Major League Baseball

Aaron Judge makes Yankees permanent home, but only after 'tough' free agency

Updated Dec. 21, 2022 8:19 p.m. ET

NEW YORK — "Welcome Home Aaron Judge."

That phrase, tattooed on the centerfield Jumbotron at Yankee Stadium on a frigid morning in New York City, felt like a pointed, intentional choice of words. That this crowded, jumbled, beautiful mess of a city, and not the rolling green and yellow hills of Northern California, could be considered Judge’s "home" must have felt impossible to the 31-year-old slugger when he debuted here back in 2016.

All winter long, Judge’s hometown San Francisco Giants had angled themselves as a worthy destination for the 2022 AL MVP. Familiarity was their biggest draw, their best advertising pitch. They hoped that the chance to play for the team he grew up loving, just two hours from his small hometown of Linden, California, might be alluring enough to make Judge a Giant. It was not to be.

And here were the Yankees, on the morning of Judge’s grand re-introductory press conference to announce his new nine-year, $360 million deal, reminding everyone where home really was.

But despite all that typical Yankee pomp and circumstance — from the surprise appearance by former captain Derek Jeter to the bundle of flowers presented to Judge’s wife, Samantha, and his parents, Wayne and Patty — the morning was most notable for how much it revealed about the pragmatic reality of Judge’s free-agent experience. His return to the Bronx was not destiny or loyalty. It was not a foregone conclusion. This ceremony was a reminder of just how close Judge came to leaving and how cold hard cash, a willingness to commit and a timely transatlantic phone call made sure that never happened.

After some introductory remarks from manager Aaron Boone, general manager Brian Cashman and owner Hal Steinbrenner, Judge donned his 99 jersey and stepped to the podium. Up on that stage, he towered above the normies in the crowd who’d braved the wintery weather to report on this moment. At 6-foot-8, Judge has been a gaze magnet in every room he’s ever entered. This was no different.

As he prepared to speak, the packed press conference room in the bowels of the stadium went completely silent, like it had upstairs all year during his at-bats, the only sound coming from the rattling of passing subway cars above.

It was the coronation of a captain, the next forever player in a franchise with an entire monument dedicated to them.

But baseball and the truth are rarely so simple.

Multiple times, both at the podium and in a later breakout session with media, the 2022 AL MVP was asked, in so many words, whether his homecoming with the Yankees was inevitable, whether all those free-agency shenanigans were just shenanigans.

The fake TMZ-style video of him in San Francisco? His dramatic 11th hour flight to San Diego for a Winter Meetings sit down with the Padres? Those quotes in Time Magazine about feeling slighted by Brian Cashman revealing what Judge believed were private contract negotiations back in April? Those were all just negotiating tactics designed to drive up his price, right? Right?

Each time Judge was questioned about the predetermination of this reunion, he had the chance to stretch the truth with sentimentality, a simple opportunity to pen his own storybook ending to a baseball love story. He easily could have said that it was the Yankees, it was always the Yankees. That he never had eyes for any team besides the one who drafted him back in 2013, that his free-agent journey was always going to lead him back to the Bronx.

Did Judge, a reporter asked, ever imagine himself not being a New York Yankee?

Instead of an immediate yes, Judge paused, collected his thoughts, flashed his trademark coy smile, and then gave a diplomatic yet incredibly revealing answer.

"It was tough." Judge said. "That's why this whole free-agency process was a different situation. I think it was valuable to see some other places and hear some opinions."

Even though Judge shared that he and his wife eventually came to the conclusion that they "belong in New York," he refused to portray the situation as preordained. Rather than craft a convenient narrative of his free-agent experience, Judge willingly admitted that, yes, he truly had, at points this winter, envisioned himself in another team’s uniform. The interest in suiting up for his hometown Giants was genuine. The Padres’ enormous, late-game offer convinced Judge to rework his travel plans en route to a Hawaii getaway.

Boone echoed that sentiment. The Yankees skipper conceded that there were moments during Judge’s free agency where he worried his most important player might not come back. The now infamous "Arson Judge to the Giants" moment in particular sent the New York skipper into panic mode.

"It was like losing your cell phone, your keys, your wallet and your iPad all at once," Boone joked.

And in the end, the Yankees got this landmark deal done, not because the gravitas of a life in pinstripes held irresistible sway, and not because Judge felt a deep sense of loyalty to the only team he’s ever known. Aaron Judge is a Yankee, and will be for the next nine seasons, because Steinbrenner was willing to make the necessary financial commitment.

That’s how this (capitalist) world works. Allegiance is only as strong as the next payday. Steinbrenner, like his late father, knows this. Judge does, too. Perhaps that’s an unromantic reading of the situation, but it’s as true as a well-struck baseball and shouldn’t dampen the excitement of Judge’s return one bit.

The tall kid from Linden is a Yankee and will be for life because Steinbrenner did the necessary thing — dialing the outfielder personally, mid-vacation, from a roadside rest stop in eastern Italy like something out of an episode of Succession — to get the deal done. He knew the Yankees could not afford a future without Judge, so he asked Judge what it would take. When the big man admitted that he needed a ninth year, Steinbrenner gave it to him.

"I actually said to him," Steinbrenner revealed from the podium on Wednesday, "that as far as I'm concerned, you are not a free agent. As far as I'm concerned, you are a Yankee and we need to do everything we can to ensure that remains the same."

That’s exactly what Steinbrenner and the Yankees did. And now, Judge has a new home for quite a while.

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Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.