Every thing all right when No. 99 on patrol
WELL, Yankee Stadium made it through one full week with the Judge’s Chambers out in right field, and somehow the foundation didn’t splinter. There were no reports of juvenile delinquency spiking in any of the five boroughs as a result of those clever wood panels. The apocalypse steered clear of River Avenue.
(Although in the bottom of the eighth inning, something even worse than locusts invaded the stands: The Wave. These things can sneak up on you. While some were wringing their hands all week likening the Chambers to installing a hot-dog stand in the vestibule at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1984 called and dumped the wave on us. THAT is the outrage.)
It’s too early to adjudicate these things fully, of course, but at the end of seven days and six games (in which the Yankees went 4-2 against the Royals and Athletics), we have noticed that something funny is starting to happen in the modest patch of land, right field at Yankee Stadium, over which the Chambers stands watch.
We already knew, thanks to baseball’s ever-evolving engineering, that this is the smallest acreage of right field in the sport thanks to the short, inviting porch and the preponderance of infielders now playing short-out-field as part of the growing reliance on defensive shifts. And when Aaron Judge himself — all 6-foot-7, 282 pounds of him — is patrolling those lawns, he makes it seem smaller than a bocce ball court.
Still, a couple of things happened there the last two days.
Saturday, with t he Yankees and Athletics tied at 1-1 in the top of the sixth inning, Starlin Castro raced out to short right to chase down a pop fly off the bat of Oakland’s Trevor Plouffe. He got his glove on the ball, but it popped
out — right into the waiting mitt of, yes, Aaron Judge for the third out of the inning. The go-ahead run roaring toward home diverted to the dugout instead. The Yankees won, 4-3.
(It is entirely possible — probable even — that Casey Stengel and John McGraw, who combined played and managed in 7,045 major league games never — not once — saw a 4-9 putout between them.)
Sunday, with the Yankees trailing 2-1 in the third, Matt Holliday lifted a fly ball that at first excited many of the 45,232 in the stands but hit an unfriendly jet stream and was tumbling down a few feet shy of the 314-foot sign in right. Except Matt Joyce, the A’s right fielder, played the ball like he was trying to catch it with his cleats, a Bad News Bears
special that loaded the bases.
(Let’s be as kind as the law allows about this: The Athletics play defense the way the Knicks would if you handed them a set of spikes and gloves.)
Two batters later, after Castro fanned, Judge clobbered a fastball from Andrew Triggs that threatened to bore a hole in the right-field bleachers only a couple of rows away from the Chambers, his first career grand slam. It gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead, fueled them to a 9-5 win, sent them out into a key 13-game stretch against AL East teams.
(And ended a home-run drought that stood at 22 at-bats, though in Judge’s world right now 22 homerless at-bats feels like a famine.)
“I thought that was a big momentum shifter,” manager Joe Girardi said. “He’s an amazing athlete. Big and strong and he’s made a lot of adjustments from last year and that’s why he’s here.”
He’s here, and he’s the main draw for a team that stands three games clear in the East and has already beaten the rest of baseball to the conclusion that as much as it entered the season tagged as a team of tomorrow, today looks awfully damned good, too.
And it wasn’t just the fans in that suddenly mystical patch of land called right field at Yankee Stadium that were heard to chant “M!V!P!” as Judge’s ball disappeared into a tangle of arms and hands. Of course that’ s premature, but what the hell: So, too, probably is the whole idea of the Judge’s Chambers. But if there’s one person that isn’t going to bother much …
“I try not to listen to it,” he said, politely but firmly. “I have a job to do.”
And to think: For almost 100 years, people thought it was center field at Yankee Stadium that had all the fun.