NY Times: "Aaron Judge Joins a Pinstriped-Only Party of Three"

All Rise!

By joining Roger Maris and Babe Ruth as the only A.L. players with 60-homer seasons, Judge showed once again that no team does big moments quite like the Yankees.

It was one of those nights, the kind that reminds you of the fundamental rule of the last baseball century: There are the Yankees, and then there is everyone else. From sepia tones to high definition, no other team does history, then or now, with such grandeur and resonance.

In the ninth inning on Tuesday in the Bronx, Aaron Judge became the third player in American League history to reach 60 home runs in a season. The others were also Yankees: Babe Ruth in 1927 and Roger Maris in 1961, and both had slugging teammates pushing them along. For Ruth it was Lou Gehrig, for Maris it was Mickey Mantle.

So what else could have followed Judge’s 60th homer but a game-ending grand slam by Giancarlo Stanton, later that inning, to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-8? No other active slugger can relate to Judge quite like Stanton, who once belted 59 homers in a season for Miami. It had to be Stanton to cap a night like this, with a screaming low liner into the left-field seats.