Jalen Brunson has had a minute, hasn’t he, a pretty grand New York minute that stands with anything we have ever seen in the postseason in New York, short of the Finals or not. You want to know just how tremendous it has been? Brunson has become as much a king of the city as Aaron Judge, already well on his way to being MVP again and looking as much like our Babe Ruth as ever.
And you know where Judge is this weekend. He is back on the same field with Shohei Ohtani, another current legend routinely compared to Ruth. It’s because Ohtani is the one who not only hits a ton of home runs himself, but is the guy who will be a starting pitcher again with the Dodgers before the summer is over.
Even in what has been a basketball time around here lately, and a barnburner of a basketball time at that, it is still worth appreciating a moment like this in baseball: Judge and Ohtani both in their primes, both MVPs, both once again hitting home runs all over the place, both setting themselves up to do what they did last year, which means chase 60. The number Ruth first put up on the board.
Put it another way with the way Judge and Ohtani have played over the past several baseball seasons: Having them on the same field as opposing players — as rarely as that happens — is the same as it was having two surpassing talents like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays on the same field once. Or Mickey and the great Henry Aaron. Or Mays and Aaron when it was the Giants against the Braves.
Here is what we really get when the Yankees are playing the Dodgers again at this time in baseball, in the time of Judge and Ohtani being better than everybody else: The two best baseball players in the world making you feel as if they’re playing a game of one-on-one game for the ages. So of course Judge hit a home run his first time up on Friday night, top of the first, dead center, and then Ohtani matched him with one of his own leading off the bottom of the first, with a solo encore in the sixth. Give the people what they want.
You know what we saw from them last season, before they both ended up in the World Series, even if Ohtani was hurt by the time he got there and Judge didn’t start to look like himself at the plate until it was too late to save the Yankees. They both did chase 60 home runs, not so long after Judge had hit 62 for the Yankees. On his coast Ohtani, in a year when he couldn’t pitch because he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, became the first player in baseball history to hit more than 50 homers in a season when he also stole more than 50 bases. He is such a gifted athlete, I swear, that he stole all those bases because he had extra time on his hands not being able to pitch. Almost as if he were accessorizing.
Now Judge came into this weekend series with 18 home runs and 47 RBI and a batting average that may have dipped under .400 again, though you never know with him, he is always one swing away from going on another heater. Ohtani? He manages to come into Yankees vs. Dodgers ’25 with two more homers than Judge.
Judge, without question, has turned into the right-handed version of The Babe. The comparisons, because of the home run tear he’s been on over the past few years, aren’t hyperbole, just real. This is something Hall of Fame baseball writer Jayson Stark wrote about Judge in The Athletic about a month ago:
“Do we understand what we’re watching? That’s the question I ask myself when I watch Aaron Judge play baseball for those New York Yankees these days. We know he’s great, but do we understand he’s actually soaring miles beyond great?
“At this point, he’s now stomping into the land of the all-time great. In fact … He has probably earned himself a label we shouldn’t just toss around because it makes for fun Hot Take Theater. By which I mean I think he’s staking his claim to being …
“The greatest right-handed hitter of modern times.”
Whoa.
But Jayson backs up his claim with a slew of numbers about Judge’s last 400-plus games, because Jayson has always had the numbers, and worth checking out for yourself if you want to hunt down his piece about Judge on the search engine of choice. When Judge has been blessed with good health, and he’s had a lot of it lately, you are shocked when he goes a single game without hitting at least one ball hard someplace, over the fence or knocking in a big run. Really, there is only one can’t-miss at-bat comparable to him. And that is an Ohtani at-bat. Who we do compare to Babe Ruth because he is both a slugger and a starter. But by the time Ruth got to New York and essentially invented the home run at the same time he was inventing the modern New York Yankees, he wasn’t pitching. There were, in fact, only four starts for him in his Yankee career, one each in 1920, ’21, ’30, ’33. Before that in Boston, the only year when he played a full season as a hitter while continuing to be a starting pitcher was 1919, the year before he came to the Yankees, when he hit 29 homers for the Red Sox and had a 9-5 record.
Ruth’s biggest year as a pitcher was 2017, when he started 35 times for the Red Sox, won 24 games. But he only played 17 games in the outfield, with two home runs. Would it have been different if there had been a DH? Of course it would. But it is still a fact that he was more pitcher than hitter in Boston, and only started hitting home runs the way Judge and Ohtani do when he got to New York.
Ohtani will be both a full-time DH and full-time starter when his right arm is ready, at which point he will set about reminding everybody what a star he was as a starting pitcher with the Angels. In his last three seasons with them he started 23 games in 2021, 28 in ’22, 23 in ’23, and never had an ERA higher than 3.18. In those seasons he hit a total of 124 home runs, twice going past 40.
So he really is the new Babe Ruth. But so, too, is Aaron Judge. The two of them fighting it out to be king of baseball the way Brunson and Judge have been fighting it out — in our imagination, anyway — to be kings of our city in the spring of 2024.
Now Judge and Ohtani are together on the same field again, seven months after the last World Series ended. Appreciate the moment they’re sharing in baseball. Appreciate it a lot. Maybe it feels this great because it doesn’t happen more often.
ADVICE FOR STRUGGLING JUAN SOTO, RED SOX CAN’T HIT, BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS AND MORE
Somebody might pass along the wisdom of a former Mets manager named Yogi Berra to Juan Soto, which means the wisdom about how it sure gets late early around here.
It’s worth pointing out, though, that even as we keep hearing how much better off our kids from the Bronx are without Soto, they had a better record after 55 games last year than they did this year.
Over the past month, the Rockies’ batting order has been better than the one Alex Cora is running out there for the Red Sox.
But then you know why?
Because everybody’s offense has been better than Boston’s.
No kidding, Garrett Crochet must feel as if he’s still pitching for the other Sox.
Anthony Edwards, for all the heat he took after the Timberwolves got waxed at the end by the Thunder, is still just 23 years old.
He’s still led the T’Wolves to the last two Western Conference finals.
And that ain’t nothin.
Two books very much worth reading right now:
One is “Nightshade” by Michael Connelly, a master class in which he introduces a new LA cop named Stillwell, who goes right in there with Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller and Renee Ballard and all the other fine characters out of his remarkable imagination.
And if you’re a father, you have to read “The No. 1 Dad Book: Be The Best Dad You Can Be — in 1 Hour!” by my friend and writing partner, James Patterson.
It is wise and sweet and funny and when Jim calls it the most important book he’s ever written, that’s good enough for me.
I don’t care how young or old your children are, you will love this book for a lot more than an hour.
You can say that Scottie Scheffler is doing Tiger Woods things without saying he’s Tiger.
In the same way, you can compare the way Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is mid-range balling right now to the way Michael Jordan once did the same stuff at this time of the year in pro basketball.
SGA doesn’t have to make shots from logos to beat you bad and neither did Michael.
We talk all the time about great individual games in Knicks playoff history, and you know which one gets left out far too often?
Patrick Ewing having 24 points and 22 rebounds the day he and the ’94 Knicks beat the Pacers and played themselves into the NBA Finals that year.
By the way?
The only shame about Knicks vs. Pacers was that Mike Breen didn’t get to call the games.
What, slow week for the coverage of Belichick and his girlfriend?
No one who watched Elon Musk staring at the ceiling, or into outer space, at the Oval Office the other day was thinking the following: I’ll have what he’s having.
