Modern technology ensures there will be millions of people who will be able to say they witnessed at least one of Aaron Judge’s home runs during a potentially record-breaking 2022 season.
But Curtis Granderson is in a far smaller club — those who witnessed Judge’s very first homers as a member of the New York Yankees.
Granderson was rehabbing a broken bone in his left hand at the Yankees’ spring training complex in 2013 when Judge, the team’s first-round draft pick that June, arrived in Tampa to sign his first professional contract and take a few ceremonial hacks in the batting cage at George Steinbrenner Field.
And what hacks they were.
“He’s hitting BP and he hits four or five balls, straightaway centerfield, over the batter’s eye,” Granderson said Thursday afternoon at Citi Field, where he was one of 14 former Roberto Clemente Award winners to gather for the Roberto Clemente Day festivities prior to the New York Mets’ game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“And he comes over to me and he goes ‘How was that? Is that OK?’” Granderson said. “And this is a 6-8 individual who had just put on one of the best displays of batting practice I’d ever seen. And from that, I sensed that’s what it was — this humble ‘I always need to work (attitude), I now that may have been good but it could be better, I’m going to keep pushing for it.’”
"This award means so much to me, in more ways than one"
Curtis Granderson talks about what being a Roberto Clemente Award winner meant to him: pic.twitter.com/z5HnY7QVvJ
— SNY (@SNYtv) September 15, 2022
Judge, of course, is now pushing for history — again.
The Yankees slugger and overwhelming favorite to win the American League Most Valuable Player award — his odds today at BetMGM are at -5000, well ahead of Los Angeles Angels unicorn Shohei Ohtani (+1500) — enters tonight’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers with a major league-high 57 homers and 123 RBIs as well as a .310 batting average, fourth-best in the American League.
Of course, as remarkable as a Triple Crown run is, Judge’s homer barrage carries the most intrigue. His 57 homers are 19 more than anyone else in Major League Baseball and just four shy of tying the team and American League record of 61 homers, set by Roger Maris, appropriately enough, 61 years ago in 1961.
“When you can hit them in bunches, you have a really good shot,” Granderson said of Judge, who hit two homers Tuesday night, homered in four straight games earlier this month and hit nine homers in a nine-game span in late July. “It’s going to be fun to see him get there. I hope he can.”
No matter how many homers Judge finishes with, his 2022 season — produced in the biggest market in America and with the specter of free agency looming after he and the Yankees couldn’t agree on an extension in spring training — will go down as one of the most remarkable individual single-season performances in baseball history.
“It’s amazing, and to do it with not only the New York pressure but free agency pressure that can bring both good and bad,” said Granderson, who is the only position player to collect 10.0 WAR for both the Yankees and Mets. “I think it shows the type of individual he is, because he never seems rattled, even from his rookie year.”
There is a sense in New York that Judge’s current pursuit of an iconic home run record — his 52 homers in 2017 broke Mark McGwire’s 30-year-old rookie record, though Judge’s mark stood for just two seasons until Pete Alonso blasted 53 homers across town — isn’t resonating as much outside of the Big Apple as within it.
Part of that may be classic New York myopia. But there’s also no doubting the steroid era of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s created some indifference to and uncertainty regarding baseball’s home run record.
Only two players — Maris and Babe Ruth in 1927 — hit 60 homers in a single season before McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds combined for a borderline cartoonish six 60-homer seasons from 1998 through 2001.
Can Aaron Judge set the AL single-season HR record with 62?
(📍@coronausa) pic.twitter.com/ZwrkF0DwRj
— (debatable) (@debatable) September 14, 2022
Is Judge “just” chasing the Yankees and the AL record? Is 61 homers still the most iconic single-season record in sports, or is Bonds’ 73-homer season in 2001 — achieved, as it likely was, with some considerable help — still the standard bearer, as even Judge has declared?
Or maybe, as someone who saw Judge’s first homers can attest, the somewhat quiet pursuit of 61 homers and beyond is a reflection of just how unsurprising it is to see Judge in such rarefied air.
“When Judge was coming in his rookie year and he did everything he did, I had so many people ask me ‘How’s he doing it?’” Granderson said. “I said ‘Do you realize how big he is? He’s a monster.’ He’s 6-foot-(7), he’s 280 pounds. I think it just became a custom. I think it’s how good he is.
“It’s expected. It’s like what everyone’s seeing, I think there’s a reason why there’s not a buzz. It’s like ‘Oh, it’s Judge. Yeah he’s gonna hit 50. He might hit 70.’ That’s going to become the new normal.”
