Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees hit his 62nd home game of the season against the Texas Rangers in the first inning of game two of a double header at Globe Life Field on Tuesday in Arlington, Texas.
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Ron Jenkins / Getty Images
Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees hit his 62nd home game of the season against the Texas Rangers in the first inning of game two of a double header at Globe Life Field on Tuesday in Arlington, Texas.
Ron Jenkins / Getty Images
For 61 years, Roger Maris’ home run record has stood: 61 home runs, set by the New York Yankee in 1961, untouched as the player with the most goals in a single season of any American Football League player.
Now, all these years later, with Aaron Judge’s 62nd decisive strike from the club, a new record has been set.
Judge, the 30-year-old standout quarterback for the New York Yankees, hit his 62nd home game of the season on Tuesday night game against the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas.
Fans in the stands broke out into cheers and his teammates gathered at home to meet him, exchanging hugs in turn.
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For decades, the Yankee elder’s mark stood alone as baseball’s overall single-season home run record. Contemporaries like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron couldn’t touch it. Nor can there be more stars to follow: not Mike Schmidt, not Reggie Jackson, not Ken Griffey Jr.
An all-MLB record, Maris’ milestone was finally surpassed in the 1998 home run, when Mark McGwire of St. The Chicago Cubs’ Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa (both National League players) captured the nation’s attention at the same time. Effort to match, then beat, record.
In 2001, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, also in the NL, beat both when he hit 73 hosts. The Bonds’ achievement to this day is still recorded in baseball’s record books as the highest one-season total ever.
But for many baseball fans, those McGwire-Sosa-Bonds seasons are tarnished. All three players are widely believed – or in McGwire’s case, admittedly – to have taken performance-enhancing drugs during those years.
And so Maris’ record survived: Officially, it was the American League record; Unofficially, in the minds of many purists, it’s the so-called “real” home run record.
Either way, since the MLB started drug testing with players in 2003, no player from both leagues has matched it.
Judge has been an impressive slugger since his first major at batman, when he hit a home run on just his fourth court as a Yankee. In his first season, he set the MLB record for most home players by a rookie with 49 goals.
Injuries kept him from reaching that potential – until now.
In his seventh season, the 30-year-old broke through his previous best. In addition to his 62 home runs, Judge has 131 RBIs – the best in the American League – and his batting average is a formidable .311. With a bit of luck, he could end his season leading the league in all three stats and claim the Triple Crown, the first player to do so in a decade.
