For decades, Major League Baseball’s leadership has wrung its hands over the lessening impact of the national pastime and the Herculean task of getting people to pay attention to the game over football and basketball, both of which are more popular with younger audiences and have the reputation of being faster paced than baseball.
After observing Aaron Judge’s pursuit of 61 homers from varying vantage points over the last week, I feel qualified to suggest that all baseball needs to return to its status as the country’s unquestioned status as its no. 1 sporting diversion is someone making a yearly run at Roger Maris’ iconic 1961 performance.
Of course, there’s some irony in relying on the home run to save baseball. Remember how the sport’s post-strike issues were all solved with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shooting past Maris in 1998? Three years later, we all had a pretty good idea how McGwire and Sosa shot past Maris, all while Barry Bonds was shooting past everyone in a dust of single-minded cynicism.
Even without the steroid cloud surrounding the late ‘90s/early ‘00s home run boom, the glut of 60-homer hitters — Sosa, McGwire and Bonds combined for six 60-homer seasons from 1998 through 2001, four more than were registered from the dawn of time through 1997 — turned a once-iconic feat into a video game caricature.
Whether we like it or not, Bonds’ 73 homers remains the single-season record. It’s also a very fair question to wonder if Judge’s monster season would be treated this reverentially — with broadcasts of college football games nationwide Saturday breaking away for Judge’s at-bats — if he was doing it in a smaller market.
But Judge making this run at 61 homers and beyond — in a season with a deadened baseball and in a New York Yankees uniform, just like Maris and the original 60-homer hitter, Babe Ruth — exactly 61 years after Maris’ 1961 season has made for some great theatre as well as achieved the compellingly archaic task of getting people to actually pay attention to the game.
We don’t “miss” anything anymore. Anything cool that happens in sports is trending on Twitter in seconds, allowing us all to participate in the discourse whether we were watching the event live or not.
But people don’t want to miss this as it happens.
All I’m saying is that they haven’t once cut into @dimension20show for not baseball history baseball
— pistachio (@sportsbroad) September 24, 2022
My wife is a teacher who has to be out the door at 8 AM every weekday morning, Our 10-year-old daughter has a hard time falling asleep at normal hours (what can I say, she’s my child). The biggest strain in our marriage has been me yelling gibberish at cool sports stuff just after our daughter has fallen asleep.
Yet last Thursday night, there was my wife the Yankees fan not just standing in the living room with our daughter having recently fallen asleep one room away, but yelling gibberish with me as a Fox cameraman trolled us all by making us believe for a couple seconds that Judge had walked off the Boston Red Sox with homer No. 61.
OH. MY. GOODNESS.
Judge was that close…
📺: FOX
💻📱: https://t.co/NvZPAyEZeD pic.twitter.com/u4KT40II8O— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 23, 2022
On Friday, we were among those finding our Apple IDs and watching on our laptops or phones every time Judge came to bat. On Saturday, with my wife demanding texts after every at-bat while she had her phone on silent while she took our daughter and her best friend into New York City, I trekked into Yankee Stadium, where I’d read and heard so much about the hush that came over the building as Judge batted.
It was even more surreal than can possibly be explained via the written word — but I’ll try anyway.
The cacophony of sights and sounds that are both part of the ballpark experience and taking our attention away from the actual game mostly ceased during Judge’s at-bats. There were giant cheers, of course, as he stepped to the plate — the MAKE SOME NOISE message on the scoreboard was wholly unnecessary — and in between every offering. But as each pitch was delivered, everyone went quiet, with the only minimal movement being the collective holding of cell phones.
I felt a pang of uncertainty doing something in the press box that thousands of fans were doing in the stadium — until I looked to my left and saw many fellow writers with their phones out, just in case this was the pitch Judge hit for his 61st homer. I can only compare this to the final inning of the 2004 World Series, when no one left the press box — as is the custom to get into the winning locker room as soon as possible — because no one wanted to say they were in an elevator when the Boston Red Sox won it all for the first time in 86 years.
On Sunday afternoon, with tickets in the cheap seats surprisingly dropping, I returned to the Stadium with my wife. The anticipation of every pitch providing a euphoric relief was even more palpable in the stands.
Behind us were a couple men who talked about their in-game bets in between at-bats. (Sorry to the guy who had Red Sox moneyline and the over) But as soon as Judge came to bat, they stood — along with everyone else 500 feet and several levels from home plate — while training their cameras on home plate. They were silent as each pitch was delivered and elicited a vaguely disappointed roar after each pitch didn’t result in a homer. Judge’s one well-struck ball —a fly out to center in the fifth — yielded a hopeful sound, just as his fly out to center in the third inning did a day earlier.
Thousands of people continued paying attention once torrential rains arrived after the sixth inning. With Judge due to lead off the seventh for the Yankees, the concourses remained jammed with those who wanted to stay dry but didn’t want to risk leaving early and missing history.
The Yankees played a pretty great mix of ‘70s and ‘80s songs while airing the Sunday Night Football game on the scoreboard. The irony of the latter made me chuckle — people not only watching football as a substitute for baseball instead of vice versa, but watching an absolute slog of a game that should render null and void any further arguments about football’s action-packed nature null and void (The Kansas City Royals and Seattle Mariners BOTH had more runs in their game Sunday afternoon than either the Denver Broncos or San Francisco 49ers had points last night)
My wife and I checked in regularly with the friend babysitting our daughter and were getting to the point where we’d have to make the difficult choice to head home when we saw Aaron Boone and Alex Cora shake hands and wave goodbye to one another on the waterlogged field.
I will say this: If Aaron Judge had 50 homers rather than 60 homers right now, this game would be called. No doubt in my mind. The field is soaked and both teams have to travel tonight for games tomorrow night in Toronto (Yankees) and Boston (Orioles at Red Sox).
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) September 26, 2022
My wife — content with seeing Nestor Cortes author a one-hit shutout of the Red Sox — and I hit the road with the rest of our soggy friends, most of whom I imagine will join us in watching on TV as Judge resumes his pursuit tonight in Toronto against the Blue Jays.
This pursuit — even if it’s just of the Yankees and American League record — has no other match in America’s big four professional sports. If Alex Ovechkin breaks Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record or LeBron James breaks Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record (James is just 1,325 points shy entering this season), it’ll happen within a handful of seconds during the course of a fast-moving game. There will also be a certain inevitability if and as either player approaches the historic mark — or if an NFL running back nears the career and single-season rushing records held by Emmitt Smith and Eric Dickerson, respectively.
It feels inevitable Judge will tie and surpass Maris, but his chase carries both no guarantee it will happen and the ability for the rest of us to stop everything we’re doing to pay attention to each of his attempts. I’m looking forward to doing that again tonight — and will kind of miss the disappearance of such anticipation if and when Judge hits no 62.
