Aaron Judge’s Yankees teammates enjoyed his home run record chase for obvious reasons: the history and the fact that Judge’s 62 homers — one more than Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League record of 61 — played a major role in them winning the AL East.
But the pursuit served another purpose: It put the Yankees into a playoff-type atmosphere for most of the final five weeks of the season.
As Aaron Boone pointed out this week, once Judge hit his 50th homer of the season in Anaheim on Aug. 29, the reality of the outfielder catching Maris started to feel real.
The attention grew as the Yankees played in front of bigger crowds than usual and with significantly more media attention — even for them.
