NEW YORK — Here are a few questions for the Average Joe who just spent an indelible night in the cheap seats at Yankee Stadium, hoping against hope for the kind of magic that unfolded before his eyes:
Did you ever feel sorry for the man with a $360 million contract?
Did you ever weigh Aaron Judge’s October failures and find room in your heart for a compassionate take on the captain of this storied team?
Did you ever fear that this liberating night would never come for an all-time great?
Long before Judge put on a master class Tuesday night in how to play an impossibly difficult game under sudden-death pressure, taking his heavy lumber to the notion that he can’t manage the demands of the postseason, this much was clear:
The Big Man was a cross between Paul Bunyan and Babe Ruth, a mythological figure in the flesh. Nobody has ever looked better in pinstripes.
Nobody has ever looked better stepping off the bus.
Judge might win his third American League MVP award in four seasons. Before he is done playing for the Yankees, he will likely hurdle Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle into second place, behind Ruth, on the all-time home run list for the franchise that made the long ball fashionable.
And yet Judge was so burdened by the one aspect of his craft that he couldn’t conquer, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t hit in the clutch on baseball’s biggest stage. He couldn’t even catch a Little League fly ball in the World Series, for goodness’ sake.
As uniquely great as he’s been for six months during the regular season, Judge had been a serial underperformer in the one month that truly counts in the Bronx. Not only hadn’t the 33-year-old right fielder won a championship for a club that has won 27 of them, but he also hadn’t delivered a single memorable moment at the plate in 63 postseason games.
Everything changed in the 64th. Oh, did it ever change.
Aaron James Judge 🫡#AllRise pic.twitter.com/AoIxdi3z8i
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) October 8, 2025
When he walked off the field after Toronto’s final Game 3 out, Judge had answered the last stubborn question about him.
It would be crazy to ever again doubt his ability to dominate in October.
Crazy to ever again question if he can lead his team to a parade.
A physical specimen at 6 foot 7 and 282 pounds, Judge shattered the narrative that he is, at his core, a giant who comes up small in the postseason. He obliterated a fastball with a swing that will become a permanent part of franchise lore if the Yanks recover from what was an 0-2 deficit to beat Toronto in this Division Series.
They won the first of three all-or-nothing games 9-6 because their megastar — Mr. May or Mr. July or Mr. September, take your pick — finally grabbed Reggie Jackson’s month by the throat.
By the time he stepped into the box in the fourth inning, Judge already had two hits, including an RBI double. The Yankees were trailing 6-3, but Addison Barger had dropped a popup and Trent Grisham had worked a walk before Louis Varland was summoned from the pen to throw gas at the most feared slugger on the planet.
Judge got some real-time intel on the reliever from Giancarlo Stanton. Varland still smoked him with a 100-mph fastball to get to 0-2 in the count.
“After he blew my doors off on (that pitch),” Judge recalled, “I said, ‘Hey, just be ready. See a good pitch and drive it.’ ”
The fans involved themselves in the drama, trying to carry the captain to a signature October moment at last. They chanted “M-V-P” while he was staring out at a pitcher who was likely to dial it up to 100 one more time.
This time Varland’s four-seamer to No. 99 hit 99.7 on the radar, and as it exploded toward his hands, Judge somehow beat the pitch to its spot with his stunning hand speed, blasting it high into the left-field lights.
Judge stood at the plate and stared wide-eyed at the ball, pleading for it to stay fair. He couldn’t hear a thing, even as the crowd roared with anticipation. Everything froze in time until the ball crashed against the foul pole and kicked back into the playing field, making the stadium sound like the old place across the street sounded in the dynastic nineties.
Common sense said the wind should’ve sent that shot to the wrong side of the foul pole.
“I guess a couple of ghosts out there in Monument Park helped keep that fair,” Judge said.
He dramatically flipped his bat in the air and looked into his dugout as he started perhaps the sweetest home run trot of his career, wagging his index finger toward the field.
“You’re kinda floating around the bases,” Judge said.
His teammates in the dugout were just as delirious as the customers in the stands.
THE CAPTAIN 🫡#ALDS pic.twitter.com/t9QyevHdWp
— MLB (@MLB) October 8, 2025
The captain said he didn’t hear the crowd again until he was rounding third base. Judge did far more than tie a Game 3 that the Blue Jays were never winning after that moon shot. He took a lunar leap toward full acceptance in the Yankee legends club. He was desperate to carry his regular-season dominance into his sport’s tournament, especially since his vastly improved playoff numbers this year were widely dismissed before Tuesday night.
Judge was batting .444 with a .524 on-base percentage, and all anyone wanted to talk about was his brutal strikeout against Kevin Gausman with no outs, the bases loaded and the count full in the sixth inning of Game 2. The slugger took one of his lamest cuts of the year at a pitch that was low and outside, painting a feeble picture that looked worse when measured against Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s fireworks.
The singles and the good at-bats weren’t good enough. Judge is paid to survey a terrifying 6-1 Toronto lead in the third inning and to alter the vibe of an elimination game by ripping a run-scoring double.
He is paid to launch a tying three-run homer and then to make a diving catch of a sinking liner in the next inning that stopped the Blue Jays from retaking the lead. Judge was all over the field and all over the basepaths, extending a rundown between third base and home to get a teammate to third.
However, that forever fourth-inning swing was everything. It was the reason thousands of fans were singing Sinatra when it was all over. Though he made American League history with his 62nd homer three years ago, Judge was asked if this one against Toronto represented the biggest homer of his life.
“Probably my biggest home run was my first one in the big leagues,” he said of his shot against Tampa Bay on Aug. 13, 2016.
“You finally make it to The Show, and you don’t know if you’re good enough or not. So no matter what happened after that day, I could say I hit a home run in the big leagues.”
Aaron Judge can now say he hit a ton of home runs in the big leagues, including one in the playoffs that no witness will forget.
Truth is, very few people have played this sport like Judge played it in Game 3 against the Blue Jays.
Don’t ever again doubt this man’s ability to play baseball in October like he plays it every other month.
