Aaron Judge has FINALLY done it! After a five game HR drought, Aaron Judge has finally hit his record-breaking 62 HR against the Texas Rangers to surpass the legendary Roger Maris’ 61 HRs tally in a season for an AL player.
MLB fans have been treated with some great home run statistics and record-breaking moments this season as Aaron Judge’s strike last night has been the third all-time HR record broken this year alone. Along with Albert Pujols’ milestones in breaking into the 700 HR club and breaking Barry Bonds go-ahead home run record a few days ago, this MLB season really has been one we’ll never forget.
And, you know what makes this season even better? Neither Pujols nor Judge cheated in reaching their HR accomplishments.
Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa may have the Top-5 single season HR records (for now, we’ll see if Judge can knock off Sosa and get into the Top-5), but these three are the most notorious cheaters in baseball history. The US Congress even needed to hold hearings about the cheating of Bond, McGuire, and Sosa in the early 2000’s as the MLB world was rocked with the worst baseball cheating scandal of all time.
Nonetheless, those steroids claims can’t be made against Aaron Judge or Albert Pujols as both players have been clean during their careers in the MLB so far. The achievements of Pujols and Judge won’t have an asterisk around it or a “well, they were great hitters but…” kind of statements attached to their names when discussing the greatest home run hitters of all time.
Thus, in regard to who should be known as the true ” Single-Season Home Run King”, I can’t see how Aaron Judge isn’t the new monarch. He has not only surpassed the great Roger Maris’ 61 single season record in a season with fewer games than Maris played back in the 60’s, but also did it without the support of an artificial strength booster, such as steroids, like Sosa, Bonds, and McGuire did.
Plus, even though I’m a Red Sox fan, it’s fitting that a Yankee, Judge, has now taken the single-season home run reigns from two Yankees greats, Rodger Maris (61) and Babe Ruth (60), and has joined his predecessors as one of the greatest single-season home run hitters of all-time.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Wikimedia Creative Commons License/Author: Keith Allison) (Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
