SI:AM | Aaron Judge Finally Did It
In this story:
Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m so relieved that Aaron Judge can put the record chase behind him in time for the playoffs.
In today’s SI:AM:
👨⚖️ Case closed
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Just in the nick of time
I was starting to think Aaron Judge wouldn’t do it.
After hitting his 60th home run Sept. 20 against the Pirates, Judge hit just one home homer in his next 13 games, only his second such stretch this season. (He also hit just one homer in the season’s first 13 games.) And after going 1-for-5 in the first game of yesterday’s doubleheader against the Rangers, he had just two games left to break Roger Maris’s American League home run record.
But leading off the nightcap last night against Jesús Tinoco, Judge turned on a hanging slider and hit a no-doubter to deep left field for his historic 62nd home run of the season.
The ball, which is believed to be worth as much as $2 million, was caught by a man named Cory Youmans. Judge seems fine with the idea that he might not get the ball back.
“It would be great to get it back but, you know, it’s a souvenir for a fan,” he told reporters. “So, they made a great catch out there and they’ve got every right to it.”
Now that Judge has surpassed Maris, the debate over his achievement will begin in earnest. Maris’s son, Roger Jr., has been tweeting incessantly about how Judge should be considered the legitimate record holder. Tom Verducci won’t go that far but does think it’s worth drawing a distinction between Judge’s achievement and that of the three steroid users—Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa—who previously surpassed Maris’s 61:
Bonds is the official home run champion. Judge is the authentic champion. One has the official designation. The other is unofficial but has the prestige of authenticity. Which would you rather have?
Personally, I find the Judge-Bonds debate exhausting. Bonds holds the record. He turned his body into a science experiment to do it, but he holds the record. There’s still room to appreciate what Judge has done this season without getting into the tiresome barbershop-type debate over who’s definitively the best. This passage from Verducci’s column puts Judge’s season in context better than I could:
It is stunning that it happened this year, when hitting is the worst it has been in the 50 seasons with a DH, when the average fastball is faster than ever, when pitchers throw more breaking and offspeed pitches than they do fastballs, when no one else is within 15 homers of him, and when Tinoco was the 230th pitcher Judge saw in 161 games. It took Ruth 10 years as a Yankee to see that many pitchers. Maris saw 270 pitchers in his seven years with the Yankees.
Let’s not pretend like Bonds’s 73 should be ignored, but let’s also not pretend that Judge’s 62 isn’t an achievement on the same level.
The playoffs are set
Judge’s 62nd wasn’t the only important thing to happen in baseball last night. As a result of the Braves, Mariners and Padres winning, this year’s playoff matchups are locked in. Here’s how things look:
NL wild-card round
Phillies at Cardinals, winner to play the Braves in the NLDS
Padres at Mets, winner to play the Dodgers in the NLDS
AL wild-card round
Rays at Guardians, winner to play the Yankees in the ALDS
Mariners at Blue Jays, winner to play the Astros in the ALDS
The wild-card series will be a best-of-three, played entirely at the home ballpark of the higher seed. Those series all begin Friday and will wrap up Sunday at the latest. They’ll air on ESPN. All four Division Series will begin Tuesday. I’ll have a more thorough preview in Friday’s newsletter.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Stephanie Apstein wrote today’s Daily Cover story about Judge’s season, in which the pressure he faced had nothing to do with his home run chase. … Jeremy Woo was in Las Vegas for the electric showdown between Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson, the consensus top two prospects in the next NBA draft. … If the Lakers are going to improve this season, Chris Mannix writes, they’re going to need Anthony Davis to step up. … Nick Selbe makes the case for why Shohei Ohtani should win the AL MVP over Aaron Judge.
Around the sports world
Former NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird said she doesn’t believe she could have responded to allegations of player abuse any better. … The owner of the Thorns will not be involved in team decisions in the wake of the NWSL scandal. … Mike Tomlin has officially named Kenny Pickett the Steelers’ starting quarterback. … Paris has joined other French cities in boycotting the World Cup and will not construct massive screens for fans to watch the games. … The Patriots are breaking out throwback uniforms with the “Pat the Patriot” helmets this weekend.
The top five...
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The dog who caught a home run at Citi Field.
4. No. 1 prospect Francisco Álvarez’s first career hit, a home run.
3. All the various TV and radio calls of Aaron Judge’s 62nd home run.
2. The Yankees dugout’s reaction to the homer.
1. Victor Wembanyama’s 37-point performance in Vegas.
SIQ
On this day in 2014, the South Sydney Rabbitohs won their first National Rugby League championship since 1971. Which actor has co-owned the club since ’06?
- Russell Crowe
- Mel Gibson
- Hugh Jackman
- Nicole Kidman
Yesterday’s SIQ: On Oct. 4, 2014, the Nationals and Giants played what is tied for the longest postseason game in MLB history. How many innings did it last? (Hint: The two other games it is tied with were played in ’18 and ’05.)
- 15 innings
- 16 innings
- 17 innings
- 18 innings
Answer: 18 innings. The Giants won after Brandon Belt led off the top of the 18th with a home run, and Hunter Strickland shut the door in the bottom of the inning.
That was Game 2 of the NLDS, a series the Giants went on to win in four games en route to winning their third World Series in five years.
The other two 18-inning playoff games were Game 3 of the 2018 World Series between the Red Sox and Dodgers and Game 4 of the ’05 NLDS between the Astros and Braves. In the ’18 game, Max Muncy led off the bottom of the 18th with a walk-off homer to give the Dodgers their only win of the series. The ’05 game is the longest series-ending game in MLB history. Houston won on Chris Burke’s walk-off home run after Game 2 starter Roger Clemens threw three innings of one-hit ball in relief.
From the Vault: Oct. 5, 1998
Darren Carroll/Sports Illustrated
Why was the 1998 MLB season perhaps the best in the sport’s history? Not just because of the home run chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. As Tom Verducci wrote after the season, there was more history made:
In addition to 70, baseball welcomed 2,632 and 114 into its sacred numerology. Nineteen ninety-eight was the season Cal Ripken Jr. voluntarily ended his 16-year run of consecutive games played and the New York Yankees collected wins as if they were snowflakes in a blizzard—so many of them but no two exactly alike. No American League team (and only the Cubs of 92 years ago) had ever won more games.
In May alone the Cubs’ Kerry Wood pitched one of the most dominating games in baseball history (20 strikeouts, no walks and one infield hit), the Yankees’ David Wells threw only the fifth perfect game by a lefthander, and the Los Angeles Dodgers pulled off the trade of the century: a seven-player deal that saw $108.1 million worth of contracts change hands and included three starters from the defending world champion Florida Marlins as well as Mike Piazza, the best hitter in Los Angeles history. The Marlins then shipped Piazza to the New York Mets seven days later.
And that wasn’t it. Randy Johnson, who’d been traded by the Mariners to the Astros, recorded the seventh-most strikeouts ever in a single season (329, a mark he would surpass in each of the next four seasons). Alex Rodriguez became the third member of the 40-40 club while setting an AL record for home runs by a shortstop and Ken Griffey Jr., at 28, became the youngest player to reach 350 career home runs.
The McGwire-Sosa race was the main attraction, though:
The sports world felt like the 1950s again, with a locked-out NBA suddenly irrelevant and an overshadowed NFL pushed to the inside pages of sports sections. The definitive moment of reclamation for baseball came on Sunday, when the crowd at the St. Louis Rams-Arizona Cardinals football game, being played a few blocks from Busch Stadium, made so much noise on a third-and-nine play that the disoriented Rams took an illegal motion penalty. The reason for the distraction? McGwire had just hit his 69th.
McGwire’s power displays were so legendary that people had to come up with new ways to describe how hard he was hitting the ball. Verducci’s story contains what may be SI’s earliest reference to exit velocity, mentioning that the home run he hit off the Expos’ Kirk Bullinger “was clocked at 111 mph going out.”
Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.
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