All hail baseball's new colossus of clout

Congratulations to New York Yankee Aaron Judge for a towering accomplishment: hitting 62 home runs in a single season, more than Babe Ruth in 1927, more than Roger Maris in 1961, more than any other Yankee and any other player in the American League — ever.

He did it with class and power and grit. He did something so physically difficult that it should be essentially impossible, yet given the outfielder’s breathtaking talent, it wasn’t. Consider the 88-mile-per-hour slider he casually smoked over the fence at the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Field on Tuesday, as if the pitch were lobbed gently underhand. Rinse, repeat. He brought even casual or non-baseball fans to their feet and their phone screens with his record-breaking performance. To some, that makes him baseball’s new home run king.

That’s where the complications begin — and where the story of his success gets even more interesting.

Three men have hit more dingers in a single year than Judge has: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa. Those three electrified baseball more than two decades ago with their monster shots and space race-style chase against each other and for the record books. Their accomplishments have been clouded by their occurrence during the steroid era, and the athletes’ varied levels of association with performance-enhancing drugs.

Hence the argument that is unfolding as baseball, a beautifully history-and-stat-obsessed tradition, digests Judge’s bench mark. Should Judge be the legitimate single-season home run champ, as Roger Maris Jr., son of the legendary Yankee, has claimed? How much should the benefit of drugs be weighed? What to think about other complicating factors: the different lengths of baseball seasons over time, the way the game has changed regarding night games, mound heights, pitching and fielding strategies, physical fitness regimes? Where does the feared, nitpicky asterisk lie?

Certainly the national obsession with the home run and its pursuit says something about our country. It is the all-or-nothing athletic feat. It feeds an atmosphere of winning at all costs, one that tipped over into mania with steroids. But cheating is not confined to the world of the four-bagger. Chess and poker are in the midst of cheating scandals. The Houston Astros had their own camera-aided ignominy in 2017. Baseball, like the nation that birthed it, has always had its exclusions, clouds, and darker moments. And it is a particularly human flaw to sacrifice morality for the urge to triumph, hardly confined to the realm of athletic competition.

No asterisk or complication is needed when it comes to the awe of Judge, who shows that great feats can be wrought through hard work, the gift of talent, enduring stamina, and sometimes, a little luck. Number 99’s achievement is one for the ages, and we’re thankful for it.

All rise.