Aaron Judge of the Yankees has returned to being the most formidable slugger in baseball.
In the early ’90s, I had a conversation with Chuck Daly, who had recently started coaching the Nets in New Jersey after a successful basketball career. We discussed Shaquille O’Neal, who had just made a sensational entrance into the NBA from LSU around the same time Daly began his stint in Jersey.
Daly wasn’t just praising O’Neal’s talent, size, and strength. He was also talking about O’Neal’s broad appeal, which has continued into his television and media career.
“This country has always liked great big action heroes,” Daly remarked.
This comparison is often made but is especially relevant now because of Aaron Judge’s recent performance for the Yankees. Judge has returned to being a Great Yankee, an action hero in baseball due to his immense size and his extraordinary ability to hit baseballs with incredible power, making him stand out in the sport much like Shaq did in basketball.
Judge and the Yankees, who haven’t lost a series during his month-long streak of hitting 14 home runs and driving in 27 runs, played against the Giants in San Francisco on Friday night. It’s worth noting that Judge could have ended up with the Giants after the 2022 season, when he hit more home runs in a single season than Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, or Mickey Mantle ever did. Naturally, Judge returned to San Francisco and hit two more home runs.
We’ll never know how seriously Judge considered leaving the Yankees, or what it would have taken for him to leave New York and return to his home state of California. But there was a possibility. If Judge had fully explored his options, he might have received more than the $360 million over nine years that he ultimately got from the Yankees. However, it didn’t come to that. The Yankees signed him to the contract they should have offered before the ’22 season, saving themselves a lot of money in the process.
