Mark Madden: Yankees fan should have cashed in on Aaron Judge's remarkable accomplishment

Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees is making $19 million this year. He’s made $36 million during his career. He’s going to break the bank in free agency after the season.

On Tuesday, he hit his 60th home run. That’s in the Yankees’ 147th game. Judge got to 60 faster than Babe Ruth did in 1927. That’s remarkable.

The projected value for Judge’s 60th home-run ball is at least $150,000. It got caught by Michael Kessler, a 20-year-old college student who attended the game at Yankee Stadium. That $150k would cover some tuition, or perhaps some student loans Kessler won’t otherwise pay back.

Kessler gave Judge the ball. Not in exchange for $150,000. No, Kessler got a meet-and-greet with Judge that included three of Kessler’s college baseball teammates. Kessler also got four signed balls and an autographed bat (not the one used to hit the home run).

Here’s guessing Kessler isn’t a business major. What a mark.

At least nimrod ballhawk Zach Hample didn’t push kids out of the way and add Judge’s home run to his pathetic hoarding of over 12,000 baseballs.

Then again, Hample would have kept the ball, or made a better deal.

Kessler’s deal evoked the Native Americans selling Manhattan Island for $24 worth of beads and trinkets. Another bad bargain, this one struck in a neighboring borough.

Nothing is noble about what Kessler did. It’s all stupid.

Give Judge a hometown discount. Make him pay, say, $75k. Then again, Judge won’t give the Yankees a hometown discount in contract negotiations. Seventy-five thousand dollars is tip money to Judge. So is $150k. That kind of cash means nothing to the Yankees, either. If neither Judge nor the Yankees pony up, auction the ball off.

Kessler might turn out to be more loyal to the Yankees than Judge.

There was a time fans could legitimately romanticize their connection to the sports they’re passionate about. That’s because there was a time when athletes had to work offseason jobs. They lived in the same neighborhoods as fans. The connection existed.

Now, it doesn’t. The revenue is monstrous, the salaries are mammoth, and much of the expense trickles down to the citizens. The athletes are on pedestals far above the great unwashed.

Kessler had a chance to get something back. Instead, he was all “golly, gee whiz, Aaron Judge is a great Yankee, please stay, you’re so awesome.” Kessler got a momentary fake connection to Judge that would not have occurred in any other circumstance. They will never meet again.

It makes you wish Hample had caught that ball.

Judge’s accomplishment is amazing.

But, to expand on something previously cited in this space, the hype isn’t what it might be because really, there is no MLB single-season home-run record. There isn’t really a career home-run record, either.

Those records got forever ruined by PED use.

Barry Bonds has the single-season and career home-run marks, but he used PEDs. So, Bonds’ records don’t count.

Roger Maris has the single-season home-run record by a non-PED user, soon to be broken by Judge. Hank Aaron has the career high by a non-PED user. But those marks, while compiled cleanly, aren’t the most home runs.

So, there are no MLB home-run records. They won’t exist again until a clean hitter tops what Bonds did.