It is possible, in 2024, to go to the ballpark and watch the most talented hitter in baseball history.
This is the sort of grandiosity and presentism that baseball fans, who worship the old gods of the sport, typically do not stomach. And it’s true that Aaron James Judge has not had the career of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, or even Barry Bonds, who played as well as all five but will forever be tainted by his steroid scandals. He is the fastest player ever to 300 home runs, but is already 32, and this means he is unlikely to join the 600 or 700 home-run clubs, where Ruth, Mays, Bonds, and Hank Aaron all reside. The relatively late start to his career — he attended college and didn’t play a full season until he was 25 — will keep him from accumulating the statistics of the immortals of yore, and he won’t have performance-enhancing drugs to make him an MVP at age 39. And anyway, baseball today is too punishing — the pitchers too wickedly fast and precise — for a hitter to dominate at the cusp of middle-age.
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