Erik Boland: Meltdowns over Yankees' Aaron Judge from media outlets, fans are completely misguided

SAN FRANCISCO — Let it be known that history will reflect March 2026 as the precise time when discourse surrounding Aaron Judge officially veered off the tracks.

Straight, unabated, into the ditch of idiocy.

To crib from Mark Twain (and Abraham Lincoln before him and the other sources this has been attributed to) regarding the purveyors of much of the talk: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

It began at the start of this month’s World Baseball Classic when Judge, called on to give an impromptu motivational speech to Team USA, in the view of many, failed the public speaking requirement of his day job by not properly channeling Tony Robbins or Les Brown.

It caused a virtual meltdown on social media, talk shows locally and beyond, and even in some outlets of what remains of “traditional media,” however that is currently defined.

That was simply a warmup for the reaction in those same spheres when Judge, two weeks later, committed the cardinal sin of telling the truth.

“I’ll say, it’s been bigger,” Judge told reporters after Team USA beat the Dominican Republic in the WBC semifinals, comparing the atmospheres at the World Baseball Classic to the World Series. “The World Series I was in versus the crowd here and the one we had against Mexico, it’s bigger and better than the World Series. The passion that these fans have representing their country, representing some of their favorite players, there’s nothing like it.”

There isn’t.

For anyone who has experienced both in person — as this reporter has been fortunate to do multiple times — it’s actually not close.

Clearly, Judge was talking about atmospheres, not importance.

Read the quote, listen to the quote. Comprehend the quote.

Nowhere was there anything that remotely intimated Judge personally rated a WBC title above a World Series one.

But nuance has as much place on the talking head circuit — really, wherever opinion is disseminated — as a box of Omaha Steaks does serving as the door prize at a vegetarian convention.

Essentially, Judge was led to public slaughter for something he didn’t say.

Incidentally, this is the same player who, after his third full year in the big leagues, said this after the Yankees’ six-game ALCS loss to the Astros in 2019:

“It’s a failure,” Judge said of the season — one in which the Yankees won 103 games and captured the AL East title for the first time since 2012 — ending without a championship. “No matter how many games we won in the regular season or anything else we did, the season’s a failure.”

Then there was Wednesday night’s 7-0 victory over the Giants and ace Logan Webb. Not even the nit-pickiest of nitpickers could pick that one apart. Max Fried and 6  1⁄3 scoreless innings; eight of nine batters in the lineup getting at least one hit; four of those hits coming from hitters 6-9; scoreless appearances from three members of the bullpen who entered the season as question marks (Jake Bird, Brent Headrick and Camilo Doval).

By any objective measure, as Hall of Fame college basketball coach Al McGuire would say, the night was all “seashells and balloons.”

Well, no.

You see, Judge went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts, a performance that just had to be indicative of something larger.

So there was Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take” on Thursday morning responding to this gem of a topic: “Bigger Story: Max Fried or Aaron Judge?”

“The reality is that when you look at Aaron Judge, who I absolutely love, who’s a monster, and I’m happy to have him as a New York Yankee, the problem is too many moments he has had in his career where this Goliath of a man and a baseball player comes up considerably and conspicuously small,” Smith said.

One hopes Judge, no doubt trying to pick up the pieces from one bad game with a mere 161 of them left on the schedule, could at the very least emotionally persevere through Thursday’s off day knowing Smith is “happy” he’s a Yankee.

Pretty much all of this, of course, has to do with the combination of Judge having yet to win a title with the Yankees and his spotty career postseason performances, last year’s standout numbers notwithstanding.

That is, obviously, fair game.

And Judge, as much as anyone, knows a championship is the biggest, and for him the most desired, part missing from a resume that already has him Hall of Fame-bound.

But there will be plenty of time for the October narrative.

There’s six months to go.

Give everything else a rest already. It’s enough.

It’s embarrassing.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.