Aaron Judge is The Guy

Each generation of Yankees fans has its own headline hero – The Guy, indeed, who shoulders the burden of pinstriped greatness, so heavy and sacrosanct.

For Prohibition kids, Babe Ruth was The Guy, supported by Lou Gehrig. GIs had Joe DiMaggio. Boomers idolised Mickey Mantle. And Don Mattingly defined Gen-X. Like most millennials, I worshipped at the altar of Derek Jeter, and the notion of ever witnessing a greater Yankee once seemed absurd. But that is changing, as Aaron Judge ploughs a juggernaut path through the pinstriped record books. The impossible is happening before our very eyes.

Make no mistake: for current Yankees fans – a multi-generational hodgepodge defined by its fledgling pups – Aaron Judge is The Guy. Another superhuman season just secured that status, and Judge is the unanimous Yankee king of Gen-Z.

This year, Judge hit .322 with 58 home runs, 144 RBI and a 1.159 OPS. He became the first player in 20 years to top the .700 slugging percentage threshold, and also fell just 10 batting average points shy of a sacred Triple Crown. In August, Judge eclipsed 300 career home runs, requiring 132 less games than any player, ever, to reach that plateau. Meanwhile, his third 50+ homer season is a feat unmatched by power-hitting greats named Mantle, Bonds, Aaron, Mays, Williams, Foxx, Griffey Jr., Ortiz and Thome.

Even the Yankee annals, so vaunted and voluminous, struggle to find precedent for Judge’s 2024 campaign. Only Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle have produced greater single-season OPS figures. Only Ruth and Gehrig have authored larger annual isolated power numbers. And only Ruth has managed a bigger yearly wRC+. A video game character brought to life, Judge ransacked the American League while hauling the Yankees back to October. A second MVP award will likely follow.

Nevertheless, as fans, we still find his greatness incomprehensible – its languid style belying its historic magnitude. Many are still yet to compute Judge’s 62-homer season in 2022 – the recency of such a landmark dulling its alien otherness. But no clean player has ever hit more home runs in a single MLB season, and Judge continues to affirm his legacy – as one of the greatest sluggers who ever lived – with perennially prodigious production.

Critics still seem to diminish Judge’s historic eminence, though. Even now, some say he is too old and too brittle to compile all-time great counting stats. Admittedly, he won Rookie of the Year honours in 2017 as a 25-year-old, the very age that Juan Soto is now, seven years into his career, but such is life. Judge was a comparative late bloomer. Still, per WAR, through their first 1,000 MLB games, Judge has still outperformed countless legends, including Bonds, Griffey Jr., Honus Wagner, Alex Rodríguez, Pete Rose, Manny Ramírez, Ernie Banks, Miguel Cabrera, Sammy Sosa and – yes – Derek Jeter.

Put some respect on his name.

To be sure, if Jeter taught us anything, it was that true Yankee greatness cannot be measured by mere numbers alone. It takes more than data to become The Guy. There is a clutch gene that must be present, and a classy comportment that mixes selfless reticence with subtle leadership.

To be The Guy is to transcend baseball and capture the mainstream zeitgeist. Jeter had his own range of Jordan sneakers. Mattingly was immortalised on The Simpsons. Mantle inspired songs and even had his own brand of tires. Simon & Garfunkel sang about DiMaggio. Ruth was – well – Ruth. 

Aaron Judge ticks all those boxes, and is adding his own criteria to The Guy dogma – enriching the sceptre and orb before passing it on. Endorsements with Prime and Ralph Lauren have brought mass exposure. Judge even followed Jeter as the baseball face of Nike-owned Jordan. And a recent appearance on Paw Patrol endeared him to millions of kids around the world. Such distinctions are essential responsibilities for The Guy, which is itself a prerequisite en route to a place in the Yankee pantheon.

Of course, the Yankees have more legendary alumni than any other team, in any other sport, but there is a clear echelon of excellence that is rarely breached. Jeter was the last pantheon entrant, in my view, pulling up a chair beside Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle. Others have viable claims – Berra, Ford, Rivera, A-Rod – but they are in the next tier down, I believe, accompanied by Mattingly, Thurman Munson, Robinson Canó, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and a few select others.

I ponder this now because, for the second time in my life, a homegrown Yankee is threatening to breach that cherished status quo and join the crème de la crème. Aaron Judge is already a Top 10 Yankee of all-time – measured by wins above replacement (WAR), and by my hyperbolic hunch – but he has the pedigree to continue climbing. He has the pedigree to join the pantheon.

Of course, there is a giant elephant in the room that smothers most discussions about Judge and his place in Yankee lore: he is yet to win a World Series ring. Indeed, some see winning the Fall Classic as a holy rite of pinstriped passage. You are not a true Yankee until you win it all. That’s why A-Rod takes every available opportunity to remind us about 2009.

I partially agree with this sentiment. Take Mattingly as the litmus test. Donnie Baseball had a stellar career, and for a spell, he was definitely The Guy. Yet it is impossible to discuss Don Mattingly without uttering the mandatory caveat that he never won the World Series. He played over 1,700 games for the Yankees, but none of them came in the Fall Classic. Mattingly is thus the poster child of rare Yankee futility.

However, quite remarkably, Aaron Judge has now surpassed Mattingly for most WAR by a Yankee without a World Series ring. Per Fangraphs, Donnie accumulated 40.7 WAR in his 14-year career. Judge is already at 51.3 WAR, and that ring is still pending.

All of which exacerbates the Yankees’ yearning for a successful playoff run. Championship expectations are permanent in the Bronx, and the shadows of a 15-year drought – the second-longest in franchise history – loom large. But Judge’s personal quest for a title emboldens the desperation. The Guy is 32, and there is a finite window in which he will be this good. Only a World Series ring can legitimise his epochal productivity, and with Gerrit Cole ageing and Juan Soto on an expiring contract, this Yankees generation may never get a better chance.

Judge knows this, of course. He uses the pressure as fuel. Aaron understood the meaning of pinstripes when leaving money on the table to remain a Yankee during free agency. To be a superstar in any other town is to be a superstar – period. But to be a superstar in pinstripes is to stand above the rest. There’s an unsurpassed aura to Yankees royalty, and Judge enriches that bloodline.

When the Yankees named Judge the 16th captain in team history, and the first since Jeter, some said it was too early; that Hal Steinbrenner used the mythic captaincy as a negotiation ploy to complement the nine-year, $360 million contract Judge received. However, so far, Judge has been an immaculate Yankee captain – a fitting heir to Jeter’s throne. He just needs the jewellery to verify his reign.

Indeed, right now, if asked to rank all-time great Yankees on the back of a cigarette packet, I would scribble Judge’s name inside the Top 10. That elusive ring would catapult him to the precipice of immortality, while multiple rings would pressure the pantheon.

And so, I implore you to enjoy every single second of peak Aaron Judge – this October, next season, and for however long this glitch persists. Hitting a baseball is not supposed to be this easy. Hitting mammoth home runs is not meant to happen with such a nonchalant flick of the wrists. So watch it. Watch all of it. Drink it all in and commit it to memory. You may never see his like again.

The Guy has a finite premiership, and the true glory of his actions cannot be rekindled in retrospect. There is no substitute for watching it unfold, in real time, right before your disbelieving eyes. There is no substitute for being here, right now, coexisting with an offensive genius of near-unmatched equipoise. There is no substitute for Aaron Judge, whose peers reside in Cooperstown.