BOSTON -- Aaron Judge might not have known that his drive toward Fenway Park's center-field flagpole in the eighth inning on Friday night represented a historic milestone, but the slugger has long believed that this Yankees lineup would be able to mash alongside any team in the game, past or present.
Judge belted the last of four Bombers blasts in Friday's 11-6 win over the Red Sox, swelling the club's season tally to 264 homers and equaling a record set by the 1997 Mariners. Gary Sanchez, Aaron Hicks and Luke Voit also cleared the fences, giving the Yanks 18 innings to make the mark their own.

"That's exciting," Judge said. "We've got a lot of guys on this team with a lot of thump. They've been doing it all year, especially once we added Voit. What he's been doing for us has been huge. Now that we've tied the record, let's go out there and break it."

The Yankees have homered in 30 of 34 games since Aug. 24 (62 homers total) and have hit four in 16 games this season, the most of any big league club.
Manager Aaron Boone didn't realize his club had tied the all-time record until there was a scramble to retrieve Judge's home run ball.
"The fact that it's come from so many different people, I think that has been the cool thing," Boone said. "If you would have told us we were going to break that record at the beginning of the year, you probably would have thought Giancarlo [Stanton] is hitting 50 or 60, Judge is hitting 50 or 60.

"Because of injuries and different things, that hasn't been the case. We've gotten a lot of production from a lot of different people who have had a big hand in that."
Sanchez started the fun with a solo homer off Red Sox starter Christopher Johnson in the third inning, clearing the Green Monster for his 18th homer of the season and snapping the team's tie with the 2010 Rangers (260), who now rank third all time.

In his return to the lineup, Hicks hit his 27th of the season off William Cuevas in the fourth; Voit slugged his 13th off Thomas Pomeranz in the seventh and Judge tied the record with a drive to center off Bobby Poyner, his 27th.

"We talked about [the record] once we started getting closer, especially early in the year, when we looked at our lineup and what type of firepower we had," Judge said. "It's great to tie it, and hopefully these next couple of days, we'll hit a couple more."
The solo shot was Judge's first since returning from a seven-week stint on the disabled list with a fractured right wrist. Though he downplayed the significance of that, it represents an encouraging sign for a lineup that will be banking on his power in the postseason.
"The power and stuff like that will come once the wrist keeps getting stronger," Judge said. "I've just been worried about having quality at-bats. If I swing at the right pitches, usually I'll hit a couple out."