New York Yankees’ rookie sensation Aaron Judge hit nearly four miles’ worth of homers Monday night in Miami to become Major League Baseball’s 2017 Home Run Derby champion. The 25-year old right fielder hit a total of 47 home runs, including 11 in the last round to beat Minnesota Twins’ third baseman Miguel Sano—with almost half of his alotted four minutes to spare. Four of his longballs went farther than 500 feet and another mammoth blast didn’t count because it hit the roof in Marlins Park.
I hadn’t watched the derby in several years. I’ve never really gotten into longball for the sake of longball, and typically find the theatrics only a little less annoying than the other staple of the All-Star Game festivities, the dreaded Legends/Celebrities softball game. Sure I like seeing Rickey Henderson hit yet another leadoff home run, and it’s reassuring to know that Freddy Lynn will be hunting down drives in the gap well into his 80s. But with Eduardo Perez shouting at the top of his lungs over the canned merengue music to egg on the antics of Jamie Foxx, who is shilling for his new movie, I’m scrolling for a Game of Thrones Season 7 preview. Speaking of which, Miles Teller has a game face like a White Walker—or maybe he was just trying to emulate another surly softball celeb, Jon Hamm. Baseball, keep the actors and singers off the diamond.
But last night’s derby was fantastic. There was Colorado Rockies’ leadoff hitter Charlie Blackmon with a beard like a Civil War infantryman rifling line drives over the right-field fence. The other Yankees’ entry, Gary Sanchez, knocked out defending champion Giancarlo Stanton in the first round, leaving the hometown Miami slugger cheering on teammate Justin Bour. The Marlins first baseman, and Washington, D.C. area native, riled up the Miami crowd like Shia LaBeouf—“Just Do It!” Bour went yard 22 times in the first round, pushing Judge to the brink. And there was Dodgers’ first baseman Cody Bellinger, who had his father Clay, a former big leaguer himself, throw to him. Cody lost in the second round to Judge, the juggernaut.
What a star. Judge is a superman who put on his Clark Kent costume for a gag on The Tonight Show to ask Yankee fans what they thought about Aaron Judge. Everyone loves him—my 6-year-old nephews were jumping up and down with joy just to see what colors of Gatorade the other All-Stars were drenching him with after he won the derby. Judge leads the majors in home runs with 30, and hits the ball hard consistently. In June he hit a ball with an exit velocity of 121.1 mph, the record since Statcast started keeping track in 2015. The trajectory of some of his shots look like a North Korean ballistic missile test. He hits balls out all over the field—some of his blasts to right Monday night looked at first like lazy flies, but coming off the bat of a 6-foot-7, 280-pound monster they take off. When Judge really lays into one, it looks like he’s taking off the top half a tree with one stroke.
Alex Rodriguez says Judge may be baseball’s version of LeBron James, and commissioner Rob Manfred thinks he could be the face of the game for years to come. May the fates of the game protect and continue to bless him, a sweet kid who knows the game is humbling. He’s humble. He shared credit for his derby with his batting practice pitcher Danilo Valiente. “Danilo just kept hitting my barrel,” Judge said. “So he made it easy.” Of course, the other way to understand the compliment is as a challenge to big league pitchers—who have hit his barrel 30 times so far this season, with half the schedule left.
It’s hardly surprising that Judge led the voting for the American League All-Stars with 4,448,702 votes. Washington Nationals’ right fielder Bryce Harper, who is also having a big year after a disappointing (for Harper) 2016, led both leagues with 4.6 million. There were a few minor controversies with All-Star selection—here in the capital of the free world we’re still a bit upset that Nats’ third baseman Anthony Rendon lost out in the last-man vote to the Dodgers’ Justin Turner, another Civil War veteran-looking star. Sure, it would be nice to see last year’s N.L. MVP Kris Bryant in Miami, but third base is loaded this year in the senior circuit, with the Rockies’ hammer Nolan Arenado starting and the D-backs Jake Lamb, and Turner, in reserve. The rosters are stacked with the ballplayers who have put together great first halves.
It was just a few years ago when baseball men like former big league general manager Jim Bowden said the ballot system “is broken.” The concern was partly in response to the 2015 All-Star voting that had the Kansas City Royals’ starters leading across the board up until nearly the very end. Yes, some of the Royals deserved to get the nod, but it looked an awful lot like the old-time ballot stuffing that in the past had benefited the big-market teams, with large local fan bases and frequent national exposure, like the Yankees and Dodgers. Steve Garvey is the name perhaps most often cited as an example of egregious big-market ballot-stuffing. (Here’s an interesting piece from FiveThirtyEight about the all-time leaders in undeserved all-star appearances, according to Wins Above Replacement, with Cal Ripken leading the way with eight undeserved appearances. Who did voters stiff most often? Keith Hernandez.)
Royals’ fans and management explained in the lead-up to the 2015 game that as the average fan base was getting older, the advantage went to clubs with younger fans, who were more likely to vote online. “And if there’s one city where young fans are really excited about their team, it’s Kansas City,” explained one local sports talk show host. What a bizarre interpretation, which taken to its logical end suggests that if a tech-savvy town like Palo Alto fielded a starting nine of superstar coders and programmers they’d all wind up in the midsummer classic.
There are a few clubs with large All-Star delegations this year, like the Nationals with five players. Right-handed pitcher Max Scherzer gets the starting assignment, with Steven Strasburg in the bullpen, along with three starters in the field. But second baseman Daniel Murphy is leading the NL in hitting, first baseman Ryan Zimmerman is second, and Harper is third. It’s earned.
It’s hard to know exactly how it happened but All-Star voters seem a lot savvier. Maybe it’s because of the game’s youth movement, which means that there are fewer veteran players who can count on the fans’ sympathy year after year, regardless of how they performed in the first half. And of course, this has always been the central question about All-Star game selection—should it honor the players having the best first half, or the perennial stars, no matter what their numbers are by the end of June? There’s a lot to be said for the latter. When I interviewed Mike Piazza just after he’d joined the Mets, he emphasized how much respect he had for the players who put up big numbers every year. Piazza of course was among them—It’s very hard, he said.
Maybe the wisdom of fans, at least this year, owes something to the same technology baseball people decried just two years ago. After all, you have the numbers at your fingertips all the time. A few weeks ago I was at Nationals Stadium reminiscing how the scoreboards used to post the numbers of the starting pitchers for all the games played that day. Then I realized I had it all on my phone. I checked to see who was starting for the Yankees and the Red Sox. I looked to see how the Padres, playing the Nats that afternoon, were hitting right-handed pitching, where shortstop Chase Arnaud played college ball, and where he played summer ball, in what round he was drafted, etc. Then I snapped a picture of Teddy Roosevelt, number 26, balancing his outsized head as he barreled across the outfield and losing yet again the Presidents’ Race. Teddy, a great president, great sportsman, and great American, is not in Miami this year.
