If there ever was a worthy successor to the Iron Horse, Aaron Judge surely is the one. Lou Gehrig, rather than Babe Ruth was the iconic Yankee. Quietly putting up HOF numbers every year without Ruth's bombast, he was the anchor of perhaps the greatest team ever assembled. Judge has been doing it for 5 years, when healthy and is finally being recognized for his accomplishments.
I know it seems like a symbol of our dysfunctional society to pay a man hundreds of millions of dollars to hit and throw a baseball. The fact the Yankee club is worth more than 6 billion gives the lie to that argument. Hal Steinbrenner needs Judge more than Judge needs the Yankees. It was within his power to extract even more money had he wanted to push, but like Gehrig, number 99 chose a legacy. Now, it is up to him to put up the numbers for at least the next 5 or 6 years to justify his place in Cooperstown.
The larger issue here is an indictment of the entire player compensation system. For the first several years of a player's career they are basically indentured servants, performing for peanuts in the hope of a free agent payday. Many are injured and never get to cash in. The average career length for a MLB ballplayer is only a few years, and Judge's trajectory is the exception, not the rule. It will take union militancy for ballplayers to adjust the system to eliminate abuses. In the meantime, elite players like Judge will reap outsize rewards. More power to them.
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