Aaron Judge’s new contract with the Yankees may have come with an additional bonus.
Now that Judge is tied to the franchise for the next nine years, there is growing speculation that he’ll be named the 16th captain in Yankees history. Judge’s teammates have repeatedly endorsed his leadership abilities in recent years, and the consensus around baseball is that the Yankees appear poised to formalize that leadership position.
Captains are an oddity in baseball. While NHL and NFL captains have formal duties (like conferring with on-ice officials and calling the coin toss) in addition to wearing the big C on their jerseys, no MLB team has had an official captain since David Wright and Adrian Beltré retired after the 2018 season. It might have made sense for someone like Joey Votto or Yadier Molina to be named captain by their team, but most clubs don’t bother officially sanctioning a guy’s role as a team leader. The guys in the clubhouse don’t need to be told who to respect.
It’s easy to scoff at the mythology around the Yankees’ captaincy as just some goofy, dusty tradition that the stuffy, smug Yankees care about too much. But it’s clear that the captaincy is something that Judge’s teammates consider important.
“He’s meant everything,” pitcher Nestor Cortes said during this year’s ALCS. “I think I’m able to say that if he’s back here next year, he’s our captain; he’s the next captain. We follow everything he does. He leads by example. He’s not really a guy that comes out and screams at anybody. But if he has to, that’s his job. I think he's earned that right to keep us in check.”
Anthony Rizzo, who also re-signed with the Yankees this winter, agrees.
“I think the fitting thing would be for him to do a press conference receiving not only the money he deserves, but also the captain title that comes with it,” Rizzo said after the Yankees were eliminated by the Astros.
The captain title is not something to be taken lightly, especially with the Yankees. They’re baseball’s most storied franchise and the list of Yankees captains evokes that history. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Thurman Munson. Don Mattingly. Derek Jeter. Although, according to a 1986 New York Times article, “Munson and [Graig] Nettles did not always seem to take their captaincies seriously,” former owner George Steinbrenner did. When Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry were named co-captains in ’86, Steinbrenner made their teammates put on their home pinstripes for the event announcing the new captains.
At various times it has seemed like the Yankees could do away with the tradition of the captaincy. How do you name a new captain after Gehrig was forced to retire due to ALS? Or after Munson was killed in a plane crash? (In fact, after Gehrig’s retirement in 1939, the Yankees didn’t name another captain until Munson in ’76.) More recently, Jeter became so synonymous with the title that he was often referred to as just “The Captain.” His 12-year tenure (2003–14) was the longest of any Yankees captain—and, as teams across baseball have begun to phase out the captaincy, it made sense for the tradition to end with Jeter.
“As far as I’m concerned—and I’m not the decision-maker on this—that captaincy should be retired with No. 2,” general manager Brian Cashman said in March 2015. “I wouldn’t give up another captain’s title to anyone else.”
When Cashman gave that interview, Judge had just finished his first pro season, hitting 17 homers in 131 games between Low and High A. He could not have realistically envisioned a world in which Judge—or any player, for that matter—rose to the level of being considered a possible captain. But Judge is the perfect candidate. He’s respected in the clubhouse, revered by the fans, an excellent player—and now he’s tied to the franchise for almost a decade. It takes a rare kind of player to be considered as a potential captain, and Judge is as rare as they come.
