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Judge painstakingly curated playlists on Spotify for each part of his workday; in the hours before first pitch, the clubhouse might be filled with high-energy hip-hop or rap from Migos, Kendrick Lamar, or Calvin Harris. Judge had a special loop that played after each victory, which he titled “Win Song 2022,” featuring songs by artists Myke Towers, Kodak Black, and Kevin Gates, among others.
As he dressed at his locker that night, Judge’s thoughts were on much more than music or thumping the Cubs.
“We’ve got a lot of guys in here that really haven’t done much of anything,” Judge said. “We have Rizzo, Chappy (Aroldis Chapman), a couple of guys with World Series rings—but this team collectively, we haven’t. So we’re not satisfied just winning the division. I want to go out there and bring the championship back.”
“Win Song 2022” was back on the air the next day after another ridiculous slugfest, an 18–4 rout in which the Yankees batted around for five first-inning runs. Inserted into the lineup after Gleyber Torres came down with a stomach bug, Matt Carpenter blasted two homers and drove in seven RBIs, continuing to etch his name in the history books.
Six of Carpenter’s first seven hits in a Yankees uniform were homers (the other was a bunt single), and he was the first Yankee to hit at least six homers in his first ten games.
“I’ve played the game long enough to know what it feels like and looks like when I’m right,” Carpenter said. “This is certainly that. I feel like I can have competitive at-bats every time I get in there. It kind of got away from me the last few years; I didn’t really have it. I was able to put in a lot of good work and have a lot of people help me get it back. To be able to do it in New York City, for the best team in baseball, it means a lot. I’m enjoying it.”
* * *
The Yanks had stumbled upon another heater, enjoying what would become a nine-game winning streak. Gerrit Cole induced a key double-play grounder to help the Yankees win the opener over the visiting Rays, on a picture-perfect Tuesday evening. They would improve their record to a commanding thirty games over .500 the next night, which Boone called “a drop in the bucket—a good deposit.”
The mindset was similar to what former manager Joe Torre voiced to his dynasty-era Yanks; focus on five-game “small bites” of the season, getting to .500, then five games over, then ten. If they could do that, as Torre’s Bombers clubs often did, the standings would begin to take care of themselves.
Nestor Cortes never played for Torre, of course; he’d been a freshman at Hialeah Senior High School near Miami when Torre managed the final game of his Hall of Fame career in 2010, with the Los Angeles Dodgers. This was all new to Cortes, who said the achievement of reaching thirty games over the break-even mark prompted conversation behind closed doors in the players’ lounge.
“I think this team can do a lot of great things,” Cortes said. “The way we carry ourselves in here translates out there. Night in and night out, there’s always a different guy stepping up to the occasion.” One answered more than his share of those calls.
* * *
It was about five hours before the scheduled first pitch as Judge boarded an elevator outside the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, invited to visit the Yankees Museum on the ballpark’s main level. Judge curiously eyed the exhibits, a Yankees Magazine editor observing as he perused artifacts like the uniform jersey Babe Ruth wore when he called his shot in the 1932 World Series, Thurman Munson’s preserved locker from the old stadium, and nearly nine hundred baseballs autographed by current and former players.
Brian Richards, the museum’s curator, keyed open an exhibit case and handed Judge a Rawlings fielder’s glove that Mickey Mantle had worn during the 1963 season. Judge unfolded the fifty-nine-year-old leather and ran his fingers inside the pocket of Mantle’s old gear, an experimental XPG-6 model. Judge was thrilled, but he couldn’t imagine how The Mick used it. “To be honest, this is like an infield glove,” Judge said.
“When I handed him Mickey Mantle’s glove, he got this very sweet, innocent smile and said, ‘Is it OK?’ ” Richards said. “He held it in his hands and looked at it, and then he looked up and had this look of pure joy on his face. His eyes were just sparkling because he felt this sense of wonder, that he was connected with Mickey Mantle by holding this glove.”
Judge scanned the room, spotting his pinstriped No. 99 jersey hanging in an exhibit alongside those worn by Ruth, Mantle, Roger Maris, and Reggie Jackson. “What’s that last one doing in there?” he asked. Judge started toward the exit, until Richards raised an index finger, coaxing his guest to wait for just a moment. Richards hurried to a storage vault, emerging with a forty-five-ounce Louisville Slugger bat that Ruth had swung during the 1922 season, when the Yankees still played their home games at the Polo Grounds.
Compared to modern equipment, Ruth’s choice was a telephone pole, massively long and thick. Richards offered the bat to Judge, who asked: “I can touch it?” Richards affirmed that Judge could, inviting him to place his hands where the Babe once had.
“Oh, this feels great,” Judge said. “I might take this out there tonight, if you guys don’t mind. There’s definitely some magic still left in this.”
As he departed, Judge turned to Richards and asked: “Can I come back sometime?” Richards was reminded of a scene in the 1989 film Field of Dreams, where Ray Liotta’s “Shoeless Joe” Jackson character asks if he will be allowed to return to the magical Iowa cornfield.
“I thought, ‘Yes, I built this for you,’ ” Richards said. “He was respectful, appreciative, thoughtful; just very much in tune with Yankees history. I remember walking away just so impressed, thinking, ‘He’s exactly what I wanted him to be.’ He’s this combination of Mickey Mantle’s tremendous power and Derek Jeter’s personality, where he’s comfortable in the spotlight and says the right things.”
HOMER #25: June 15 vs. Tampa Bay Rays’ Shane McClanahan (1st inning, solo)
Exit velocity: 104.1 mph. Distance: 364 feet. Launch angle: 24 degrees. HR in 1 of 30 MLB parks.
Judge used his own bat, not the Bambino’s, as he stepped into the box that night against Shane McClanahan. A twenty-five-year-old left-hander, McClanahan was off to a terrific start as Tampa Bay’s ace, on the receiving end of some early Cy Young Award chatter thanks to a 7-2 record and 1.87 ERA across his first twelve starts.
With one out in the first inning, McClanahan set to work against Judge, who worked the count full by spitting on a couple of pitches and fouling one off. McClanahan tried a curveball that lacked the intended bite, floating into dangerous territory. Judge connected and drove the ball to right-center field, where outfielder Manuel Margot ran out of room on the warning track.
“I just relied on my teammates, relied on our scouting reports,” Judge said. “Especially against [McClanahan], I haven’t had much success off him. He was running that fastball to 99 or 100; I’m just trying to battle and put something in play. I got a curveball hanging that I was able to put out to right.”
It was a Yankee Stadium special, an extra-base hit or out in any of the other twenty-nine ballparks. In the Bronx, it was a homer. After Judge returned to the dugout, he conferred with Rizzo, who had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Hey,” Rizzo said. “Get 30 before the All-Star break. We’ve got two weeks left. You’ve got this.”
Judge grinned. Challenge accepted.
“Sometimes it’s that guy next to you saying, ‘Hey, come on, you’ve got this. Let’s push it a little bit,’ ” Judge said. “Just having someone to manifest your goals with you, that positive reinforcement next to you, it keeps pushing you and helping you along.”
The Yanks won that night and the next, when Rizzo had launched a walk-off homer in the ninth inning. Rizzo gestured as though he was securing the team’s jewel-encrusted, wrestling-style belt across his waistline, a token for the game’s most significant contributor.
As he clutched the real thing in the clubhouse five minutes later, Rizzo made the requisite closed-door speech to teammates and coaches, announcing that a championship season would take contributions from everyone.
“There’s a lot of big names in this clubhouse, and you would never know inside,” Rizzo said. “Everyone is treated on the same level, whether you have a couple of days in the big leagues or fifteen years. We keep it loose.”
That win marked the club’s fourteenth straight in the Bronx, an unprecedented run in the present-day incarnation of Yankee Stadium. “I thought Rizzo said it really well,” Boone said. “It’s something we say in spring training when the full group is there. Look around; even if you don’t think you’re going to impact us, there’s a chance you might come up in a huge spot. One day, one week, whatever. Make sure you’re ready.”
Though Boone cautioned, “We ain’t done nothing yet,” Rizzo’s bat continued sizzling, and the Bombers kept rolling. Rizzo hit a grand slam in a rout of the Blue Jays and Clay Holmes helped extend the winning streak to nine games with his twenty-ninth consecutive scoreless outing, eclipsing a franchise record previously held by Mariano Rivera. Holmes was humbled to be mentioned in the same sentence as the great Rivera.
“He’s a guy that I grew up watching; I think everybody did,” Holmes said. “Just to be in the same category for this one little thing he’s done is pretty cool.”
When Toronto salvaged the series finale, the Yankees embarked on a bus ride across the border. Because negative COVID-19 tests were still required to board international flights out of Toronto, some professional sports teams made a strategic two-hour detour to Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Buffalo, New York. The Blue Jays, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics, and Philadelphia 76ers were among the other teams known to have bypassed Toronto’s airports in favor of Buffalo, with COVID-19 testing no longer required to cross the border by land.
Safely on the ground in Florida, the Yanks reached another milestone the next night at Tropicana Field. Gerrit Cole took a no-hitter into the eighth inning as the Bombers became the majors’ first team to fifty victories. New York’s winning percentage stood at an otherworldly .746 as they shook hands on the turf that night, and watching from a suite high above the diamond, managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner was dreaming big.
“The club that Cash put together, that we rolled into Opening Day with, was one of the most dominant clubs in all of baseball—for months, not for weeks,” Steinbrenner said. “For months.”
Yet Cashman refused to take a victory lap; like Boone, he’d been through too many gauntlets, experiencing enough heartbreak to know that nothing had been achieved yet. From 2018 to 2020, the Yankees had lost more days than any other team to leg injuries—calves, hamstrings, and knees—prompting the hiring of health guru Eric Cressey before the ’20 campaign. They’d suffered quite a bit in 2021, and prayed that their good health would continue through 2022.
“I’ve been in this game a long time,” Cashman said. “So I’ve seen a lot of things go well early and not go well late. 162 games is so long, and unfortunately, there was plenty to go. I was very thankful for the time that I had a chance to get some sleep. It felt like we were magically healthy for a really long time; I mean, it was the longest I’ve ever had as a GM. Three months without any injuries is unheard of, for any club. And then, clearly, that changed.”
HOMER #26: June 22 vs. Tampa Bay Rays’ Shane Baz (4th inning, solo)
Exit velocity: 99.9 mph. Distance: 396 feet. Launch angle: 34 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
HOMER #27: June 22 vs. Tampa Bay Rays’ Colin Poche (7th inning, solo)
Exit velocity: 109.0 mph. Distance: 406 feet. Launch angle: 41 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
Judge stood in the batter’s box, his feet set widely apart, the bat cocked and still behind his right ear. The Yankees were down by three runs, with Tampa Bay having peppered Jordan Montgomery early, on homers from Rays infielder Isaac Paredes (his fourth in two games) and light-hitting infielder Vidal Bruján.
Now it was the second time through the batting order for Shane Baz, a twenty-three-year-old top prospect making his sixth start in the majors. Baz received a quick lesson in why not to leave sliders spinning over the heart of home plate as Judge pummeled a drive about twelve rows deep over the left-field wall, registering the Yanks’ first run of the night.
Immediately after the swing, Baz swung his right arm across his waistline and muttered an expletive, not bothering to watch. He’d seen the last of that particular baseball.
Judge wasn’t done yet. Facing lefty Colin Poche in the seventh, Judge clobbered a 1-2 curveball high over the left-field wall, losing track of the projectile as it hung in the air for 6.7 seconds and soared toward Tropicana Field’s catwalks. Uncertain about how the ground rules would treat his blast if it were to dent one of those quirky pathways, Judge hustled out of the batter’s box, then realized he could safely begin yet another trot. Glancing at first-base umpire John Tumpane while he rounded the bases, Judge sought confirmation that he’d indeed gone deep.
“I saw it the whole way through, but I don’t know the catwalk rules,” Judge said. “So I started running around the bases; I didn’t know what would happen if it would hit one of those and drop back in. I was just trying to make sure I was on second base if it fell in play.”
Jose Trevino belted a go-ahead, two-run blast in the eighth inning, providing the necessary margin of victory for the Yanks’ eighteenth win in twenty-one games. As he spoke in the clubhouse, Trevino credited his new teammates for helping him reach his offensive potential, noting, “Learning from them has been huge, talking to them and being able to pick their brains. A guy like Judge is special.”
To that comment, a passing Judge grinned, raising his right fist into the air—reminding at least one observer of Judd Nelson’s character in the iconic closing scene of The Breakfast Club. Don’t you forget about me, indeed.
* * *
The Yankees were heading home, about to test their mettle against the Astros. There was already a playoff atmosphere in the building as the turnstiles began spinning hours before game time, on a fine Thursday evening in the Bronx.
The fans had lubricated their vocal chords with parking lot Budweisers, intent on foully filling the eardrums of José Altuve, Alex Bregman, and the Houston Astros. For a considerable segment of the faithful, there would always be hell to pay for the sins of the 2017 sign-stealing scandal; chants of “Fuck Altuve!” frequently rang out, sometimes when the Astros weren’t even in the same state. In that juiced environment, the Yankees rallied for a season highlight, stunning Houston with a furious ninth-inning rally.
New York trailed by three runs as Astros manager Dusty Baker handed the ball to Ryan Pressly for the ninth inning. The righty was a reliable ten-year veteran, but he couldn’t hit his marks on this night, issuing walks to Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres. Watching from his perch near the top step of the dugout, Boone sensed a good level of focus, blended with calm, resolve, and energy.
“It was like, ‘Let’s go grind this thing out,’ ” Boone said.
Aaron Hicks’s preseason prediction would fall short; that much appeared clear. During spring training, Hicks had boasted that he intended to post a 30-30 season, targeting 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases. As Hicks later learned, that was a feat that only two other Yankees had achieved—by Bobby Bonds in 1975, and twice by Alfonso Soriano, in 2002 and ’03. Through his first fifty-nine games of the season, Hicks had managed two homers and seven stolen bases; his off-season plan of trimming weight had not yielded the desired combination of speed and power.
Yet this would be one of Hicks’s best moments of the year, jumping on a 1-2 fastball to slug a game-tying home run over the right-field wall, transforming the bleachers and the dugout alike into a frenzied celebration. Pressly continued to struggle, prompting Baker to turn to reliever Ryne Stanek. With runners at first and second bases, Stanek offered a 3-0 cookie that Judge lashed to the left-field wall, celebrating a walk-off single.
“You saw up and down our lineup, guys working the at-bat, the moment not getting too big for guys,” Judge said. “It’s just believing in each other.”
* * *
In a remarkable slice of timing, Judge’s arbitration hearing had been scheduled for the next day—meaning that, less than twenty-four hours after lifting the team to victory over a despised rival, Judge braced for an opportunity to hear the Yankees’ lawyers explain why he should be paid less.
Though Judge was in the midst of his best season yet, hitting .299 and leading the majors with 27 homers and 53 RBIs, the arbitration process demanded that time stop when Judge requested $21 million on March 22. No data from the 2022 season could be factored into the decision; he would either be worth $17 million, as the club contended, or $21 million.
The hearing was scheduled for noon on Zoom, and Judge arrived at the Manhattan headquarters of the Major League Baseball Players Association on time, dressed in a sharp suit and tie.
“Kind of bad timing,” Judge said. “We were logged in, ready to go. All dressed up.”
The hearing never began, delayed once, then again. By 12:45 p.m., the sides had agreed to meet at the midpoint, setting Judge’s 2022 salary at $19 million. The team believed that they had the necessary ammunition to win the hearing, but common sense indicated that saving a few million bucks wouldn’t be worth alienating their best player. Judge’s new deal included attainable $250,000 bonuses if he was named AL MVP (as he would) and $250,000 if he were named World Series MVP. Still, by dragging things out to the last possible minute, the episode didn’t necessarily inspire confidence that Judge’s next negotiations would go smoothly.
“I was happy we were able to agree on a number and settle this thing and not have to go into court there,” Judge said that night. “If I would have went in that room, I probably would have missed the game tonight, and that didn’t really sit too well with me.”
