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Watching from the Yankees bullpen, Holmes agonized as he watched King exit with one out in the eighth inning, pointing to his right elbow. Tests showed that King had fractured his pitching elbow and needed surgery, having likely aggravated a stress reaction by continuing to pitch. With a 2.29 ERA in thirty-four appearances, the twenty-seven-year-old King could have been the club’s seventh representative at the All-Star Game in Los Angeles. Instead, he was gone for the year.
Cole tried to shoulder the load for a gassed bullpen and coughed up a three-run lead the next night, in a loss of missed opportunities that Boone called “frustrating.” One reporter noted that the Yanks had lost eight of their last twelve, their poorest stretch of the season. Perhaps because the stretch was interrupted by the glitz of the Tinseltown trip, or because the Yankees still held a twelve-game lead in the American League East, Cole seemed surprised by the statistic.
“I didn’t realize that,” he said. “That’s not very good.”
Zoom out a little farther and they had been a more manageable 16-15 over their last thirty-one games, though they were rapidly falling off the pace of juggernauts like the 1998 Yankees and 2001 Mariners. Cashman acknowledged then that he was “concerned,” painting his job as one in which he must always plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Behind the scenes, the Yanks were deep in talks with the Cincinnati Reds about ace right-hander Luis Castillo, and they had checked in with the Washington Nationals about a mega-deal for outfielder Juan Soto. The respective prices had been exorbitant; with no requests moving off top prospects like Anthony Volpe, Oswald Peraza, and Jasson Dominguez. They also seemed to be serious contenders for Kansas City Royals outfielder Andrew Benintendi, but they’d have to keep plugging away with what they had in house for the moment.
HOMER #37: July 24 vs. Baltimore Orioles’ Dean Kremer (3rd inning, two-run)
Exit velocity: 111.1 mph. Distance: 456 feet. Launch angle: 31 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
Judge was up for the challenge, extending his big-league home run lead by teeing off on a hanging curveball from Dean Kremer, a shaggy-haired twenty-six-year-old righty from Stockton, California. As Judge’s shot to the left-field seats soared on a hazy, humid afternoon, O’s catcher Robinson Chirinos dropped to his right knee and craned his neck. In Chirinos’s view, Judge was the most dangerous hitter in the league.
“I don’t think anybody should pitch to him,” Chirinos said. “The guy is unbelievable. He’s hitting good pitches. He’s hitting mistakes. Normally when a guy’s hot, he’s hitting doubles and singles. He’s hitting the ball out of the ballpark, and it’s crazy. He’s a good hitter. What can you say?”
Judge’s two hits not only supported a winning Nestor Cortes effort but also raised his batting average to .294, which he considered a key area of focus. “I saw a lot of the greats—Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera—they always hit above .300 and the power just came with it,” Judge said. “That’s always been a goal of mine, to hit above .300, and we’ll keep working towards it.”
Around this time, Michael Kay approached Judge, not to garner a quote, just to share a chat. That spring in Tampa, Florida, Judge had given a pair of batting gloves to Kay’s eight-year-old son, Charlie. It was a move that Judge had done numerous times before, believing that gifting an article of gear held much more significance than scribbling his name on a ball.
As Judge continued to slug homers in July, Charlie told his dad: “I just want you to know that if Judge leaves, I’m not going to root for the Yankees anymore.” Kay was incredulous: “Really? Even though your father’s the announcer?” Charlie replied: “Yeah. I’m out.”
“The next day, I went into the clubhouse and told Judge that story,” Kay said. “He had almost a sad look on his face. He really paused, longer than he usually pauses. And he said to me: ‘Please tell Charlie not to worry.’ ”
HOMER #38: July 26 vs. New York Mets’ Taijuan Walker (1st inning, solo)
Exit velocity: 112.1 mph. Distance: 423 feet. Launch angle: 29 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
It didn’t reflect reality for anyone who has swiped a MetroCard since the venerable subway token was phased out, but a segment of the population swears that New York is not really a Yankees town. The five boroughs have rich National League heritage, traced to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ occupation of Ebbets Field and the New York Giants’ finest seasons at the Polo Grounds, just across the Harlem River in Manhattan from where both iterations of Yankee Stadium have stood.
Soon after the Dodgers and Giants moved west after the 1957 season, the New York Mets came along to fill the void, a crew of lovable losers who shocked the world by winning a “Miracle” World Series in 1969—just a few months after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Yogi Berra steered the Mets to an unlikely 1973 pennant, the rowdy Amazin’s rode through the Canyon of Heroes in 1986, and there was the true Subway Series of 2000—the one after which Derek Jeter swore he’d have moved out of Manhattan, had the Yankees lost.
Yet that autumn was the outlier; for the most part, when one team is up, the other has been down. Still, since the dawn of interleague play in 1997, the Mets-Yankees rivalry had provided reasons to cheer and to dream. Should they ever meet again in October, as the Mets’ Pete Alonso said, “The city will just be on fire.” Judge appreciated those games, mostly because of the heated postseason atmosphere; fans swapping chants of “Let’s Go Mets,” “Let’s Go Yankees,” and several PG-13–rated variations.
That was the scene as Judge limbered in the on-deck circle at Citi Field, the 2009 replacement for dilapidated and outdated Shea Stadium. If Yankee Stadium was a living museum of the Yanks’ rich history, Citi Field attempted to inspire intimacy, beginning with an entryway rotunda borrowed from the blueprints for long-gone Ebbets Field. Citi Field hardly seemed to honor the Mets at all—Fred Wilpon, the club’s previous owner, had been a die-hard Dodgers fan and a one-time high school teammate of Sandy Koufax. Outcry eventually prompted change, from restoring the outfield walls to their traditional blue and orange to commissioning a stunning statue of Tom Seaver, the franchise’s greatest player.
“I think our guys look forward to playing in this kind of environment,” Boone said. “Especially as we enter the dog days of summer, it seems like it gives guys a little shot in the arm, a little life. I think most guys would agree that they enjoy playing on this kind of stage, with the amount of interest that is on the series within the city.”
With this installment of the Subway Series underway, Judge stepped in to face Walker, a ten-year veteran who’d bounced between the Seattle Mariners, Arizona Diamondbacks, Toronto Blue Jays, and the Mariners again before landing by the shores of Flushing Bay. Walker’s preferred uniform number was No. 99, and in this battle of ninety-nines, Judge saw five pitches, filling the count. The sixth left the yard, a four-seam fastball down the middle that Judge parked into the visiting bullpen, beyond the right-field wall.
Anthony Rizzo homered on Walker’s next pitch, but the back-to-back blasts only served as an appetizer for the power show. The Mets pelted Jordan Montgomery for four runs in the home half of the first, including homers by Starling Marte and Eduardo Escobar; Montgomery needed seventy-one pitches to record seven outs, and when Boone came to the mound to retrieve the baseball, the lefty blinked and asked: “Why?” A brief explanation followed; Boone patted his hurler’s chest in something of an apology, though the five runs already on the scoreboard told the tale. “I wanted to be out there, but I sucked,” Montgomery said.
The Mets made it a Subway sweep the next night, with Max Scherzer performing marvelously on his thirty-eighth birthday, including three Judge strikeouts. Gleyber Torres smacked a game-tying homer in the ninth, but Marte answered with a walk-off single. Cashman had a response, too; minutes after the game, the Yankees announced that they’d acquired Andrew Benintendi from the Kansas City Royals for three minor-league pitchers.
Conveniently, Benintendi was already in town; the Royals had checked into a midtown Manhattan hotel that night, preparing to open a four-game series with the Yankees. Benintendi spent the next few hours playing cards with his former teammates, saying, “It’s definitely a weird situation, lacing it up with them yesterday and going against them today.”
HOMER #39: July 28 vs. Kansas City Royals’ Scott Barlow (9th inning, solo, walk-off)
Exit velocity: 109.6 mph. Distance: 431 feet. Launch angle: 35 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
Benintendi tried on his new pinstriped uniform with No. 18 stitched on the back, surveying his attire in a mirror affixed to the wall of the players’ restroom. He looked sharp in crisp Yankees white. However, it would be a stretch to say Benintendi had ever envisioned being on this side of the rivalry, having grown up in a suburb of Cincinnati before playing his first five big-league seasons with the Red Sox.
His year and a half with Kansas City had blunted any shock of the transition, though. Benintendi had an opportunity to play the hero in his Yanks debut as the game proceeded scorelessly to the bottom of the ninth inning. New York had been held to one hit through the first eight frames, and as he dug in against Kansas City closer Scott Barlow, Benintendi got a pitch to hit—a 95 mph fastball right over the heart of the plate.
He whipped his bat through the zone and lifted a drive… that left fielder Kyle Isbel snagged in foul territory, the first out of the inning.
So a storybook ending wasn’t in the cards for Benintendi on day one—not in Judge’s season. Judge was the designated hitter that night. As Barlow warmed in the Kansas City bullpen, rookie reliever Ron Marinaccio had spotted Judge walking through the clubhouse on his way back to the dugout. “Let’s get this thing done,” Marinaccio told the slugger, who had replied with a wink.
About two minutes later, Judge clobbered a drive that pelted an advertising board at the back of Yankee Stadium’s visiting bullpen for yet another walk-off homer. While watching from the weight room, the flashing Yankee Stadium LED lights caught Jameson Taillon’s attention—a signal to rush for the field.
“We were just like, ‘This dude did it again,’ ” Taillon said. “It’s pretty unbelievable, but we’ve come to expect it. It seems like every big moment, he comes up there and he comes through.”
Said Benintendi: “Seeing it from the other side, it’s incredible what he’s doing. Then to be a part of it, it’s almost like it was drawn up exactly how he wants it.”
Judge’s three walk-off homers tied Mickey Mantle (1959) for the most by a Yankee in a single season; channeling the Mick, he’d swung hard and tried to hit one out of the park.
“Especially in that situation, I was [0-for-2] with two [strikeouts]. What’s the worst that’s going to happen?” Judge said. “I just go up there, try to do the job. Get something over the plate and make something happen for the guys behind me. Luckily it happened with the first pitch and we were able to get it done.”
HOMER #40: July 29 vs. Kansas City Royals’ Kris Bubic (1st inning, two-run)
Exit velocity: 110.2 mph. Distance: 449 feet. Launch angle: 29 degrees. HR in 30 of 30 MLB parks.
HOMER #41: July 29 vs. Kansas City Royals’ Jackson Kowar (8th inning, grand slam)
Exit velocity: 105.1 mph. Distance: 370 feet. Launch angle: 29 degrees. HR in 10 of 30 MLB parks.
Should you ever wind up in a bar, quizzed about the identities of the three Yankees to hit 40 or more homers by the end of July, don’t overcomplicate the matter. It’s Judge, Maris (1961), and Babe Ruth (1928). Here was a telling snapshot of Judge’s historic summer: as he stood in the center of the Yankees’ clubhouse late on a Friday evening, the slugger was asked to ponder if he preferred making a leaping catch over the wall or hitting a grand slam to help win a game. Of course, he’d done both in the same night.
As he had for pretty much the entire season, Judge starred on both sides of the ball in a rainy 11–5 victory over the Royals, helping out Gerrit Cole by bringing back a first-inning homer, then joining pinstriped royalty with his 40th and 41st home runs.
“Ooh, they’re close,” Judge said. “Robbing [a home run], you’ve got the crowd excitement, helping out a pitcher who’s working his butt off. It’s pretty cool. Then, you’ve got the same thing when you hit one, helping your team add some runs to the board. Hitting a homer is still above robbing one for me right now.”
Said Cole: “I wish I could have my phone on the bench like the rest of the fans, taking video of every one of his at-bats.”
Boone found 41 homers before the end of July “hard to process,” while noting, “Nobody is better equipped to go through it and handle it than him.” The multi-homer game, Judge’s ninth of the year, had put him on pace to hit 66. “There is going to be a generation,” said Paul O’Neill, “that looks back and reminds their kids: ‘You know, you remember Aaron Judge in 2022?’ ” He had 11 homers in his past thirteen games alone. Yet, even in the afterglow of a six-RBI performance, he whisked the topic away—just like the magic wand that Cole said Judge seemed to be waving every night, calling it “a steady dose of amazingness.”
“When he started creeping up there over 40, I was saying, ‘This guy’s got a real chance to do it,’ ” said Clarke Schmidt. “Every day, he was hitting one or two, and you couldn’t stop him. I was grateful to be on the same team as him; I was glad not to be on the other side facing him, that’s for sure.”
On a night when one fortunate soul struck a billion-dollar Mega Millions jackpot at a Des Plaines, Illinois gas station, the wager that Judge placed back in April seemed even more like a sure thing. The offer of $213.5 million wasn’t yesterday’s price, nor was it today’s or tomorrow’s. When fans chanted “M-V-P!” after each highlight-reel contribution, it was a shorthand plea for the front office to pay whatever it took to keep Judge in pinstripes. Judge never saw turning down the extension as a bet on himself, but if it had been one, Judge was winning big time.
“It was never a gamble for me, because no matter whether we got a deal done or didn’t get a deal done, I was still going to be playing with the Yankees this year,” Judge said. “In my mind, there was no gamble. I’ll be playing for the Yankees, working as hard as I can to help us win a World Series. All that other stuff, that’s why I’ve got an agent.”
9
HEROES AND GHOSTS
A vintage copy of Life magazine, dated August 18, 1961, and carrying a cover price of twenty cents, rested on the carpet of Aaron Judge’s locker at Yankee Stadium. The grinning color visages of Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle greeted Judge, placed over a black-and-white photograph of Babe Ruth and below a red, white, and blue banner that promised: “Will Yank Sluggers Reach 60 Homers? The Real Odds.”
For some reason, the magazine’s editors placed the Maris-Mantle teaser below one for an Ann Landers article: “Frank Talk on Youth and Sex,” in which the finger-wagging columnist had used her space to admonish teenagers against the dangers of necking and petting in parked automobiles. “Of course sex is natural. So is eating,” Landers wrote. “But would you sit down at the dinner table and pull the leg off a turkey or scoop up the mashed potatoes with your hands?” Decades after that text landed in mailboxes, one was reminded of Ned Flanders, the normally straight-laced neighbor on The Simpsons, whose tongue was loosened by a sip of blackberry schnapps, prompting a declaration to his horrified wife: “Ann Landers is a boring old biddy.”
Judge flipped through the yellowed pages, past advertisements for General Electric refrigerators, White Owl cigars, and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, and scanned the text of the article about Maris and Mantle. The magazine, left as a gift for Judge by YES Network president John J. Filippelli, provided a time-capsule window into the world of his predecessors.
“I had it from childhood,” Filippelli said. “I’m a baseball historian, and I have been since I was a child. My father ran a bar across the street from Ebbets Field. I was 10 years old in 1961, and I became a big Roger Maris fan. The whole world was rooting for Mickey Mantle to break the record. I was rooting for Maris. He still is my favorite player of all time, because I love the way he conducted himself. His humility really struck me.”
Life’s readers were treated to a convoluted interpretation of a mathematical formula in which the magazine opined that Mantle’s chances of breaking Ruth’s record was “50-50,” while noting that the odds were running 4-1 against Maris. The combined probability of one, or both, breaking the record was 3-2 in favor. The article, which did not have a byline, recounted a game against the Los Angeles Angels (a quick search identifies the contest as August 7, 1961) in which Maris stepped to the plate with Bobby Richardson on third base and two outs, with the Yankees trailing by a run.
The Angels had played the infield back, expecting Maris to swing away against pitcher Ken McBride. It was the third inning, and Maris had 41 homers; why would they think differently? But the Angels didn’t know that Maris had nudged manager Ralph Houk in the dugout that half-inning, asking, “Ralph, what do you think about me bunting for a hit?” Houk had given his approval, and Maris dropped a superb bunt down the third-base line, scoring Richardson with the tying run. Yogi Berra would hit a go-ahead homer in the sixth inning and the Yanks won, 4–1.
As Life wrote, “Maris had decided that tying up the game was more important than Ruth’s record.” Judge thought the magazine was “pretty cool,” especially the part about Maris’s bunt—team first, all the way. “That’s what it’s all about,” he said. He’d skipped the Landers article, though it generated a good laugh for the beat writers.
That nostalgia was in the air as the Yankees assembled on the afternoon of July 30, celebrating the return of Old-Timers’ Day, a popular event benched for two years because of the pandemic. The traditional three-inning game had yet to return, but thanks to the video highlights accompanying each entrance to the playing field, headliners like Ron Guidry, Tino Martinez, Willie Randolph, and Bernie Williams could remain forever young. As members of the greatest teams in recent history milled about in Monument Park, inspecting plaques and retired numbers, one name continued to spill from their lips. Those assembled alumni marveled at the special season Judge was enjoying, while also wondering aloud about his pinstriped future.
