Was this what it was like to watch Babe Ruth play every day?
No, really. It’s a fair question now. We know Babe Ruth was a great hitter – perhaps the greatest hitter – because we can read the numbers, which seem hard to understand if you look at them too closely. We know he was great because his contemporaries went to their graves revering him, marveling at his power, his skill, his talent.
For nearly a century, it was foolish to compare anyone else to him, even though there is hardly anyone left alive who saw him. Babe Ruth? I mean, Billy Joel is a terrific pianist, but did anyone ever say he was better than Ludwig van Beethoven – even though there is no one on earth who ever heard LVB tickle the ivories?
There are things we simply accept by faith.
Babe Ruth, it was always believed, lived on his own shelf as a slugger.
Everyone else—starting with Hank Aaron, joined by Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, a few others—had their own shelf, just below.
But Aaron Judge makes us think.
Was this what it was like to watch Babe Ruth play every day?
“He’s capable of historic runs, MVP-type runs, supernatural-type runs,” said Yankees teammate Gerrit Cole, who has had a front-row seat to most of Judge’s accomplishments since 2020. “He’s just a great player.”
He is historic. He is otherworldly. He stands as the unanimous MVP this time around, capping the title he won two years ago when he hit 62 home runs, two more than Ruth had in 1927, the year Ruth was the most feared baseball player of all time.
In 1927, Ruth had two 51-game streaks that required you to check your work three and four times when you were done, to make sure the numbers were right, because you felt like they couldn’t possibly be right.
The first time, from May 30 to July 26, Ruth hit 20 home runs, drove in 57 runs, scored 55 runs and posted a .400/.526/.844 average. That’s a 1.371 OPS over two months of baseball.
The second time, from August 3 to September 30, the next-to-last day of the season, the day he hit Washington’s Tom Zachary’s No. 60 and declared, “Sixty! Count ’em! Let’s see another son of a bitch do that!” – the numbers read like this: 26 homers, 71 RBIs, 52 runs scored, with a .332/.454/.824 batting average and a 1.278 OPS, which only seems small when compared to Ruth’s previous work.
Now let’s take a look at Aaron Judge’s last 51 games, heading into Tuesday’s game at Yankee Stadium against the Reds.
From May 3 through Sunday in Toronto, 51 games, he hit 25 home runs. He drove in 64 runs. He scored 53 runs. He hit .397/.507/.922. That’s an OPS of 1.429, 58 points better than Babe Ruth’s during the hottest stretch of the most legendary offensive season in baseball history.
There is a word for that: Ruthien.
Or maybe it should be Judgian instead.
This is not hype.
This is not hyperbole.
This is history. In real time. Every day.
“He’s in the company of him all the time now,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s unbelievable what he’s doing, really. A little disappointing, 2 for 4 (Sunday) with one hit to the batter’s eye. He’s in those conversations now all the time with Gehrig and Ruth and all the superlatives you can think of. He continues to be involved in those conversations.”
He put himself in this situation. Because he belongs. He doesn’t just impress his teammates, he astounds them. He doesn’t just scare opposing pitchers, sometimes he goes beyond that. Or did you not see the baseball-sized mark he left on Chris Bassit’s arm the other day, which was there for the world to see until Bassit opted for a long-sleeved shirt on a sweltering day.
“The professional,” jazz master Dizzy Gillespie once said, “is the one who can do it twice.”
Twice? In his career, Ruth has had seasons of 60, 59, 54 and 54. He has reached 40 or more in six other years. In that sense, Judge has some catching up to do. He has already reached 52. He has already reached 62. He is almost certain to reach those heights a third time. Ruth’s career is still on top of a mountain.
But in everyday life?
This is what it must have been like in 1927, in 1921, in 1930. Back then, when Ruth was making the titanic explosions seem as routine to him as a game of pepper jack, it was Jumpin’ Joe Dugan, his teammate with the Red Sox and Yankees, who said, “To understand him, you have to understand this: He’s not human.”
The more you watch Aaron Judge, the more you understand.
News Source : nypost.com
Gn sports
