The Yankees, Aaron Judge and the fate of Major League Baseball
By Cory Claus
A Great Big Cash Cow
In addition, his multi-cultural roots and story of adoption make him a star surely of his time. And a corporate goldmine. That’s an aspect of that 90s Yankees teams that remains important today.
Judge and the rest of the Yankees play in a big new building with everything the players need to be successful. That wasn’t cheap. And if this team is going to become a dynasty, they will need money for free agents, enough to outbid other wealthy teams.
That means Prince Hal needs to sell cable packages, luxury boxes and Legends seats. That’s a lot easier when you have the most liked and marketable player in the game. Aaron was voted by the fans the most popular player in August, the first rookie to ever do so.
My guess is he would receive a similar vote by executives on Wall Street.
This might be the most difficult accomplishment of all. Liking Yankees is not exactly a national pastime. And we already had Derek Jeter. Once again, fate played a hand.
Had the Angels surrounded Trout with a World Series winning team, as they tried to do, he would have already become the face of the game.
And just as Ted Williams always played second fiddle to Dimaggio because Joe arrived first, Judge would have always been second in the hearts of fans to Trout.