As Aaron Judge flirts with another historic season, now on pace for 61 home runs, Evan asked his fill-in co-host, Ian O’Connor, if the Yankee captain could ever finish as an equal to the captain who preceded him.
“Derek Jeter is the king of this city over the last 40 years,” Evan said. “There’s nobody close. Eli isn’t close. Even LT isn’t close in terms of sheer popularity and what he accomplished on and off the field.
“We are currently watching a baseball player that plays on his team in his city who, from a talent perspective, has already passed him. Is there anything Aaron Judge can possibly do to surpass Derek Jeter?”
Who better to ask than O’Connor, who wrote “The Captain,” an extensive biography on Jeter, back in 2011?
“I think he just needs to win one,” O’Connor said of Judge. “He’s better, everyone knows that…I have been watching baseball seriously for 50 years. Peak Aaron Judge is the second best player I’ve ever seen. Barry Bonds would be first.”
Jeter believes it will take more than one title, and it will take some monster Octobers for Judge given his struggles in the playoffs compared to Jeter’s long list of clutch performances when the lights were shining the brightest.
“I think Jeter’s got the [Michael] Jordan treatment,” Evan said. “We saw Jeter win so much at such a young age…he feels like the definition of a champion. I don’t know if one title would be enough for fans to say, ‘Yeah, he surpassed the ultimate winner.’ What I’m saying isn’t fair, I know that. But it also feels like the reality, that the mystique of Jeter is almost impenetrable.”