Sometimes it takes a while before it hits us what we’re watching. One minute, we’re just doing what we do, tuning into baseball in 2024. The next, it begins to dawn on us.
We’re witnessing something special. Then we ask: Just how special? Next thing we know, we’ve taken a trip back in time, to that place where legends dwell. And that’s where Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have taken us.
Advertisement It never feels comfortable to do what we’re about to do. But we’re about to do it anyway. As they near the finish line of an astonishing season in the modern-day incarnation of Yankee Stadium, Judge and Soto are connecting the dots to a very different incarnation of Yankee Stadium.
Is it OK to argue this? That we’re watching the 21st-century version of the two most prodigious and productive teammates who ever played baseball? Can we really connect those dots, from Judge and Soto to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? I think we can. They’re not the same — in many ways. I get that.
Ruth and Gehrig were all-time behemoths, cranking out seasons we’ll never see again. I get that, too. But am I crazy to make this comp? I don’t think I am.
I’m not alone. “I think you’re on firm ground,” said STATS Perform’s Steve Hirdt, one of baseball’s most prominent and all-knowing historical minds. “Just the fact that you’re contemplating it might answer your question,” said Buck Showalter, former manager of two New York baseball teams, the Yankees and Mets .
“And the f.