(SP) – Yankees rookie Aaron Judge brought the home crowd to its feet last night when he successfully connected with a pitched baseball, ending his streak of approximately 100 consecutive swings-and-misses.
“What a night!” said Yankees fan Jeff Myers. “I brought my sons to the game and they said all they wanted to see what for Judge to make contact once. That’s obviously a big ask, like saying you want to see a no-hitter, but he came through. This will be a night my kids never forget. It reminds me of when I was a kid in 1993 and saw Kevin Maas weakly ground out to the pitcher. What a memory.”
After opening the season red-hot, Judge has struggled mightily since the All-Star break, leading to a significant change in expectations from the Yankee faithful.
“I was all-in on him at the start of the year, so I’m not jumping off the bandwagon now,” said season ticket holder Don Velazquez. “All of the greats go through stretches where they somehow managed to strike out 155 times in just 38 plate appearances. He’ll snap out of it.”
Judge said that he will keep working on his game but still feels he has a long way to go to get back to where he was earlier in the season.
“I’ll be honest, I decided to just close my eyes when the pitcher wound up and then swing,” he said after the game. “Nothing else had worked, so I thought that might be worth it. Fortunately, the ball was thrown directly into my bat. Hopefully that happens again soon.”
