NEW YORK – It was the ghosts of Monument Park.
Aaron Judge struggles to take credit for the magic he creates on the baseball diamond. Ask him how he’s won two MVP awards, and he’ll praise the Yankees for preparing him since the day he was drafted into the organization. Ask him how he set the American League record for most home runs in a single season, and he’ll point to his teammates for giving him opportunities to hit.
So when he was asked how he kept the ball fair off his bat in the fourth inning of Game 3 of the ALDS, Judge credited the spirits of former Yankees greats for arguably the most memorable, and most important, home run of his career.
“You just never know with the wind, if it’s going to push it foul, is it going to keep curving or not,” Judge said. “But I guess a couple ghosts out there in Monument Park helped keep that fair.”
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Monument Park is an open-air museum located in center field at Yankee Stadium. It is filled with monuments and plaques that honor distinguished Yankees.
But Judge, as usual, is being modest.
The slugger’s game-tying three-run home run in the Yankees’ 9-6 win over the Blue Jays on Tuesday night in the Bronx was his signature postseason moment — and it was all Judge. Unless ghosts are helping him out on a regular basis, the extraordinary is what we’ve come to expect from the Yankees captain.
Yankees’ Aaron Judge hits a three-run home run to even score against Blue Jays
He connected on a 99.7 mph fastball from Blue Jays right-hander Louis Varland that was also 1.2 feet inside, from the center of the zone. It was the first time in the pitch-tracking era, which began in 2008, that a hitter homered off a 99-plus-mph pitch that was also that far inside — in either the regular season or the postseason.
Just when you think Judge has covered all the bases in the past decade he’s played in the major leagues, he adds another improbable statistical feat to the back of his overflowing baseball card.
“I get yelled at for swinging at them out of the zone, but now I’m getting praised for it,” Judge quipped when asked why he swung at Varland’s fastball inside. “It’s a game. You’ve got to go out there and play. I don’t care what the numbers say or where something was at. I’m just up there trying to put a good swing on a good pitch, and it looked good to me.”
(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
It looked like a dream to the 47,399 fans in Yankee Stadium that watched Judge’s homer clang off the left-field foul pole. The three-run moonshot completed the Yankees’ comeback over the Blue Jays when their season was on the brink.
But it wasn’t just Judge’s well-timed swing on an impossible pitch to hit that ensured the Yankees would stay alive for at least another day. With the game tied at 6-6, he also stopped the Jays from scoring when he laid out for a diving catch in right field, taking a hit away from Anthony Santander on a liner that had the chance to drive in Ernie Clement from second base.
Judge went 3-for-4 with a double, an intentional walk, four RBI, and three runs scored. It was hard to keep track of all the plays he made that helped the Yankees stave off elimination. It makes you wonder how much farther the Yankees could’ve pushed the Dodgers in last year’s Fall Classic if Judge was as productive as he’s been so far this October.
(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
He batted .222 (4-for-23) with three RBI, two runs scored, and one home run in five World Series games last year. After Tuesday night, he’s batting .500 (11-for-22) with six RBI, five runs scored, and one home run in six playoff games this year. The Yankees, as a team, look scarier and seem to play better when Judge is contributing the way he is. It helps, of course, when the bullpen holds the lead. After Carlos Rodon coughed up six earned runs in 2.1 innings against the Jays, the Bombers scored eight unanswered runs, and five Yankees relievers combined to throw 6.2 scoreless innings from the ‘pen.
“Just an awesome team win,” Yankees skipper Aaron Boone said. “So many guys playing an important role in some way, shape, or form makes it a lot of fun.”
The Jays flew into New York with a 2-0 series lead, needing only one win to eliminate the Yankees and advance to the ALCS. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s third home run off the Yankees in as many games helped Toronto pull ahead to a 6-1 lead in the third inning. The crowd became restless. The Bronx Bombers were 21 outs away from the book closing on the 2025 season. But, inside the Yankees’ dugout, a comeback was the only thing on players’ minds.
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“Baseball is a hard game. If you’re thinking about being discouraged, you’d be discouraged every day,” said Jazz Chisholm, who hit the go-ahead home run to give the Yankees a 7-6 lead in the fifth inning. “So for us, we just keep on riding the wave and trusting our teammates that someone’s gonna pick us up.”
After all the criticism that he couldn’t get a big hit in the playoffs, finally, that someone was Judge.
The 33-year-old’s game-tying shot that sent Yankee Stadium into pandemonium was his first home run of this postseason. Even though he entered Tuesday’s ALDS Game 3 batting .444 (8-for-18) in five playoff games this October, Judge was getting lambasted on New York’s radio waves and talk shows for failing to hit a home run with runners on base, when the stakes were highest, and when his team needed him to send one out of the park the most.
Whether or not Judge used that commentary as fuel for his pivotal home run, we may never know. As far as his manager, teammates, and the people that know him best are concerned, Judge is always the same guy: even-keeled, diligent, always trying to improve, and hungry to win.
“He’s the real deal, and as beloved a player as I’ve ever been around by his teammates,” Boone said. “They all admire him, look up to him, respect him, want his approval, and that’s just a credit to who Aaron is and how he goes about things.”
By now, you’ve probably seen multiple different angles of the Yankees dugout losing its collective mind over Judge’s home run. But what did it feel like as the ball was sailing out to left field?
“It was insane. I would say the only comparable feeling was probably (Juan) Soto’s home run from last year to send us to the World Series,” Clarke Schmidt said, referring to Soto’s home run off Hunter Gaddis in Game 5 of the 2024 ALCS. “They were both crazy. I think after, we all felt like we needed to take a second to breathe. Like we were all going to pass out.”
Judge’s teammates are in awe of him, no matter if he’s slamming home runs or leading the clubhouse. There is no one else in the Yankees dugout they root for more than the captain. To them, he already belongs in Monument Park.
It wasn’t a ghost. It was Aaron Judge.
(Photo by New York Yankees/Getty Images)
Deesha Thosar covers Major League Baseball as a reporter and columnist for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.
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