Aaron Judge got revenge on the Yankees' weirdest hater with playoff clinch night HR

Through seven innings, it seemed like the Yankees were going to have to rely on someone else to do their bidding if they intended to clinch a playoff spot on Monday night in Minnesota. In a driving rain that would not stop and was definitely a good idea to play through, New York fumbled three balls on four plays in the sixth; Ryan McMahon lost a liner, George Lombard Jr. had one tick off his glove, and Spencer Jones turned a game-tying single into a lead-flipping triple to let Will Warren down. Almost concurrently, the Blue Jays crushed a three-run homer to steal the lead back from Detroit, and it seemed like the clinch would be on ice, while the Yankees would lose a crucial game in all their playoff pursuits (with the Rays and Red Sox inactive).

But! Instead! The Yankees rallied for six runs in the eighth for an 8-3 win, and the weather didn't seem quite so bad after all. Not only did they snatch victory (while, yes, the Blue Jays lost), but they did the bulk of their damage off a pitcher who holds a weird grudge against them.

AJ Minter entered with runners on first and second and the game suddenly tied in the eighth, a move that made me wonder, "Wait, why wasn't AJ Minter already in this game when it was a one-run affair? He's good!"

On this sloppy, soaked day, he was very much not good. Ben Rice put up a great AB left-on-left, fighting off a 3-2 pitch over a drawn-in infield after Anthony Volpe and Jose Caballero had proven their love of the mud by double stealing. Two batters later, Aaron Judge hit his first home run since returning, a titanic second-deck shot in left that nearly reached the third.

And Minter, bad footing and sopping hat and all, had to sit there and take it about a year and a half after joining the Mets and deciding, "Yeah, I'm gonna be the weirdest one at this Juan Soto press conference for sure."

Wow. He just totally SHREDDED us!

AJ Minter got tormented by Yankees after calling out the authenticity of their fans

Look. I'm a Yankees diehard. Always have been. Runs in my blood. I have never understood this critique even a little bit. The Mets have some fantastic fans. They also have plenty of transplant fans who moved to Brooklyn post-college and didn't want to pick the (shudders) Yankees. The Yankees have some fantastic fans. They also have some front-runners and some NYC businesspeople trying to fit in and some celebrities in the privileged seats. Every fan base in every big city has devoted lifers and hangers-on. That's professional sports. Some real New Yorkers are Mets fans and some real New Yorkers root for the Yankees.

It's an easy way to score points, though, pretending the fanbase that travels nationally and always turns the Bronx into a zoo for the postseason (nine of the past 10 years now, 34 winning seasons in a row) would disappear instantly with a lower position in the standings. Oh well. Good thing we'll never have to find out, thanks in part to Minter!

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