Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge is the New York Yankees' franchise centerpiece, a generational power hitter who rewrote the American League home run record and bet on himself with one of the richest contracts in baseball history.
Aaron Judge: The Yankee Who Owns the AL Home Run Record
Aaron Judge is the right fielder (and captain) of the New York Yankees, widely regarded as the best player in the American League and one of the two or three best in all of baseball. He burst into mainstream consciousness in 2017 with a Rookie of the Year season, but it was 2022 that cemented his legend: he hit 62 home runs, breaking Roger Maris’s 61-year-old American League record and winning the AL MVP unanimously.
At 6-foot-7 and 282 pounds, Judge is physically unlike almost any player who has ever played the game. His combination of elite contact rate (for a power hitter), plate discipline, and raw power makes him the kind of talent that appears once a generation. He is also widely praised as a clubhouse leader and model professional, hence the Yankees naming him team captain in 2022, the first Yankee to hold that title since Derek Jeter.
People search Judge constantly because he is always in the thick of MVP races, home run chases, and contract news. His 2022 contract negotiation saga, in which he turned down a reported $213.5 million extension before the season, went out and had the greatest season in AL history, then signed a nine-year, $360 million deal, became one of the most talked-about stories in recent sports business history.
Off the field, Judge keeps a relatively private life compared to most athletes of his stature. He married Samantha Bracksieck in 2021 and the couple welcomed a son in 2022, though Judge has kept family details largely out of the spotlight. His adopted parents, Patty and Wayne Judge, are both educators who raised him in Linden, California, a backstory that is itself well-documented and frequently cited as part of his grounded public persona.