Aaron Judge moves into eternity with 62nd home run to break AL record

Aaron Judge put a definitive stamp on one of the great single-season performances by any hitter in baseball history on Tuesday night, smashing his 62nd home run of the year to eclipse Roger Maris’s long-standing American League record and topple one of the most hallowed numbers in all of sports.

Before a crowd at Globe Life Field buzzing in anticipation, the New York Yankees slugger drove a slider from Texas Rangers right-hander Jesús Tinoco into the left field seats to lead off the top of the first inning in the second game of a doubleheader. Having bested Babe Ruth’s total of 60 for the 1927 Yankees six days ago, Judge finally surpassed Maris’s 61 in the penultimate game of the regular season – exactly 61 years after his predecessor set the mark for the 1961 Yankees.

Remember where you were when #AaronJudge made history. 6️⃣2️⃣ #AllRise pic.twitter.com/w4kbDJf5ZC

Few records have endured in the American sporting consciousness like Maris’s 61 home runs. Although the number was topped six times in the National League at the height of baseball’s steroid era – by Barry Bonds (the official major-league standard bearer with 73 in 2001), Mark McGwire (70 in 1998, 65 in 1999) and Sammy Sosa (66 in 1998, 64 in 2001 and 63 in 1999) – the Maris mark has stood the test of time in the American League since he famously chased down Ruth’s 60 on the final day of the season. And Maris’s record has stood untainted by the specter of performance-enhancing drugs that loomed over the game at the turn of the millennium, leading some to consider it the legitimate single-season record.

The stress of chasing down Ruth’s mark was so taxing that it famously, perhaps apocryphally, led to Maris’s hair falling out in clumps. While Judge’s pursuit