The judge’s special season reignites the debate over which home run records really count

In a perfect world, Aaron Judge hit career home run #763 in pinstripes, a sea of ​​cell phone cameras sparkling on a clear Bronx evening, and just like that, Barry Bonds would be gone forever.

phew! Never mess up the game again.

OK: Given that Aaron Judge is already 30 years old…well, if we give him 60 homers this season and then generously allow him 50 homers a year for the rest of his career…er, he’d be 41 years old, if he sets the record. And it would be around 2034. So, yes. Even with the National League’s introduction of the designated batsman — theoretically creating more opportunities for aging hitters to hold on to (see: Albert Pujols) — and even if Major League Baseball digs up those old Jack Rabbit home run balls to make the If you’re pumping offensively, it will likely be up to someone else to ultimately send Bond and his starlet to the dustbin of history.

I was thinking of Judge and Bonds on Wednesday afternoon when Judge hit his 55th homer of the season, six away from Roger Maris’ 1961 New York Yankees record. That’s also a historical starting point, because as soon as you pass Maris’ 61 top six homer records in a season, Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire hold them. All were registered between 1998-2001. All three thugs are inextricably linked to the steroid scandal. With many baseball fans and connoisseurs considering Henry Aaron’s 755 career homers the “legitimate” career record, can we say that Judge is about to set a new “legitimate” season mark? Is 62 the new 756?

For the record, Judge said publicly that he considers Bonds’ 73 a one-season record. But, well, you know how baseball moralists roll, right? We had former major league player and current MLB analyst Doug Glanville with us Blair & Barker and asked him how we should view what the most significant single-season home run overall poststeroid era will be. Glanville is one of the original thinkers of our game and I liked his approach: let the Yankees lead; Consider it a Yankees Club record and allow baseball fans to apply their own context – something baseball has often asked of us since the early 2000s.

Seriously, what’s another contextual demand between friends?

By God, it feels good to get your hands dirty again, doesn’t it? Back in Steroid Weed? They thought we were goodbye when Bonds and Roger Clemens fell out of the Hall of Fame election leaving Alex Rodriguez as the final villain. But then Judge went and passed, slipping past A-Rod to claim the Yankees’ year-old right-hander homer record — 54 homers in 2007. In terms of chiseling the asterisks littering the landscape as a result of the steroid scandal , which is not much more than a small chip.

Next comes Ruth’s 60, Babe’s highest singles season total in 1927. Then Maris — and all the bittersweet stuff that it represents. Remember, no one was keen on Maris beating Ruth’s existing record of 60 because he wasn’t a “real” Yankee. Commissioner Ford Frick certainly did not, announcing that if Ruth’s record was not broken in 154 games and not in 162 – Ruth set the record when the regular schedule was 154 games – it would be labeled differently. Maris faced death threats, was bullied by the media and became even more isolated when Mickey Mantle was hospitalized with a hip infection. It was as miserable as Bonds’ slog to 756.

In the judge’s case, the drama is twofold. First, the Yankees have reduced a 15.5 game lead in the American League East to five, and threads are unraveling everywhere. Manager Aaron Boone and general manager Brian Cashman’s jobs are clearly on the line, and of course Judge is on his stint and, well, he’s not going cheap. The judge denied a seven-year, $231.5 million extension, and the numbers to consider are Max Scherzer’s $43 million salary with the New York Mets — the highest ever in baseball — as well as the standard for length and total dollar value, Mookie Betts. 12-year, $365 million deal with Los Angeles Dodgers usurped by Mike Trouts averaging $36 million per year for 10 years. Betts and Trout were both 27 when they signed their contracts. The judge will turn 31 next April and his age will be a mitigating factor in terms of the length of the contract. Bottom Line: It could take less time if the average annual value gets closer to $50 million per year.

So the Yankees are just going to sign him, right?

Right?

All-time Yankees greats Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams may have considered leaving the team at some point, but only when they were in their teens. Like her, Mariano Rivera chatted with the Boston Red Sox late in his career…but how much of it was legitimate on the Red Sox side versus the Red Sox is a matter of interpretation. They had also won titles. Judge, on the other hand, would be leaving at a time when the crosstown New York Mets owner has much deeper pockets than the Steinbrenners and the rest of the Yankees team is a combination of old and young and possibly staring at a 13-year World Series drought .

Judge has mastered one of Jeter’s dark arts – the ability to make eye contact, smile, relax and say absolutely nothing of importance during interviews. His teflon-coated, happily married, jealously guarded off-field life goes hand in hand with his relentless kindness to fans – small sensibilities like getting down on one knee so his six-foot-tall build is less intimidating to children. You think that stuff doesn’t matter, but it does. It’s part of a package that will make people like you and think the best of you during cynical times.

It’s what you need to be a great Yankee, but it also drives well.

Put the judge in a Mets uniform. Or a San Francisco Giants or Los Angeles Dodgers or Chicago Cubs or your choice of team uniform. The fit is perfect.

Look: MLB’s influence on North American sports — let alone continental culture — is a poor cousin of the NFL and NBA. This is nothing new. But it holds virtual copyright on “numbers” when it comes to team sports. Individual sports have their numbers that matter — Grand Slam and Wimbledon titles, PGA Tour or Open wins, the 100-meter record — but few career numbers have much magic in team sports.

Nobody gets poetic about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s NBA-record 38,387 points. Also… is that the holiest NBA record ever? I do not know. I remember OJ Simpson’s 2,003 yards in 1973 — the first time anyone surpassed that number — but it’s been completed six times since. And while you may know that Eric Dickerson holds the single-season record for rushing yards, Peyton Manning the single-season record for passing yards, and Calvin Johnson the record for most yards, I suspect you don’t know those numbers by heart. Or who comes second or third in one of those categories that the average baseball fan naturally knows by heart: Aaron’s 755 home runs and Ruth’s 714.

What gives MLB more cause for optimism is what Pujols did in his senior year: hit 16 home runs at the age of 42 playing in the National League because baseball finally managed to get the designated hitter into the senior circle. That’s 695 career home runs, and if Pujols were just, say, two years younger, we’d be cheering him to the holiest of sports records. A record that we rarely want or can talk about anymore.

Jeff Blair will be hosting Blair & Barker from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and Sportsnet 360. The show is also available on-demand wherever you get your podcasts.