In the history of baseball, there are just two rookies who have hit more than 50 home runs in a season. Both of them play in New York. The first to do it, in 2017, was Aaron Judge, a.k.a. "All Rise." The second to do it was Pete Alonso, known as "Polar Bear," two years later. Each had a season that felt like one long Home Run Derby, after each won the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game.

Judge will turn 29 in April, while Alonso just turned 26 in December. Judge has played on better teams than Alonso, with a lot more home run pop around him in the batting order. But he has also had a hard time staying on the field for three years running, having missed 142 of the 384 regular season games the Yankees have played during that time. Alonso? He has missed a grand total of four games over his two seasons in the big leagues.

So here’s the question:

If you could only choose one to build around for the next several years, which one would you pick?

Of course, the answer would have been easy after Judge was Rookie of the Year in 2017, when he ended up second to Jose Altuve in the American League MVP voting. That was the year when he did stay on the field. Did he ever. He played 155 games, had 542 official at-bats, 154 hits and 127 walks, 52 homers, 114 RBIs and a slash line of .284/.422/.627 (1.049 OPS). In a world where nobody cared how many times you struck out if you hit the way he did, the Yankees didn’t care that Judge struck out 208 times.

Then, he missed 50 games in 2018, 60 in '19 and didn’t even play half of the Yankees’ games in the shortened '20 campaign. You can imagine why all of Yankees Universe held its collective breath on Wednesday night when Judge was hit in the back by a 95 mph fastball thrown by the Blue Jays' Alek Manoah. No. 99 was nearly pulled from the game by interim Yankees manager Carlos Mendoza before he got to first base.

“He’s fine,” Mendoza said later, explaining that Judge wasn’t going to play much longer that night anyway.

Still, Yankees fans know the various things that have happened to Judge since 2017, including a broken bone in his wrist in July of '18. Even little things are treated like big things with the big guy -- the way they are with Giancarlo Stanton, the other big (6-foot-6) guy on their team with a 59-homer season on his resume.

Judge played 27 games and logged 84 at-bats for the Yankees in 2016, hitting four homers along the way. Nobody knew he would come on the way he did the following season. But Yankees fans knew he was coming -- just because he was 6 feet 7 inches, built like a tight end and impossible to miss.

It was different with Alonso, who was no sure thing to even make it north with the Mets when he got to Port St. Lucie, Fla., in 2019. It is why his rookie year was even more surprising than Judge’s, as he became the greatest single-season home run hitter in the history of his team en route to winning his own Rookie of the Year Award.

Alonso would end up playing 161 games in his rookie year. He had 597 at-bats and scored 103 runs. He batted .260 to Judge’s .284 mark in 2017, even though he ended up with one more hit. He only walked 72 times, posted a .358 on-base percentage and .583 slugging percentage (.941 OPS) and struck out 183 times. The Mets star didn’t get nearly enough love from MVP voters, mostly because his club finished 86-76 and didn’t make the postseason. It doesn’t change the fact that Alonso was as valuable to his team that year as any player in the National League.

Everybody knows what happened to Alonso in the abbreviated 2020 season. He only hit .231, even though his home run and RBI numbers projected to 45 homers and right around 100 RBIs over a 162-game campaign. Now, the Mets have added Francisco Lindor to their batting order and even bolstered the power behind Alonso with James McCann, their new catcher. It is also worth mentioning that Alonso, even in a losing season for his team, ended up playing 57 out of 60 games in '20. He is a horse. You can place just as big of a bet on him to have a big year in Queens as you can on Judge to do the same in the Bronx.

The other day, he hit a grand slam -- one he called a “birthday bomb” for his mom, and said this afterward:

"I feel like my swing is getting there. I'm really happy with being able to drive the ball to the big part of the field -- whether it be center field or dead right field. For me, I pride myself on being able to take the ball to the big part of the yard. And if I hit it hard, it's gonna go a long way.”

Two homegrown, under-30 home run guys in New York at the same time. Two who already have 50-homer seasons in the books. Both Home Run Derby champs and former Rookies of the Year. If you’re choosing up sides, which one would you pick first?