Sometime in the 1800s, somebody threw the first pitch in baseball history. This was followed by the second pitch in baseball history, at which point somebody immediately said pitching was not what it used to be.
Baseball is perpetually trying to chase a purer, happier past that did not exist, and this strange habit is most evident when discussing the single-season home run record. Ty Cobb, who rose to stardom in the dead-ball era, used to bristle at the idea that players should even to hit home runs. Roger Maris’s pursuit of Babe Ruth’s record quickly became more of a defense of Ruth than a celebration of Maris; commissioner Ford Frick said Ruth would be the real record-holder because he hit his 60 in a 154-game season, while Maris’s Yankees got to play 162, and only 23,154 fans showed up to watch Maris hit No. 61. Then Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds came along and … well, you know that story.
This brings us to Aaron Judge, and let’s try to save us from ourselves here. No, he did not tie the “real” major-league record when he hit his 61st of the season Wednesday night in Toronto. No, he is not atoning for the sport’s past sins. He is having one of the most dominant hitting seasons in the history of the game, and if that’s not enough for us, we’ve got problems.
Judge has 61 home runs. Kyle Schwarber has hit the second-most home runs in baseball: 42. There is a larger gap between Judge and Schwarber than between Schwarber and the guys tied for 42nd on the home run list, one of whom happens to be Bo Bichette, a star who is having himself a marvelous year but is still hitting just one home run for every 2.5 of Judge’s.
Judge would be having a legendary season even if he were straight out of the Dave Kingman/Adam Dunn/Chris Davis mold and the vast majority of his value came from hitting home runs. But of course, that’s not Judge at all. If you look up the word “complete” in the dictionary, you should really expand your vocabulary, since most people know what that word means. But anyway, Judge is having one of the most complete seasons in baseball history.
He leads the league in on-base percentage. He could win the Triple Crown. He has even stolen 16 bases in 19 attempts.
There is a difference between comparing with past eras and competing with them. Comparing is fun. Competing is annoying. We can compare Judge’s dominance with Ruth’s or Barry Bonds’s, but we don’t need Judge to undo the feats (or misdeeds) of 1998 and 2001. This is a beautiful, messy sport with a long, beautiful, messy history. Sometimes, a great player has a special season. That is Aaron Judge in 2022. It doesn’t have to be more, or less, than that. —
