“If I Hit This Home Run, I’ll See My Dad Again, Right?”
Inside the Secret That Drove Aaron Judge’s Most Emotional Game as a Yankee
By [Author Name] | The Athletic-style feature | ~940 words
Before the game, no one noticed the necklace.
It wasn’t flashy. Just a thin, fraying leather cord with a tiny pendant tucked beneath Aaron Judge’s jersey. But for the Yankees captain, it carried the weight of 20 years — and the echo of a promise made when he was just a boy chasing fly balls on fields far from the Bronx.
That night, under the stadium lights and the roar of 47,000 fans, Judge didn’t just step into the batter’s box to win a game. He stepped into it for something much more personal — something no box score could ever measure.
“I told myself,” he later said, “If I hit this home run… maybe, just maybe… I’ll see him again.”
The Necklace No One Noticed
The Yankees were in the middle of a tense playoff run. Every swing mattered. Every inning felt like a chapter in a season written with sweat and grit.
But when Judge emerged from the tunnel before first pitch, coaches noticed something different. His warm-up was quieter. His gaze — normally focused, intense — was somewhere else. His fingers kept brushing his chest, as if checking for something.
What they didn’t know was that, tucked under his uniform, he wore his father’s necklace for the first time in two decades.
The same necklace his dad gave him the week before he passed away.
A Boy’s Promise, A Man’s Burden
Judge doesn’t speak often about his father. Adopted as a baby, Aaron had always referred to his dad, Wayne, as “the only man who ever called me son.”
When Wayne Judge died suddenly when Aaron was 11, the loss shattered something deep inside the boy who had just discovered his love for baseball.
“He was my whole world,” Judge told a friend in a rare, off-camera moment last year. “When he died… I didn’t cry. I just grabbed his necklace, went to the backyard, and kept swinging.”
Before his father passed, Aaron had whispered something into the hospital room, a secret he never told anyone:
“If I ever hit a home run in the Major Leagues… I want you to see it.”
That was the promise. And over the years, through record-breaking seasons and All-Star Games, Judge had never worn the necklace — not once — out of fear that the promise would be “used up.”
The Game That Made It All Real
It was Game 7 of the ALCS. The Yankees were trailing by one. Bottom of the 8th. Two outs. Runner on second.
The crowd stood, holding its breath. Judge stepped into the box.
Inside his glove, a sliver of tape wrapped around his thumb bore the initials WJ — Wayne Judge.
The first pitch: a fastball, outside. Ball one.
The second: a cutter, belt-high.
Judge turned on it.
Crack.
A towering shot to deep left field. The ball seemed to freeze in the night sky, just long enough for Judge to whisper, under his breath, “This is for you, Dad.”
A Stadium Silenced by Memory
When the ball cleared the fence, Yankee Stadium erupted. But in the dugout, something strange happened — a few teammates sat still, blinking, as if they’d just witnessed something more than baseball.
Later, Gerrit Cole said, “We didn’t celebrate right away. I don’t know why. It was like we all… just knew that swing meant something different.”
After touching home plate, Judge looked skyward and tapped the necklace once. Then, he took it off and placed it inside his helmet.
The Press Conference No One Expected
After the game, Judge didn’t want to talk about stats or series leads.
Instead, he pulled the necklace out of his pocket and laid it on the table.
“This was my dad’s,” he said softly. “I kept it in a box for 20 years. I told myself I’d wear it for the most important game of my life. And this felt like the one.”
He paused.
“Growing up, I thought hitting a home run might let me see him again. Tonight, I didn’t just feel him watching… I felt him in my swing.”
Reporters were silent. Cameras rolled. One journalist, wiping away tears, whispered, “You’ve given this city a thousand moments… but this one will never be forgotten.”
Legacy Beyond the Fence
In the hours that followed, fans flooded social media with photos of homemade pendants, dedications to their own fathers, and the hashtag #ForMyDad.
One post read: “Aaron Judge reminded us tonight that baseball isn’t just a game — it’s where we carry the people we’ve loved and lost.”
A young fan at the stadium, wearing a hand-drawn “WJ” on his hat, told a local reporter, “I wanna be like Judge. I wanna swing for someone.”
The Final Word
Aaron Judge has hit hundreds of home runs.
But only one was ever promised.
And on that night in the Bronx, beneath a quiet pendant and a memory 20 years old, that promise was kept.