Whenever Aaron Judge hits a home run, especially one of those prodigious blasts when you hear the crack of the bat echo throughout the ballpark, I'm reminded of late Negro Leagues star Buck O'Neil, who said he heard three batters in his lifetime where the ball sounded different off their bat from all others: Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson and Bo Jackson.
O'Neil never had the opportunity to see Judge -- but I'm pretty sure Judge would be a fourth hitter on that list.
The New York Yankees slugger is on one of the great heaters in baseball history. Judge just completed a 50-game stretch when he hit .398/.507/.937 with 25 home runs -- and it has come against the highest level of pitching in the game's history. Just to give you perspective on the kind of company he keeps: The only players with a 1.430 OPS over a 50-game span have been Ruth (five different years), Lou Gehrig (once), Ted Williams (once), Barry Bonds (four seasons) and now Judge.
We're past the technical halfway point in games played, although we're not yet at the All-Star break, which is the traditional halfway point of the season. To put some of Judge's numbers in perspective, let's compare him to the best totals in history from the first half (the All-Star Game began in 1933, so we're only looking at since then) -- and, since the first half doesn't always feature the same number of games, we'll also compare Judge to other historic seasons through 90 team games (the Yankees' total through Friday).
