It is now a matter of days, if not hours, before Aaron Judge supplants Roger Maris as the American League single-season home run king.
Aaron Judge hit his 60th home run of the year Tuesday night in a spectacular 9-8 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Yankee Stadium, tying Babe Ruth’s 60-homer mark and moving within one blast from tying Maris 62-year-old record of 61 set in 1961.
Maris’ sons, Kevin Maris and Roger Maris Jr., were at the game Tuesday night.
In case you didn’t already know, Maris grew up in Fargo and was once named by Sports Illustrated as the greatest sports figure in North Dakota history. It’s a title Maris easily still claims 23 years after the piece was published.
Maris was baseball’s single-season home run king for 37 years before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa each broke his record during the 1998 home run chase. Barry Bonds later hit 73 home runs in the 2001 season. Both McGwire and Bonds have admitted to the use of performance-enhancing drugs during those seasons while Sosa has skirted the issue and denied using them.
Judge, it seems, doesn’t have the same problems. He’s just a monster of a man with a monstrous swing playing half his games with Yankee Stadium’s relatively short porch. Judge has also been nothing short of a high-character star the entirety of his career. So if Maris’ record is going to go down, it might as well be to this particular Yankee, right?
Maris didn’t hit his 61st until Oct. 1, and it’s fair to assume Judge – who will most likely win AL MVP the same as Maris did in 1961 – will hit one or two over the next 11 days. If he gets on a tear, with 15 games remaining in the Yankees’ season, it’s not unreasonable to think Judge can flirt with 70-plus homers and also the AL Triple Crown.
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