Sometime in the 1800s, somebody threw the first pitch in baseball history. This was followed by the second pitch in baseball history, at which point somebody immediately said pitching was not what it used to be.
Baseball is perpetually trying to chase a purer, happier past that did not exist, and this strange habit is most evident when discussing the single-season home run record. Ty Cobb, who rose to stardom in the dead-ball era, used to bristle at the idea that players should even try to hit home runs. Roger Maris’s pursuit of Babe Ruth’s record quickly became more of a defense of Ruth than a celebration of Maris; commissioner Ford Frick said Ruth would be the real record-holder because he hit his 60 in a 154-game season, while Maris’s Yankees got to play 162, and only 23,154 fans showed up to watch Maris hit No. 61. Then Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds came along and … well, you know that story.
This brings us to Aaron Judge, and let’s try to save us from ourselves here. No, he did not tie the “real” major-league record when he hit his 61st of the season Wednesday night in Toronto. No, he is not atoning for the sport’s past sins. He is having one of the most dominant hitting seasons in the history of the game, and if that’s not enough for us, we’ve got problems.
