Reasons to make Judge a lifelong Yankee

It is down to a week now before Opening Day, always the best beginning in all of sports, as much of a national baseball holiday as we have in this country, all over the baseball map. But for the Yankees, in this particular spring, next Thursday is supposed to be the end of something, too -- at least as it involves Aaron Judge, their best player and the one who became the face of the franchise after Derek Jeter left.

Judge, who is about to turn 30, will sign the long-term contract extension he is seeking, one that might very well make him the kind of Yankee-for-life that Jeter was. Or he won’t. Jeter was No. 2. Judge is No. 99. The big man, with that big number, is obviously looking for big, star money before he could become eligible to become a free agent at the end of this season.

And here is why it is hard to believe that something won’t get worked out -- probably before April 7 -- to Judge’s satisfaction and the satisfaction of the Yankees, and their fans:

Because it is the best thing for him and it is the best thing for them.

Because it makes way too much sense for a player who already understands what a great baseball thing it is to be a great player at Yankee Stadium, on either side of 161st Street in the Bronx.

Start with this: There are five players in the history of the Yankees who have hit more than 50 home runs in a season. The first four are Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Alex Rodriguez (he hit 54 in 2007, the year when he sought, and got, a long-term extension).

The fifth is Aaron Judge.

“I think we’ll get something worked out,” Giancarlo Stanton, who once hit 59 homers in a season himself, said about Judge’s contract circumstances the other day.

There is a difference between Stanton and Judge, and not just because Judge is listed as being one inch taller at 6-foot-7. But Stanton came from Miami. Yankees fans consider Judge one of their own. The team drafted him and signed him, and before too very long, he was All Rise Judge, hitting 52 home runs and breaking what was then the all-time rookie for home runs in 2017, when the Yankees came as close as they have come -- Game 7, American League Championship Series against the Astros -- to making it back to the World Series for the first time since '09.

Judge had been injured a fair amount since then, and the Yankees are allowed to factor that into an offer that will probably take Judge into his late 30s. He missed 60 games one season and 50 in another, and didn’t even play half the team’s season during the COVID-shortened season of 2020. But he got healthy again last season, hit 39 homers and was fourth in the AL MVP balloting after being second to Jose Altuve in ’17.

He is not just the Yankees’ best player. He is their most popular player. They have never had anybody this big before, this talented. They watch him carry himself with old Yankees grace. At his best, he is one of the players in the sport that people most want to watch. Now he wants to get paid. He saw Francisco Lindor score a $341 million contract last March almost as soon as he joined New York’s other team via a trade with Cleveland.

Judge said he wanted to have this worked out before Opening Day, because he didn’t want to be talking about this all season. He didn’t present this as some kind of ultimatum. But he is right to want to have this worked out before Gerrit Cole (on whom the Yankees lavished a $324 million free-agent contract) throws his first pitch to the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium next Thursday afternoon. For their part, the Yankees seem to have been talking about their offer since the moment the lockout ended.

“Between now and Opening Day, we’ve said we’ll make an offer and he’ll obviously receive an offer, and all the conversations will be had, will have taken place and will either resolve into a multiyear deal or it won’t,” general manager Brian Cashman said last week.

And here is what Judge said when he reported to Yankees camp in Tampa, Fla.:

"There's no better place to play on this planet. I strongly believe that and I've been vocal about that. I want to stay here in pinstripes. So if that happens, it happens, but if it comes to it that it doesn't, like I said before, I'll enjoy my memories here."

The Yankees have spent a lot of money on a lot of star players over the past 20 years. Now it is time for them to do the same with one of their homegrown stars. You have to believe that when All Rise Judge runs out to right field next Thursday at the Stadium, the fans out there will not simply be rising up to welcome him back home. They will be cheering the fact that he isn’t leaving.