![]() What’s up with that? Hey, you think it’s every night the guy leading the league in hitting breaks up a no-hitter in the ninth? I ran this past my friends from STATS Perform. He spun off 8 2/3 spectacular, no-hit innings last Saturday, only to have the AL batting leader, Luis Arraez, step in and break it up. What’s up with that? It was Albert’s third pinch home run of the season - and he’s 42! The only players in history to hit at least three pinch homers in a season at that age or older: Willie Stargell (1982), Graig Nettles (1987), Jason Giambi (2013) and the pinch-hit bombardier himself, Matt Stairs ( four of them, in 2010).ĪRRAEZ CON NO-NO - Poor Dylan Cease. THE ACE IN THE PUJOLS – Another week, another epic Albert Pujols moment. So how wild is that? There have been only three seasons in Yankees history in which anybody hit at least 22 second-half homers and nobody else on the roster hit 10:īut now here comes Aaron Judge in the year 2022, re-enacting stuff that was supposed to happen 100 years ago. HE’S THE ULTIMATE BRONX BOMBER! We could go on for pretty much ever here, but one more point we should probably make: It’s a good thing for Judge’s team that he’s doing what he’s doing! And here’s a surprise: That list includes nobody from the PED era, only … So if he goes on to join the 60-Homer Club, he’ll become only the fourth player to homer at least nine times in five consecutive months in the same season. ![]() Then Judge kicked off September by homering in four games in a row. How many players in baseball have outhomered him in any of those months? If you guessed none, you win! HE’S THE PLAYER OF THE MONTH - EVERY MONTH! Let’s look at Judge’s home runs by month, starting with May: The Tigers (all of them) have hit at least two home runs against 16 different teams. Judge has hit at least two home runs against 18 different teams this year. (Cary Edmondson / USA Today)ĬECIL FIELDER, COVER YOUR EYES! A tip of the hat to loyal reader Jim Passon for this one: Through Thursday, Aaron Judge was batting. So who else has ever led his league by 20 or more - non-Ruthian division? It won’t take long to call the roll of this club. Eight teams haven’t had anyone hit 22 home runs, period. The biggest margin by anyone not named Babe Ruth: 17, by Jimmie Foxx - 90 years ago, in 1932.Ģ0 IS PLENTY! Meanwhile, just in his league, Judge went into Thursday night leading the next closest masher in the AL by 22 home runs (Judge 55, Shohei Ohtani 33). The Bambino led the major leagues by margins ranging from 19 to 35 in five different seasons. (Judge: 55, Kyle Schwarber 36.) There are just two words that sum up everyone else in history who has ever outhomered the field by that much: ![]() Incredibly, Judge has hit 19 more home runs than anyone else in the sport. HE’S RUTHIAN! Now let’s get a little more specific. But Gehrig hit 47 that year, and the Babe couldn’t miss it, since Gehrig followed him to the plate from the 4-hole, in virtually every at-bat of every game. ![]() Only one other man (Lou Gehrig) had more than 30. Closest anyone has ever come? In 1927, of course. How many times in baseball history has that happened, you ask? That would be none. How can that be happening? The ball is dead, right? Except when he hits. It’s possible Judge is going to hit 60 home runs this year - and nobody else is going to hit 40. HE’S FOUNDING THE 60-40 CLUB! This makes my brain cells rattle every day. Which means, naturally, it’s Weird and Wild material!īut Maris’ season ran only through Oct. American League history is somewhere just beyond that horizon. He has nearly four more weeks to hunt all of the magic numbers ahead. We know that now because we get to watch Aaron Judge chase that number, 60, all over again, in a different time, in a different world. The performance-enhancing drugs era has done its best to pulverize that meaning. That was what the number, 60, used to mean. I hope you got to see that.”īut of course he did. So I grabbed my phone and called the great Peter Gammons, all so I could pretty much scream: “Peter, I just watched Babe Ruth’s 60th home run. It was Babe Ruth’s 60th home run, swatted into history way back in 1927, suddenly flashing across my TV screen, in all its blurry black-and-white glory. So there I was one evening, watching Burns spin his tales about the 1920s, when I saw something that gave me goosebumps - and still does. For those of us trying to keep the baseball candle burning, Ken Burns’ “Baseball” doc was what “The Last Dance” was to American sports fans in the pandemic.
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