Aaron Judge stands as the 6’ 7”  face of the Yankee franchise and he’s threatening his predecessor, Babe Ruth’s, legacy. 

Judge was unanimously chosen Rookie of the Year in 2017, and should have been the MVP as well. He deserves that award again for this season, in which he might win the Triple Crown, among the rarest of baseball achievements.

And, before you dismiss this as Yankee-fan propaganda, rest assured that nobody has ever disputed that my love of historical truth exceeds my love of the Yankees. 

Furthermore, before you dismiss baseball as trivial, remember this bon mot of Jacques Barzun, among the greatest historians of the last century. “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules, and reality of the game.” After the Constitution, and perhaps jazz, baseball has been America’s greatest contribution to human civilization. 

Yankee Aaron Judge is on pace to set a single-season home-run record. But what is the record? 

Babe Ruth revolutionized the game in 1920 when he hit 54 home runs in his debut season with the Yankees. Fifty-four was more than most teams hit that year. Ruth had been principally a pitcher for the Red Sox; the Yankees turned him into a full-time outfielder. It was almost double his 1919 total of 29, which was itself a record, with only one player having hit more than 20 since the modern major leagues were formed in 1901. Ruth hit 59 the next year, and 60 in 1927. 

Historians still dispute the cause of the baseball revolution of the 1920s — a livelier ball, the prohibition of spitballs and other trick pitches, or a change in hitting style. It arguably helped save the game from the 1919 “Blacksox” scandal, the revelation that players on the Chicago White Sox had been bribed to throw the World Series. It turned Ruth into a national icon and cemented baseball’s status as the American pastime. 

In proper historical perspective, Ruth’s 60 home-run season remains the MLB record. Ruth did it in a 154-game season. When Roger Maris appeared to break it in 1961, he did so in the first 162-game season (the number that remains today). Maris had 58 home runs at the 154-game mark. He had 50 more at-bats than Ruth (or, if you prefer, seven more “plate appearances.” Walks don’t count as at-bats, and Ruth drew a lot more walks than Maris did).  

Even more significantly, the 1961 season was extended because it was the first year of “expansion.” MLB had eight teams in each league since 1901. In 1961 the American League added two teams. This significantly diluted the quality of the players — sabermetricians call this “talent decompression.” Maris benefited from facing a lot of inferior-quality pitchers. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick thus imposed the first “asterisk” in MLB history. 

It goes without saying that we need not consider the National League records claimed by Mark McGwire (70), Sammy Sosa (63, 64, and 66), and Barry Bonds (73). They were all steroid-induced, corked-batted, and who knows what else. Ironically, the real (162-game) National League record belongs to the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton, whose recent walkoff grand slam shows that he can hit his way out of a wet paper bag. The classic, 154-game record belongs to the amiable Cub, Hack Wilson. 

So the question is: Can Judge hit his 61st home run within the 154-game frame? If he hasn’t done it by the time you are reading this, the odds are that he will do it at home against the Red Sox. And that would be… justice.