Pride, Power, Pinstripes. Tradition—the foundational pillar of Yankee baseball—is both its allure and its stigma. At its best, it’s a nod to a history of winning that only the Yankees can boast. At its worst, it’s a bleaching of personality that produces an oeuvre of PR-able sound bytes with a clean shave and a fresh haircut. The 2017 “fun Yankees” lived in the area between, but some casualties were unavoidable.
Aaron Judge is by any standard the most marketable player in the game. It’s a role that he has taken from Bryce Harper, but the two couldn’t be less alike by public persona.