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Yankees: Please, let’s not start this with Aaron Judge

By Steve Contursi

Aaron Judge Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Aaron Judge Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) /
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The Yankees have a strapping, young, and very appealing right fielder. As such, he draws more than his share of attention in the New York media. But please, can we just stop with this kind of thing before we have another A-Rod on our hands.

The Yankees right fielder, Aaron Judge, has a lot on his plate at the moment. Once the talk of baseball as the next superstar, he is still the talk of baseball, but this time it’s more about his failings during the second half of the season.

So in keeping with the advice of many, he decided to get away from baseball for a couple of hours by taking in the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which is underway and thirty minutes from Yankee Stadium with reasonable traffic.

But wherever Aaron goes, so goes the New York media, a portion of which is always on the prowl for “the scoop” that will out-scoop the competition. And so it was that the New York Daily News beat the New York Post with a story headlined “Aaron Judge spotted in stands at third round of U.S. Open with blonde”.

The story comes replete with two oversized photos, one of the “The Blonde” posing at Yankee Stadium and the other of the two “together” at the Open.

The writer of the story, Nicholas Parco, was apparently so taken by “the blonde”, all he could manage to say is “The verdict? WOWZA!”.

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“The blonde” has an Instagram account, and apparently she is the one who posted the photos, which the Daily News “found” and included in their story.

Which, automatically, brings up several questions as to what her motives are. And, hopefully, that brings pause to Judge in considering future dates, no matter how WOWZA she is.

Aaron Judge is a talented ballplayer. He plays for the New York Yankees. He has a future ahead of him paved with gold. He doesn’t need this, especially now. And I dare say, we don’t need it either.

We’ve been through this before as fans of the Yankees and, once it gets started, it has a life of its own. Alex Rodriguez, aka A-Rod to those who know him better, was the poster boy for the New York tabloids for many years. Even today in his quasi-retirement, hardly a day goes by when somewhere in the depths of the Daily News or The Post there isn’t a photo of Rodriguez and “J-Lo”.

Look, I read both newspapers every day and I find their coverage of the Yankees, for the most part, to be indispensable and informative. But I don’t need or want this kind of exploitive journalism.

Any plea to stop it will be futile. I get that. And I don’t envy the position Judge is in. But this is something he needs to take control of before he becomes the next darling of the New York tabloids.

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Derek Jeter Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /

His possible role model is plain and obvious. He has a choice to make. He can be A-Rod or he can be Derek Jeter. No one in New York has dealt better with the media than Jeter. He fooled them all for twenty years. Jeter was accessible but never revealing. And that was especially true when it came to his personal life.

Without ever saying it out loud, Jeter made it known that he was the shortstop for the New York Yankees. And even with that, he never gave very much.

And yet, to this day, he is revered in the media.

With everything on his plate at the moment, Judge might put this on the back burner for now, letting it go but with an asterisk on it as something to come to terms with in the near future.

Next: Would you trade Aaron Judge even up for Giancarlo Stanton

It is Judge’s choice, though. The Yankees can help, but they can’t do it for him. For what it’s worth, as far as “The Blonde” and Instagram go, I’d ditch both of them quicker than a Dellin Betances fastball.

As always, I invite you to share your thoughts and comments about this story or anything Yankees on the Yanks Go Yard Facebook page.

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