ball family.
Did Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa or Bonds face such nasty stuff on a day-to-day basis? Nobody can say for sure, but "no" is a safe guess.
Consider what things were like in 2008, the first year Statcast lists pitch-tracking data. The highest rate of 95-plus mph fastballs that any hitter saw that year was a mere 20.7 percent, while the whiff rate on the average slider was 3.7 percentage points lower than it is in 2022.
If that's what things were like 14 years ago, then it's hard to fathom hitters were facing as nasty or even nastier stuff in 2001. Or 1999. Or 1998. Or 1961. Or definitely 1927.
This is not to rule out the possibility that someone from the past could have hit 60-plus home runs in 2022. Take it from Baseball Reference's neutralized batting tool, which posits that '01 Bonds (69 HR) and '98 McGwire (64 HR) could have done so.
But as that's the end of the list, there's simply not enough to distract from the fact that only one person has actually topped 60 home runs in this year's environment.
For this, Judge can, should and indeed must take a bow.
Collector: Jasson Domínguez 1-of-a-Kind Yankees Rookie Card Could Be Worth over $1M
Oct 4, 2022
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 16: Jasson Dominguez #12 of the New York Yankees rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run in the third inning during the 2022 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, July 16, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Jasson Domínguez is likely at least another year away from making his MLB debut, but card collectors are already betting big on the Yankees prospect being baseball's next big thing.
Matt Allen, better known as collector Shyne150, dropped $474,000 on a Domínguez 2020 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autographs Superfractor in January and now estimates he could get at least $600,000 for the card.
"That card can break a million dollars before he even makes it to the major leagues," Allen told Dan Hajducky and Anthony Olivieri of ESPN.
Allen plopping down nearly a half-million dollars for a player who is yet to play in an MLB game was unprecedented. Prospecting, the practice of buying a card well above its current sticker price with the idea it will greatly appreciate over time, has become an increasingly popular phenomenon, but even those in the industry were shocked at Allen's massive bid.
Domínguez is a top-two prospect in the Yankees farm system and has all the tools to be a franchise face. Signed for $5.1 million at age 16, Domínguez has ascended quickly in the Yankees farm system and has been selected to each of the last two Futures Games.
That said, it's far from a sure thing Domínguez winds up being a superstar. Baseball tends to be the most unpredictable of the major sports in determining which prep stars will turn into All-Stars. Guys spend years languishing in the minors or wind up minor success stories as platoon players in the bigs after being hyped as the next great thing.
Allen is banking on Domínguez's combination of skill and name recognition due to his association with the Yankees creating a big financial windfall down the line.
Yankees News: RP Ron Marinaccio Out Until at Least ALCS with Shin Injury
Oct 4, 2022
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 30: Ron Marinaccio #97 of the New York Yankees pitches during the seventh inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium on September 30, 2022 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
The New York Yankees' short-handed bullpen took another hit Tuesday after the team placed right-handed relief pitcher Ron Marinaccio on the injured list with a stress reaction in his right shin.
Manager Aaron Boone told the news to reporters:
The #Yankees place reliable reliever Ron Marinaccio on the IL with a stress reaction in his right shin. ‘It’s a blow,’ manager Aaron Boone says. He will be out at least until the ALCS if #Yankees advance past the division series.
Marinaccio, who sports a 2.05 ERA in 40 appearances, isn't eligible to return until the American League Championship Series round should the Yankees make it that far.
The Yanks are the AL's No. 2 seed and will skip the wild-card round to head to the AL Division Series against a to-be-determined opponent.
Marinaccio was removed from the eighth inning of his team's 3-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday because of the injury. He had retired all three batters faced.
The Yankees bullpen has taken big hits all year.
Chad Green, Zack Britton and Michael King are all out for the season. All-Star closer Clay Holmes is day-to-day because of a right shoulder strain. Wandy Peralta is working his way back from left thoracic spine tightness. Miguel Castro just returned from a shoulder injury and a stint on the 60-day IL.
Now Marinaccio will miss some time. It's a big loss for the Yankees, as the 27-year-old has been one of the Yankees' best and most consistent relievers this season. The rookie notably allowed just one earned run over 23 appearances from May 22 to Aug. 22.
For now, the Yankees will finish out their regular season with three games against the Texas Rangers. Their first playoff game will be on Oct. 11.
MLB Rumors: Latest Buzz on Yankees' Aaron Judge, Projected Contract Value, More
Sep 30, 2022
TORONTO, ON - SEPTEMBER 28: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees runs out his 61st home run of the season in the seventh inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on September 28, 2022 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Judge has now tied Roger Maris for the American League record. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
The Major League Baseball landscape feels a lot different than it did when the lockout was impacting the start of the regular season. We've seen exciting playoff races, surprising teams and one star chasing history.
New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge has captivated much of the baseball world as he continues a historic season.
On Wednesday, Judge hit his 61st home run of the season, tying Roger Maris for the most in American League history.
61 years since 61.
Aaron Judge has written his name alongside Roger Maris in baseball's record books. pic.twitter.com/1V4Gums34C
Judge is now tied for seventh all-time in MLB history with seven games to go. With one more dinger, he will own the Yankees and AL record by himself. Judge has also batted an impressive .313 average and delivered 130 RBI. Quite frankly, he's having one of the most impressive seasons of the century.
"He has made a brutally difficult game look relatively easy," Ian O'Connor of the New York Post wrote. "Nobody
has ever won the Triple Crown by hitting more than 52 home runs, and now
Judge has a chance to win it by hitting more than 62, while batting at
least 70 points higher than the league average."
While baseball fans—and the Yankees—should celebrate Judge's accomplishments this season, part of the feel-good story is overshadowed by the fact that the 30-year-old may be playing his last games in a Yankees uniform.
Judge rejected New York's seven-year, $213.5 million extension offer in the offseason, setting him up for 2023 free agency.
"Judge wanted close to the 10-year, $360 million
contract extension that center fielder Mike Trout received from the Los
Angeles Angels," USA Today's Bob Nightengale wrote in April. "Sorry, the Yankees finally told Judge and his
representatives, if you want to finish your career with the Yankees,
this is a fair offer. But if you want to be paid like Trout, the Yankees told him, you’ll have to go elsewhere."
After such a prolific season, Judge's price tag certainly isn't coming down—though the slugger insists that he didn't necessarily view this year as a bet on himself.
"Every day is a gamble,’’ Judge said, per Dan Martin of the New York Post. "So I just focus on
what I need to do on the field, and everything else will take care of
itself.”
Whether Judge viewed his contract decision as a gamble or not, he's about to hit the proverbial jackpot. He'll be heavily courted on the open market, and he stands a reasonable chance of becoming the league's highest-paid player.
ESPN's Kiley McDaniel recently polled 14 anonymous MLB executives about Judge's projected contract value. The predictions averaged out to 8.6 years and just below $320 million.
"In fact, a couple of the experts I talked to immediately responded to my question of how much Judge should get with something to the effect of 'just over Mike Trout's AAV,'" McDaniel wrote.
Trout, for the record, is making $35.5 million annually, according to Spotrac. If Judge were to equal that on a seven-year deal—the length that New York offered—it would be roughly $35 million more than what the Yankees have on the table.
Even factoring in a hometown discount, that's a sizeable gap, and one that legitimately gives other teams a chance to swoop in and snag Judge in the offseason.
Interestingly, five of nine unnamed executives predicted that Judge will sign with a team that isn't the Yankees. According to McDaniel, two picked the New York Mets, two said the San Francisco Giants, and one guessed either the Giants or the Los Angeles Dodgers.
This differs from earlier buzz, which suggested that Judge is heavily expected to return to the Yankees in 2023.
"Most expect the Yankees to re-sign AL MVP shoo-in Judge even though there was a big gap in talks when they broke for the season," Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote on September 1.
Earlier this month, rumors suggested that many around the league not only expect Judge to re-sign but believe it would benefit the sport as a whole.
"The Yankees 'have to' keep Judge, says a rival," Heyman wrote last week. "He played as practically a one-man band in the second half, taking his season into the realm of the all-time great. Even among some rivals, the hope is he stays 'for the good of the game.'"
Indeed, Judge's run has likely brought new eyeballs to the MLB and kept casual fans engaged. He's a charismatic player, doing remarkable things and playing for one of the sport's most high-profile franchises.
Little of that, though, should matter to the Yankees. This is a franchise that consistently churns out a high payroll but hasn't won a title since 2009. Judge will turn 31 in the spring and has a notable injury history. Paying him such a substantial sum into his late 30s could be problematic.
While New York is a franchise that loves to have stars, it has a difficult decision to make regarding Judge. But if the Yankees decide not to meet his preferred asking price, another team will.
So, there's a real chance we see Judge in San Francisco or Los Angeles next season—he did grow up in California, after all. He could land elsewhere, too, and fans can expect his foray into free agency to be one of the offseason's biggest storylines.
Despite the buzz, the speculation and the uncertainty, though, fans should take the time to appreciate what Judge is doing now. He's having a campaign for the ages, and he'll have an opportunity to continue it with New York in the postseason.
Yankees' Aaron Judge Felt 'Some Relief' Hitting 61st HR to Tie Roger Maris' Record
Sep 29, 2022
TORONTO, ON - SEPTEMBER 28: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees smiles during a post-game interview after hitting his 61st home run of the season in the seventh inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on September 28, 2022 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Judge has now tied Roger Maris for the American League record. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
New York Yankees superstar Aaron Judge
said he felt "some relief" after tying Roger Maris' American
League record with his 61st home run Wednesday night against the
Toronto Blue Jays.
Judge ended a seven-game homer drought
with a seventh-inning blast off Toronto relief pitcher Tim Mayza as
part of an 8-3 Yanks road win at the Rogers Centre.
61 years since 61.
Aaron Judge has written his name alongside Roger Maris in baseball's record books. pic.twitter.com/1V4Gums34C
It's been a career year for the
30-year-old California native, who's also in the running for the AL
Triple Crown. He's tied with the Minnesota Twins' Luis Arraez in
batting average (.313) and leads the Junior Circuit in runs batted in
(130).
His dominance of the home run charts is
the main story, however, as his 61 long balls are 19 more than anyone
else in baseball. It's not like the steroid or juiced-ball eras where
there was a league-wide surge in homers; he's just a one-man wrecking
crew this year.
So it left enough time for him to tie
Maris, who played for New York from 1960 through 1966, despite the
recent homer-less drought, and he'll likely establish a new AL mark
in the coming days.
"It's an incredible honor to get a
chance to be associated with one of the Yankee greats, one of the
baseball greats," Judge told reporters. "To be enshrined with
them forever, words can't describe it. That's one thing that's
so special about the Yankee organization, all the guys that came
before us and paved the way, played the game the right way."
He'll still face some individual
pressure over the regular season's final seven games as he attempts
to establish the new AL record, but his MVP-level campaign has helped
the Yankees clinch the AL East title and at least the No. 2 seed in
the AL playoffs.
Judge is still not interested in
shifting the focus to himself, though.
"My game plan is what got me to this
point," he said. "I never really thought it would be fair to my
teammates or the Yankees to be up here trying to chase a record. My
job is to go out there and be the best hitter I can be."
His first chance to hit No. 62 will come
Friday night when the Yanks host the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee
Stadium.
Aaron Judge's Record-Tying 61st Home Run Celebrated by MLB Twitter, Yankees Fans
Sep 29, 2022
TORONTO, ON - SEPTEMBER 28 - New York Yankees designated hitter Aaron Judge (99) hits his 61st home run, a two run shot, of the season to tie Roger Maris as the Toronto Blue Jays play the New York Yankees at Rogers Centre in Toronto. September 28, 2022. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge made history Wednesday night, hitting his 61st home run to tie Roger Maris for the most homers in American League history.
Judge's historic blast came on a two-run shot in the seventh inning to break a 3-3 tie. In a season where Judge has carried the Yankees on his back, he delivered yet again, but this time he did so in grand fashion.
It had been seven games since Judge last hit a home run, so many had wondered if the quest for No. 61 was getting to him. He put those questions to rest with one swing on Wednesday.
MLB Twitter lit up with celebratory messages for the 30-year-old after his monumental moment:
Fun fact: Aaron Judge 6️⃣1️⃣ home runs are tied with Roger Maris who did it 6️⃣1️⃣ years ago in the year 196️⃣1️⃣.@TheMLBMusepic.twitter.com/RMuJKQjg34
In a season where he will almost single-handedly drag this Yankee team to the playoffs, of COURSE Aaron Judge's 61st came, late in the game, to give his team the lead
Judge bet on himself when he turned down a $213.5 million contract extension from the Yankees prior to this season. His gamble paid off, as he is in the running for the Triple Crown as he leads the AL in batting average, home runs and RBI.
The Yankees are surely hoping Judge chooses to stay put, but the price to keep him undoubtedly went up after Thursday.
Yankees' Aaron Judge Ties Roger Maris' Single-Season AL Home Run Record With No. 61
Sep 29, 2022
BOSTON, MA - SEPTEMBER 13: Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees runs the bases after hitting a home run during the eighth inning of a game against the Boston Red Sox on September 13, 2022 at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Maddie Malhotra/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge slugged his 61st home run of the season Wednesday against the Toronto Blue Jays, tying the record held by Yankees legend Roger Maris for the most home runs by an American League player in a single season.
61 years since 61.
Aaron Judge has written his name alongside Roger Maris in baseball's record books. pic.twitter.com/1V4Gums34C
Judge's historic blast came off left-hander Tim Mayza in the seventh inning of the Yankees' road game at Rogers Centre to give his team a 5-3 lead.
Maris stood alone as the AL single-season home run king for 61 years, as he smashed 61 homers during the 1961 campaign, surpassing the record of another Yankees great in Babe Ruth, who hit 60 home runs in 1927.
While Maris' single-season MLB record was broken by both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, and then Barry Bonds in 2001 with a still-standing record of 73, no AL player was able to match him until now.
The 30-year-old Judge has been on a torrid pace all year, and it has come in the final year of his contract as he looks to cash in with the Yankees or perhaps even another team in free agency during the offseason.
Maris won his second of two consecutive AL MVP awards in 1961, and Judge is now a contender to win his first AL MVP award this season.
The Yankees have dealt with several significant injuries to their lineup and pitching staff this season, which made them go from a historic winning pace in the first half to fighting to hang on to the AL East lead during the second half.
While many of the Yanks' top players have been on and off the injured list, Judge has been the one constant, appearing in his most games since playing 155 in 2017.
Judge hit 52 homers in 2017 en route to being named AL Rookie of the Year and finishing second in the AL MVP voting, but he has reached a new level in 2022, firmly establishing himself as the face of baseball.
There is some uncertainty ahead for Judge in terms of his contract and the Yankees in terms of whether they will truly be able to contend for a World Series this season, but Judge's 2022 campaign is now cemented in history regardless of what the future holds.
