Judge became the fastest player in MLB history to reach 300 home homers.
Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees made history again on Wednesday night, becoming the fastest player in MLB history to smash 300 career home runs during the team’s 10-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field.
But not before the White Sox made Judge “mad.”
Right before Judge blasted his 300th career home run, a three-run bomb in the eighth inning, the White Sox decided to intentionally walk the hot Juan Soto in order to bring Judge up. After the game, the imposing Yankees slugger revealed that the decision “fueled” him to go deep.
“I was mad about the intentional walk, so that kind of fueled it,” Judge told Yes Network’s Meredith Marakovits in a postgame interview. “Usually 3-0, I’ll take a pitch, see it, and then pass it around to the next man. But in that case, if they don’t want to pitch you, you have to follow through.”
The White Sox interim manager had told the media before the series that he meant to be “extremely careful” with Judge, and the team had mostly followed through, allowing four hits, none of which were home runs, to the Yankees outfielder and walking him three times entering Wednesday’s game.
But Sizemore wasn’t taking any chances with Soto, who homered three times on Tuesday and again in the first inning Wednesday. So he walked Soto to pitch Judge. Judge took it personally, hitting his historic 300th career home run.
Judge reached the milestone in just 955 career games and 3,431 at-bats, beating the previous records of 1,087 by Ralph Kiner and 3,831 by Babe Ruth.
“Those are some guys that have done a lot of great things in this game,” Mr. Judge added. “You toss a lot of those names around to people who don’t know baseball, but they recognize who they are. “It’s a unique group to be in.”
