Baby Bombers Read online

  As that 1996 team broke the seal on the newly-constructed Legends Field facility in Tampa, Florida, Williams recalled that Torre told his players, “‘You’ve got two rules with me. You play hard, and you be on time. If you do that, I’ll go through a wall for you.’ He did, and he gave us that confidence to know that if we did those things, we were going to be fine.”

  There were in-season maneuvers that bolstered the squad, adding Strawberry, Graeme Lloyd, Luis Sojo, and Hayes, but perhaps the most crucial moves were the ones not made. Panicked by Jeter’s inconsistent fielding in the spring, Steinbrenner suggested trading Rivera for light-hitting infielder Felix Fermin. The dynasty could have ended before it began––Rivera would have been in Seattle and Jeter banished to Triple-A. Instead, Rivera was setting up for World Series Most Valuable Player John Wetteland while Jeter earned honors as the AL’s Rookie of the Year.

  “That was a gutsy call from The Boss,” Rivera said. “To have four youngsters on the team, that was a gutsy call. We were anxious and we wanted to do something, because we knew that we belonged in the big leagues.”

  It was the first title for many, including Cashman, who was then the Yankees’ assistant general manager under Bob Watson. Cashman recalls cheering from Watson’s private box on the suite level of the old Stadium when Lemke fouled out to Hayes, then tagging along with many other staffers to continue the celebration at a watering hole on the Upper East Side. On their way, they discovered that the championship had turned the city upside down in euphoria.

  “People were on top of cars,” Cashman said. “It was just a complete block party of entire Manhattan. It was just truly amazing.”

  Yet if the Yankees thought a title gave them license to rest, Steinbrenner quickly corrected that. Cashman was among the groggy group nursing coffee a few mornings later while they boarded buses from Yankee Stadium, preparing for a celebratory ride along Broadway. It was the city’s first baseball title since the Mets defeated the Red Sox in 1986, and Cashman smiled when he saw that Mets owner Fred Wilpon took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Daily News, congratulating Steinbrenner on bringing a title back to the city.

  “I said to myself, ‘Oh, George must be in all his glory, the Wilpons are taking a knee and we’re king of New York again,’” Cashman said. “Then I got off the bus when we arrived down the Canyon of Heroes and literally first step off the bus, there was The Boss. This was our first rodeo, but not his. He had choreographed out exactly how the parade would be and where people would be. I remember him screaming at our players, Boggs, Leyritz and Wetteland: ‘Get your wives off the float!’”

  Steinbrenner’s plan, as he loudly informed Yankees vice president of marketing Debbie Tymon, had been to have the players riding atop floats while their wives were assigned to the lower level of the double-decker buses that were also rolling along the parade route.

  “He was ballistic,” Cashman said. “I said to myself, ‘He’s a world champion, but he’s a perfectionist. If he can’t be happy now, I don’t know if we’ll ever make him happy.’ It was 8:00 a.m. and he was just crushing our guys. Guys were looking at The Boss yelling at them, and then they were looking at their ‘boss,’ and they had to pick between which boss, the wives or the Boss. The wives stayed, but he was not happy.”

  Fortunately, there would be more parades to orchestrate.

  Flash forward twenty years to the nostalgic atmosphere that awaited to celebrate that special club, the air thick with tales of “remember when,” and you have a sense of the atmosphere that enveloped Aaron Judge as he walked into the Yankees’ clubhouse for the first time as a big-league player. His day would be fueled by adrenaline; Judge had been dining with his parents at a Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant in Rochester, New York, prior to midnight, ready to dig into a postgame bite when RailRiders manager Al Pedrique wandered over to their table.

  “He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’d better hurry up with this meal. You’ve got to be up in New York tomorrow,’” Judge said. “So, pretty special. At first, it was kind of a shock, but he meant it and it was pretty cool.”

  Judge’s parents, Patty and Wayne, had been looking for an opportunity to meet up with the RailRiders for weeks, seeing a few games at PNC Field in Moosic, Pennsylvania, before accompanying the team on a road trip. They had perfect timing. The Judges paid their bill, piled into a rental car, and drove through the night to cover the 336 miles between the barbecue joint and Yankee Stadium, arriving in New York after 6:00 a.m.

  Now-retired teachers from California’s San Joaquin County, where they instructed students in physical education and leadership, Patty and Wayne Judge adopted Aaron the day after he was born in April 1992. Judge’s older brother, John, was also adopted and is currently an English teacher in Korea. Wayne Judge once told the New York Post that during pediatric check-ups, Aaron was always at the top of his age group, and that doctors had taken note of his large hands and feet.

  “We kind of joked that he looked like the Michelin Tire baby,” he said. “It wasn’t long before the four ounces of formula was just the appetizer and it had to be the formula with the oatmeal to pacify him.”

  The major summer event in Judge’s bucolic hometown of Linden, California is the annual cherry festival, and Judge recalls the 7½ square mile area of shady walnut groves, peach orchards, and vineyards as being “a perfect environment to grow up in.” He quickly earned a reputation as a special athlete; Judge’s tee-ball opponents scattered when he came to the plate, unwilling to risk bodily injury by fielding his hard grounders and line drives.

  “It was just a small community,” Judge said. “I had a mom in every single house down the street. I had people always looking out for me and people in the community looking out for me. Growing up in something like that was something special. I always had a place to go and there was a friend on every corner you looked.”

  Judge said he has never had any contact with his biological parents and has not spoken publicly about his ethnicity. He said that he was about ten or eleven years old when he came home with a question that Patty and Wayne—both of whom are Caucasian—had anticipated would one day be asked.

  “I think it was like, ‘I don’t look like you, Mom. I don’t look like you, Dad. Like, what’s going on here?’” Judge said. “They just kind of told me I was adopted. I was like, ‘OK, that’s fine with me.’ You’re still my mom, the only mom I know. You’re still my dad, the only dad I know. Nothing really changed. I never really asked any questions after that. There’s no need to.”

  Judge said he hardly remembers the conversation because it was not that important to him. When his parents asked if he had any questions, his response had been, “OK, can I go outside and play?’

  Already standing six-foot-three as a sophomore, he’d shot up another four inches prior to that senior season, and opponents often simply refused to pitch to him. More than a few times, scouts asked coach Joe Pimbio Sr. to set up the batting cage following one of Linden’s games because Judge hadn’t been given anything to hit that afternoon.

  Judge would then good-naturedly hit for another hour, with a dozen or so scouts roaming the outfield to shag fly balls. Though Judge loved watching Giants slugger Barry Bonds, he’d also been a hurler, showcasing a low 90s fastball and a sharp curveball to go 9-3 with a 0.88 ERA in his senior year. With 65 strikeouts and 25 walks, there was a legitimate debate over whether Judge’s future path should be at the plate or on the mound.

  When Oakland area scout Jermaine Clark filed a breathless report on the Linden High first baseman and pitcher, calling him an “untapped monster,” the A’s invited Judge to work out at the Coliseum. As Oakland called Judge’s name in the thirty-first round of the 2010 draft, Judge’s parents told him that the decision was his to make, but that he should consider the value of continuing his studies.

  “They wanted me to always make sure I put education first and make sure I prioritized everything,” Judge said. “If I was going to make plans, stick to the
m. Make sure I’m on a tight schedule and make sure I don’t miss anything. I think having that background in education really helped them give me some of the qualities as a teacher.

  “It was tough at times growing up. I wanted to go outside and play with my friends or play some video games, but they were tough on me. They’d say, ‘Hey, you’ve got homework to do. You’ve got to finish your math homework and science homework, then if you have time left over before dinner you can go play,’ something like that. I didn’t like it as a kid, but looking back on it, I really appreciate what they did for me.”

  Judge’s performance in other sports forced him to make difficult choices. During the 2009–2010 school year, Judge averaged 18.2 points and 12.8 rebounds per game as Linden’s center. He would later say that his favorite memory of high school basketball was the bonding experience Judge and his teammates had on the streets of Linden, picking up garbage as part of a community service program. On the football field, Judge reeled in 54 catches, setting single-season school records in receiving yards (969) and touchdowns (17).

  One of Linden’s most effective plays, as coach Mike Huber remembers it, was to send Judge down the field with what they called the “Jump Pass.” If Linden was within the red zone, Huber would signal for the play by raising both hands in the air, as though he were signaling a touchdown. The quarterback would lob the ball above the defense, and it usually didn’t matter if the opponents knew it was coming; they couldn’t defend it.

  Judge’s high school senior yearbook took note of his athletic endeavors, including an action shot of him dunking a basketball, while his classmates tagged him with the superlative of “Most Flirty.” Seemingly every day, the Judges received another invitation on collegiate letterhead. Stanford, Michigan State, Notre Dame, and UCLA were among the programs expressing interest in the wide receiver/defensive end; a coach at UCLA told Judge that they would probably ask him to put thirty to forty pounds on and convert him into a tight end.

  Many believed that Judge could have had an NFL career, had he wanted one. Late in 2017, when an autumnal crisp began to fill the Bronx air, he’d occasionally run pass routes across the Yankee Stadium outfield with Matt Holliday, who took the opportunity to revisit his own days of high school quarterback stardom. But baseball had been Judge’s strongest passion since those early days terrorizing T-ball opponents, and so he was off to Fresno State, where he declared kinesiology as his major.

  Aaron Judge was selected by the Athletics in the 30th round of the 2010 draft but opted to attend Fresno State, where he was named the Western Athletic Conference’s Freshman of the Year after hitting .358. (Courtesy of Fresno State Athletics)

  “It was the first time being away,” Judge said. “You’re kind of on your own, learning the things that your parents did for you. Now you’re on your own and nobody is there for you. You’ve got to grow up and adapt and learn, otherwise you’re going to sink and have a miserable time in college.”

  Though he had been drafted by the Yanks in June 2013, a quadriceps injury sustained during a base running drill kept Judge from beginning his climb to the majors until 2014, when he made his professional debut with Class-A Charleston. Infielder Tyler Wade, then entering his first full pro season, recalls meeting Judge on their first day together as members of the RiverDogs.

  “He was a gentle giant,” Wade said. “I was eighteen years old and didn’t really know what to expect. He came through the clubhouse and he was like the first guy to introduce himself to me. I was like, ‘This is a really nice guy.’ I think we went out to lunch and ever since, we’ve been friends.”

  Judge hit .333 with nine homers and 45 RBIs in 65 games to earn selection as a South Atlantic League Midseason All-Star. Wade said that Judge quickly established himself as “a man amongst boys,” remarking that he had never seen anyone hit the ball farther or harder.

  “It was like the first month. We were in Charleston and I was at second base, and he hit a ball probably ankle-high at me,” Wade recalled. “I was at second base, getting my secondary [lead]. I didn’t know what to do, so I laid down and the ball skipped right over me. He hit it so hard, I didn’t know what to do.”

  Judge was promoted to Class-A Tampa in June of that season, where he batted .283 with eight homers and 33 RBIs in 66 games while getting a taste of the pitcher-friendly Florida State League. Judge made a positive impression quickly on Tampa manager Al Pedrique, who recalled Judge as being humble, respectful, and easy to coach.

  “I was very impressed with his makeup,” Pedrique said. “The one thing I realized on a daily basis was his work ethic was great. I had to really help him a little bit in having a routine in all the areas, but for the most part when I had him the second half of that year, you could tell the kid knew what he wanted to do to get better.”

  James Rowson, then the Yankees’ minor league hitting coordinator, also said that Judge’s determination stood out at that early stage. Rowson observed that once Judge figured something out, he had the ability to maintain and hold on to it.

  “He always wanted to know ‘Why?’, which I think is the most important question that a young hitter can ask,” Rowson said. “Any time you’re making adjustments or you’re talking about the game, it was like, ‘Hey, tell me why you want me to do that?’ When guys ask that question, you really know that they’re going to make it their own. If they understand it, they’re going to make it their own and they’re going to repeat it and do it more consistently. His ability to not just do things, but to understand why he was doing things, was pretty special.”

  With Judge’s 78 RBIs leading all Yankees minor leaguers, he was selected to participate in the Arizona Fall League, where he hit .278 with four homers and 14 RBIs in 24 games for the Scottsdale Scorpions. The Scottsdale roster was comprised of some of the top talent in the Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, and Giants farm systems, many of whom were getting their first opportunity to see Judge on a daily basis.

  The Mets’ Brandon Nimmo, one of Judge’s teammates that fall, said that the Scorpions “were in awe of him” and immediately started making comparisons to Giancarlo Stanton, who had led the National League in homers for the first time in 2014 while finishing second in the MVP race to Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw. The Scorpions had their own version of that talent to watch, gawking when Judge would connect on hard liners that improbably carried over the outfield walls or uncorked an impressive throw with his strong right arm.

  “We all knew that he could break us if he wanted to,” Nimmo said. “That’s the thing about him; he never imposes that. He’s a very gentle soul, and I appreciate him very much for that because he can throw his weight around very easily.…A great friend, a great leader, and then he has that huge presence about him. I just loved being around Aaron and being his teammate, and then secondly getting to see that he’s quite a talent on the baseball field.”

  In the AFL, teams wear the home and road uniforms of their big-league organizations, with only a customized cap to identify them as being on the same team. Scottsdale’s caps were black with a red embroidered arachnid on the front, and the mish-mash of temporary teammates bonded during their six weeks together.

  Since the first pitches of games were normally scheduled for noon, the players had some post-game free time to explore what Scottsdale—once described by The New York Times as “a desert version of Miami’s South Beach”—had to offer. Nimmo recalls a few lengthy meals at Mastro’s City Hall, a high-end steak and seafood lounge where he broke bread with Judge, Greg Bird, and P.J. Pilittere, a former minor league catcher who had transitioned into one of the Yankees’ most respected hitting instructors.

  “They had this tomahawk ribeye that was like thirty-six ounces and we ordered three or four of those. It was awesome,” Nimmo said. “We were all grabbing the bones at the end and gnawing on them. We had a lot of fun together out there, talking about what the major leagues would be like if we were so lucky to get there. A lot of dreaming.”

  The nutrition-ric
h red meat, as well as the development time in the desert, proved beneficial. Judge split his 2015 campaign between Double-A Trenton and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, batting a combined .255 with 20 homers and 72 RBIs. He led all Yankees minor leaguers in homers and RBIs, enjoying a fourteen-game hitting streak while wowing his teammates with a series of awesome BP displays at Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton.

  “Some of the same mutual friends that I have that were in the lower levels were saying, ‘This guy is awesome. You’re going to love playing with him,’” said Rob Refsnyder, who counts Judge among his closest friends in baseball. “We had a similar family background, being adopted. He’s pretty down to earth, straightforward, honest. We clicked right away.”

  One of the better-regarded hitting prospects in New York’s system, Refsnyder batted .241 over 91 games with the Yankees before moving on to the Blue Jays organization in 2017. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Refsnyder was adopted at five months old by Jane and Clint Refsnyder, who raised him near the Pacific Ocean in picturesque Laguna Hills, California. The adopted-son link came up only briefly; Judge told Refsnyder that he maintained no curiosity about his biological parents, saying that his adoption had been meant to be.

  “What impressed me the most about Aaron was he was an awesome teammate,” Refsnyder said. “He could be struggling, but he was still the same every day at the ballpark. I think that’s what New York should be most excited about. He’s very self-driven. He sets goals and every day he works at it. I think that’s indicative of his parents. His parents are awesome, awesome people.”

  Promoted to Triple-A in late June, Judge participated in the All-Star Futures Game at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, then returned to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to open 2016, where he batted .270 with 19 homers and 65 RBIs in 93 games. His place in the Yankees organization could be directly traced through Nick Swisher’s departure as a free agent following the 2012 season, as Swisher netted New York a compensation draft choice when he signed a four-year, $56 million deal with the Indians. The Yankees had used that pick to select Judge.