The Aaron Judge Effect

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Living in NY, it seems weird to me how little most people seem to care generally about the Judge saga. Yankee fans are ga ga of course, and many baseball fans are paying attention, but it doesn’t feel like everyone has stopped to pay attention. It’s weird. Was just in bar in penn station and people seemed more interested in a bad football game. Yes, when judge comes up there is a crowd watching. But its not the broad hysteria I sort of assumed it would be for such a historic record. Maybe it’s just a sign of the times. And this is coming from a massive fan of baseball in general.

Maybe a little of it is all the debate as to what the legitimate record is and what number we should be looking at.

Some of that supposed lack of interest may be because he technically has not broken, or even really tied, any records, yet. PEDs or not, the official MLB record for homers in a season belongs to Bonds at 73. Not everyone is as big of a baseball purist when it comes to issues and questions with PEDs, but to the average person Judge isn't even within single digits of the record yet. Also, football is a lot more popular than it was in the past, and many have said/felt it has actually supplanted baseball as America's pastime.

Now, if Judge were sitting on 70 homers at this point, i think it more likely the interest and hysteria you were expecting would be in place.