Yankees/ Red Sox I: Pitching, Power, And The Coming Pun-Pocalypse
By Cory Claus
Yeah, You are Smiling Now!
I love Aaron Judge. From his smile and deferential, disarming charm to the new sounds he is introducing into baseball, I am already thanking Allah for making Judge a Yankee. And I hope he continues to hit legend-making home runs.
But there is a danger out there in his success, a coming storm. You see, the better Judge does, the more people are going to comment on him. And that means a deluge of bad puns playing off of his name and stature.
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You probably cannot see it yet, like Superstorm Sandy when it was still in the Caribbean. That’s because we are mostly hearing the same refrains, ad infinitum. John Sterling was not the first to call his arrival and subsequent home run heroics Judgment day, and “Here comes the Judge” is already playing on a loop in some baseball writers office right now. Your faithful scribe, writer of these and other frivolous words, may have even participated in the fun.
But I must warn you that this is just the innocuous beginning. Take one of Sterling’s other calls for Aaron: He’s judge and jury. Next someone will refer to him as Judge, jury and executioner. From there it is only one small Simon Pegg movie away from turning into Judge Judy and executioner. That’s the one that will stick. Just typing it made me cringe.
Hot Fuzz
And that is just the first of the Four Horsemen of the Pun-pocalypse. I am truly scared at what might follow. There will be horrible jokes about his size. He will go from, “Mountain of a man Judge” to “Mountain man Judge” to “Mount Judge”; I refuse to predict the jokes about large, coital-minded women that will inevitably follow.
Or what are now short asides concerning his contact with various outfield walls will become just long and boring. Yes, we get it. He is big. If he runs in to a wall, he could actually damage the wall and the wall will then need replacing. That was mildly amusing the first time I heard it about 2,037 mentions ago. Now commentators can just (please) stop. But they won’t. No, they will go the other way.
“I wonder if he has to pay for the replacement wall”; that’s neither funny nor clever but you are going to start hearing it. Or, “The outfield wall just tweeted: Ouch!”; at least that uses a very modern way to be just horrible. Granting personification to the wall will soon become popular. “The wall just filed a grievance with the players association for Judge abuse”; “The outfield walls just went on strike but they are scared to let a Judge hear the case”; or, “The outfield wall just requested a trade to a different sport”.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Because before too long we will get to the worst of them all: the “Aaron Judge is so big…” jokes. Oh God. “Aaron Judge is so big (how big is he?) that his jersey has five E’s in Yankeeeees”; did you like reading that? Think how you will feel when you hear it. “Aaron Judge is so big he bumps his head playing in the Skydome.” Maybe that one will just be told in Canada. “Aaron Judge is so big that, when he goes to work, he does not walk into Yankees Stadium, he climbs in over the top.”
Stop them before they joke again!
You can see the storm that is coming. And it is out there and getting closer, and more people will be affected by Pun-pocalypse than by Sandy. At least that horrible event was over in a few days.
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So, yes, I do want Aaron Judge to be successful. I want to see tape measure home runs and victories deep into October. But the excitement is tempered by the coming deluge of bad jokes. Of course anything is worth putting up for a World Series title. Even the new jokes, which that wonderful event will inspire, are worth it: Will Aaron Judge ride a float or be one?
On second thought, even winning a World Series is not worth having to hear that one.