San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
MIGHT JUDGE PLAY WHERE BONDS DID?
Yanks’ outfielder grew up fan of Giants, who have room to sign him
Like Barry Bonds 21 years earlier, Aaron Judge is on course for home run history.
Not that it’s necessarily new for the New York Yankees’ celebrated outfielder. After all, back in 2001, Judge was aboard the Bonds bandwagon to 73 home runs.
As a 9-year-old San Francisco Giants fan in the Central Valley.
“The greatest hitter of all time, in my opinion,” Judge said in an interview with The Chronicle. “After playing this game and realizing how hard it is, I look back to how he’d see one pitch a game, one pitch a series that was over the plate, and he didn’t miss it.
“He’d get intentionally walked, then walked again, walked again. Next night, couple more walks, then all of a sudden in his third at-bat, they’d maybe throw a changeup on the corner, and he’d drive it out to the opposite field.
“He just made the game look so easy and definitely pretty fun.”
That’s what Judge is pursuing, the fun quotient. He’s on pace to break the American League season home run record of 61, and by all accounts, he’s not freaking
out over it, not allowing it to be a nerve-racking experience.
Instead, he’s embracing it while keeping the focus on the Yankees’ march to the playoffs.
“I’m playing a game I’ve been playing since I was 5 years old and never want to overthink that or overstress it,” Judge said. “Very few people get a chance to play this game at this level and wear pinstripes in New York. I never want to take that for granted, thinking selfishly about my own numbers and my own stats.”
Judge, 30, who played at Linden High School (San Joaquin County) and Fresno State, is in cherished baseball company. He’s already joined Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle as the only Yankees with multiple 50-homer seasons, and the next step is 60, which is territory that only Ruth and Roger Maris conquered in AL history — as you can see, this is a Yankee thing.
Ruth hit 60 homers in 1927, and Maris broke the record with 61 in 1961. When Judge hit his 51st Tuesday in Anaheim, it put him on pace for 63.
Of course, that wouldn’t be record. Bonds’ 73 stands as the majors’ high-water mark, asteriskfree, and though 73 might be unattainable for Judge, let it be known he does not pooh-pooh the number because of Bonds’ history with performance-enhancing drugs.
Judge, a fan of the early 2000s Giants teams who’d catch games at Pacific Bell Park, said Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and that 73 is the legitimate record.
“Oh, yeah,” Judge said. “That’s the record. I watched him do it. I stayed up late watching him do it. That’s the record. No one can take that from him.”
Judge does his best to quiet the noise that follows him on two fronts. Not only is he a face of baseball because of the home run chase, but this is his walk year. He’ll be a free agent after the season, and speculation runs rampant over where he’ll play in 2023.
The Giants make perfect sense, of course. The California kid could return to his roots, and the Giants certainly are in need of a power hitter who plays expert outfield defense — he has started more games in center than right — and they possess the resources to pay whatever’s necessary.
Judge has been crafty in downplaying his pending free agency, including the possibility of playing in San Francisco, but undeniable is the fact that this was a childhood dream.
“Oh, yeah,” Judge said, “it was for any kid growing up in the Central Valley, especially my hometown, a big Giants community. Everybody I went to school with was a Giants fan. So that’s one thing you always dreamed about. But that all went out the window when my name got called and I got a chance to play in New York. You can dream as a little 12-year-old.”
As a 30-year-old, business gets involved. On the eve of the season, Judge rejected a seven-year, $213.5 million offer from the Yankees, betting on himself to put up a big year and do better as a free agent. The gamble is paying off. Judge is in a two-person race with the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani for Most Valuable Player honors — leading the league in homers, RBIs, runs, walks, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases — and should command more than $300 million on the open market.
If the Giants win the lottery with Judge, it would become a momentous story of a four-time All-Star returning to the park he visited as a kid. The Giants would need to show him the money but also show him they’ll be competitive in the wake of a gloomy 2022 season.
Even if Judge signs elsewhere, he’ll forever hold the memories from his youth.
“All those Giants players, Rich Aurilia and Jeff Kent up the middle, J.T. Snow at first, all a bunch of gamers,” Judge said, “and you’ve got Barry Bonds winning Gold Gloves out in left field and hitting bombs into McCovey Cove. It made it fun being a Giants fan at that time, and there’s an inspiration you get to go out there and play hard.”
For the record, Judge’s favorite player wasn’t Bonds. It was Aurilia. Judge played shortstop in Little League and dug the fact Aurilia’s number was 35, the number Judge’s father, Wayne, wore in his basketball days, the reason it automatically became his son’s favorite number.
“That’s my hero,” Judge said of his dad. “You want to be like your hero. He liked 35, so as a kid, any chance I got to pick a number, it was always 35. And sure enough, the shortstop for my favorite team was wearing 35, so it kind of all worked out at the time.”
Judge’s family and roots are extremely important to him. His mother, Patty, was at the Coliseum last month representing his All Rise Foundation as he gave an uplifting talk to dozens of kids in the East Side Club; one key message was to be careful on social media.
“There’s just so much negativity in the world, and no one ever gave us a handbook on how to work these devices or how to talk to each other online or what’s the proper way to do it,” Judge said. “We’re trying to help these kids become positive citizens and better this world, so any chance I got to help them out, talk with them, do anything I can, I love to.”
Judge was adopted shortly after birth by parents who were school teachers. When the Oakland Athletics drafted him out of high school in the 31st round, there was little chance he’d sign. He was motivated to go to college, and he became such a fabulous player at Fresno State that the Yankees drafted him 32nd overall.
Judge has ample experience at the Coliseum, where the A’s hosted him in a pre-draft workout, where he appeared in 15 bigleague games, including four last month — he hit his 49th homer off JP Sears on a typically chilly night that reminded him of his high school football games: “Can’t beat this weather, that’s for sure” — but has not appeared in a game at Oracle Park.
The one time he had a chance, when the Yankees were in town in 2019 for an interleague series, Judge was shelved with an oblique injury. “I was pretty bummed about it because it was my birthday weekend,” he said.
The Giants open next season in the Bronx, and if Judge isn’t wearing Yankee pinstripes, perhaps he’ll be outfitted in Giants road grays.
If that’s the case, maybe he’d finally get a chance to meet Bonds; after all, Judge would be the team’s biggest free-agent acquisition since Bonds signed in December 1992.
And he might run into Mays, too. It was the Say Hey Kid link that got a young Judge into the ballpark. As the story goes, the daughter of a close friend of Mays was Judge’s best friend’s stepmother. From there, the youngsters scored tickets to Pac Bell, and Judge became the proud owner of a Mays-signed baseball and photo he proudly displayed in his room.
“Having two parents who were teachers, we really couldn’t afford driving out to the Bay Area a lot and getting tickets,” Judge said. “That connection really helped.”
Meantime, Judge keeps swinging away in pursuit of the playoffs and the AL record, tabling talk of free agency. He has plenty of time to surpass Maris, who was so stressed by the pursuit of Ruth that his hair started falling out. Judge’s mind-set is different. “If I get the record, if I don’t get the record, it’s out of my hands. It’s all God’s plan. He gave me ability to come out here and play this game and gave me an opportunity here with the Yankees,” Judge said.
“I don’t want to overshadow what we’ve got going on here. We’ve got a great group, ownership, a line of great players in this clubhouse, made some good trades, made some good signings in the offseason. So I never want to waste those opportunities.
“I just try to focus on all that. That kind of keeps my mind clearer.”
“If I get the (home run) record, if I don’t get the record, it’s out of my hands. It’s all God’s plan.”
Aaron Judge, Yankees outfielder