From pre-season fringe player to MLB star, the rookie has taken the US by storm this summer in the Yankees’ march to unlikely post-season success

On Sunday night at Yankee Stadium, Francisco Lindor of the Cleveland Indians hit a baseball towards the right‑field stands that was clearly destined to be a two-run homer. And not just any home run: one that would demolish the New York Yankees and send the Indians to the edge of the World Series.

Suddenly a great mitted hand rose from the depths, like the head of a sea monster, reached above the wall and snatched the ball from thin air. On its own, it was a superhuman catch: something more associated with the planet Krypton than the earthly Bronx. In context, it was devastating: the Indians, two games up in a best‑of‑five series, lost 1-0 that night. Late on Wednesday the Yankees completed their comeback and marched forward.

The sea monster was one Aaron Judge, the Yankees’ new star and a man who has taken the US by storm this summer. He is 6ft 7in, which helps at moments like that, and around 20 stone, which might not. His fielding, however, is merely a sideline. Pre-season, he was a fringe player, no cert for the starting lineup. Seven months later he has set an all-time record by hitting 52 home runs in the regular season, the best for a rookie and equal 28th on the all‑time list – a list in which the top six performances have all been tainted by drug revelations. Judge also won the annual novelty event: the Home Run Derby. All this despite a spectacular mid-season slump.

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His shirt, No99, has been the top‑seller of the year. And a group of Yankee fans have taken to turning up in (British-style) judges’ wigs and robes, carrying (American-style) gavels with a banner saying “All Rise”. This is a phenomenon, hindered so far only by the fact that Judge is, by all accounts, pleasant and respectful and has not yet beaten up anyone outside a nightclub.

On Friday night he will be in business again, in the seven-game play-off for the American League against the Houston Astros. The National League equivalent will involve the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs, who beat the Washington Nationals in a thrilling 9-8 decider late on Thursday, the most eventful night not involving Donald Trump the nation’s capital has seen in years. The two survivors will contest the 2017 World Series, starting on 24 October.

No one expected the once mighty Yankees to be anywhere near this. They had just had a generational clear-out and were hoping merely to rebuild gradually. Against Cleveland, just edged out by the Cubs in the 2016 World Series, they were definite underdogs. But their geese turned out to be swans or, in Judge’s case, some larger beast. He is 25, a little old for an overnight sensation, but he went to college first and put baseball second. In a way, he seems ageless. In some lights his face looks babyish; in others, as though it has been chiselled out of Mount Rushmore.

There are aspects of his game that might be regarded as immature. Along with the home runs have come their polar opposite: a record number of strike-outs (“three strikes and yer out”), regarded by grizzled old pros as a humiliating kind of exit, akin to being bowled middle stump. In this, he has already broken the post-season record, 30, with considerable power to add against Houston and maybe beyond.

No one expected the once mighty Yankees to be anywhere near this – against Cleveland, they were definite underdogs

Home runs are great for show, but for dough – the conventional wisdom has it – frontline batters such as Judge are meant above all to keep the ball down, get it through the infield, reach base and hustle like hell for runs. But in all of this, Judge is leading a trend: the total number of Major League home runs in 2017 smashed the previous high of 5,963, set in 2000, the height of baseball’s subservience to the illegal pharmaceutical industry. Total strikeouts were also a record, passing 40,000 for the first time.

No one has adequately explained the rush of homers, though there are whispers that the druggies might again have found a way to thwart the authorities, who were unbelievably slow in waking up to the power of steroids. There is no evidence for this, yet. It may be more productive to note the analogy with cricket, which also now prizes hit-and-hope above its old verities. Baseball, though, remains recognisably the sport it always was and not a marketing-driven mish-mash.

And Judge is quite clearly an exceptional, if mysterious, specimen. Even his ethnicity is a matter of internet speculation: he was adopted – into a notably proud and together family – as a baby and has no knowledge of his biological parentage.

His batting form, however, is again a matter of concern. He has suffered the strike-outs all right, but against Cleveland managed a solitary hit in 20 at‑bats. The starring role with the bat was played by another up-and-comer, Didi Gregorius from Curacao, the much‑derided replacement at short‑stop for the great Derek Jeter. Gregorius hit two homers in the first three innings in the crucial contest in Cleveland, and no one’s deriding now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aaron Judge catches at the wall to deny the Cleveland Indians’ Francisco Lindor a home run during the crucial third game of the ALDS on Sunday. Photograph: Kathy Willens/AP

But it was the Judge catch that broke Cleveland hearts. It did, however, have an extra dimension that caused a ripple of satisfaction across the game. The photos show Judge grabbing the ball inches away from the outstretched mitt of a yellow-shirted spectator, apparently a teenaged innocent sadly deprived of the catch of this life.

Skilled observers, however, recognised him as 40-year-old Zack Hample, author of How To Snag Major League Baseballs, and described by Business Insider as “a notorious ballhawk”. Baseball custom dictates that balls hit into the crowd belong to the catcher, and attentive regulars may collect one or two in a lifetime. Hample reputedly has 10,000.

He does appear to have his own superhuman knack for being in the right place at the right time, and to raise money for charity rather than himself. Against that, he has been accused of knocking children out of the way to feed his collection. Ah well, as the saying goes, judge not that ye be not judged.