Aaron Judge in the Hall of the Home Run Kings

You can appreciate the achievement of Aaron Judge regardless of how you deal with the context around his record-breaking season.

In 1927, when Babe Ruth hit 60, he hit more home runs than 12 other (entirely white) teams. In 1961, Maris hit 61, shattering the notion that 60 was an insurmountable sum. In 2001 Barry Bonds either hit 73 home runs or he hit 0 home runs, there is no in-between. Aaron Judge has topped 60 in a season when no other player will likely surpass 45.

They are each the home-run kings of their respective eras — and none of them are villains.

As Judge pursued Maris and Sosa, there has been no shortage of “takes” on what exactly the standing single-season home run record is. Some outright claim it stands at 61, the last record seemingly unmarred by scandal. Others, less willing to outright invalidate Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa, fixate on the American League record — 61. Delineating by league is a cleaner way to not confront the question directly and yet still grant Judge a place in history. Many want to celebrate an accomplishment they are seeing achieved but have difficulty doing so without placing it in an “all-time” context.

In order to find the root cause of this dissonance we have to go back in time, but not to 1961. We can save some energy — for now just set your time machines to 1994.

Baseball was in a bad spot financially, and team owners saw fit to break the piggy bank that was player salaries. A salary cap was proposed to offset losses by ownerships, negotiations around a contract broke down, and a strike date was set. Antitrust legislation making its way through the Senate, which would have placed the MLB Players Association on a much stronger footing in negotiations with the owners, died in committee and the players went on strike. When the strike finally ended and the shortened 1995 season started, fans showed their ire and didn’t show up to the ballparks.

To put numbers to it: In 1993, the last full season prior to the strike, a little more than 70 million fans attended 2,269 games played across baseball — which comes to 30,964 fans per game. In 1995, a shortened 141-game season, fans per game averaged only 25,021. Overall that constitutes about a 28 percent decrease in total fan attendance — and payroll went up.

Owners emerged from the strike with their wrists slapped and less cash in their coffers. This remained the case through the mid-90s — indeed, fan attendance didn’t return to 1993 levels until 1998. McGwire, Sosa and Griffey were each on pace to come close to or surpass 61 and fans came out to see — nearly 71 million of them. The same held true all the way through 2001 when more than 72 million fans turned out to the ballpark — more than 29,000 fans per game. Home runs sell tickets, plain and simple.

Aaron Judge and his 62 home runs are a product of his era, just like every other record

The performance-enhancing drug (“PED”) era is indeed a scandal, but at the risk of sounding trite, the real PED wasn’t “cream” or “clear” injected into the body of Bonds but was spectacle injected into baseball. McGwire, Bonds and others are easy scapegoats, they’re low-hanging fruit. But the decision to allow conditions to persist that required a slugger wanting to remain competitive to make compromises they may not have wanted to make lands squarely on the shoulders of MLB.

Players are the faces of the sport, and owners want it to remain that way. When contract negotiations stall or team ownership fails to pay a homegrown player what they’re worth and they leave, the easy route is to point to the greed and selfishness of the player. Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and others were all allowed to do what was necessary to continue to put on the spectacle that put cash in the pockets of ownership. In both cases, they are heroes when tickets are on sale and villains when they’re no longer salable.

Baseball is the national pastime and through history, it has reflected back on us a portrait of the era it is played in. At times, we have found it difficult to look; but that is when we must maintain our gaze, unwavering. The PED era was permitted to endure because it was profitable for the powers that be to see it through. Now, it behooves those same powers to discard the players, mired in scandal and controversy. Ruth didn’t choose to play preintegration or to maintain the color barrier, and individual players in the PED era weren’t in a position to bring a stop to their widespread use. In each case there were powers that be that chose to maintain the status quo – players just played.

As fans, we also ask a lot of players. When a pitcher tears their ulnar collateral ligament (“UCL”), we ask that they, without question, endure surgery where a tendon is taken from another part of their body or a corpse to make the repair. Get it done, rehab, and get back on the mound. The same goes for hitters — get the bone chip removed or the flexor repaired and get back in the box. It would be inexcusable for a promising pitcher with a torn UCL to simply opt out of the surgery and announce their retirement. They are baseball players, it is their identity, and they must dedicate their lives and bodies to the sport for the time the sport will have them. To blame the players for doing what was medically necessary and professionally possible to perform to the best of their abilities is to pick and choose when we demand their complete devotion.

The sport evolves just as the society it is played in does and individual players do not control their eras, but plainly their eras control them. We needn’t invalidate the accomplishments of the past in service of finding a hero unblemished in every era we pull them forward into. The king is dead, long live the king.