The Yankees, Aaron Judge and the fate of Major League Baseball

The Yankees have the biggest player in baseball in Aaron Judge. And that’s just the way it was always meant to be.

The Yankees have always had the right man at the right time. It’s just part of their baseball karma. And it has been these men who have created the ongoing Yankees mystique.

When Babe Ruth came along, New York was the epicenter of a world on fire.

The Yanks had just won the war to save democracy—the war to end all wars—and all of America shared their roaring ebullience. Meanwhile, Prohibition turned average men and women into criminals who drank to the health of local gangsters.

Everything was bigger-than-life in the 1920’s, and no one was bigger than the Babe. He out-drank, out-ate, and out-caroused anyone since Dionysus. And, of course, out-homered.

Ruth Knocked Baseball’s Socks Off

His prodigious power had been on display since he was an orphan in Baltimore. And, since everything he did was impossible to believe, his unbelievable accomplishments for the Yankees were accepted as Babe being Babe.

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When he first hit over fifty home runs (54/1920), he shattered his own record from the previous year (29). And that had shattered the modern record set in 1902 by Socks Seybold (16) of the Philadelphia Athletics. No one was surprised. Flabbergasted, yes; surprised, no.

Ruth’s records are still hard to believe. He remains the only player to ever have four seasons of at least 50 home runs. For those of you new to the column, I don’t include RSS (Records Set by Steroids).

As a final note of lasting greatness, The Babe is the only player, ever, to hit three home runs in two different World Series games. Only three other times has a player hit three homers in a WS game, and Ruth did it twice.

Ruth played in a time of giants — when men such as Grange, Dempsey, and Louis were all becoming immortals. He had to be better at his sport than they were at theirs, and more audacious, to become a legend among legends.

Fortunately for the Yankees, he was. More than just of the time, he was The Time.