Aaron Judge is now just one home run away from matching Roger Maris' American League home run record, and Yankees ticket prices are soaring as the slugger hits the Bronx diamond for the second of six home games Wednesday.
According to Gametime, which bills itself as the leading site for last-minute tickets, the current average ticket price for a Yankees game has more than doubled in the last week alone, from $119 per seat seven days ago to $274 per seat Wednesday. Ahead of Tuesday night's game, the average was $248, so it rose a few more pretty pennies overnight.
The most expensive seats for Wednesday night's game in the Bronx will run you $4,742 a pop, up from $1,122 on Sept. 8.
Judge hit his 58th and 59th home runs of the season on Sunday and added No. 60 to the count, tying Babe Ruth, when the Yankees played their first game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday night. (The walk-off grand slam that followed from Giancarlo Stanton only made everyone more excited.)
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With one more home run, Judge will match the 61 hit by Maris in 1961, which stands as the single-season record for the Yankees franchise and the American League. He faces the Pirates again at 7:05 p.m. ET, then the Red Sox come to town.
Judge's pursuit of Maris has stirred debate over how to put this AL record in context, should he break it. He's unlikely to threaten Barry Bonds' major league record of 73, but that mark, as well as the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa around the same time, have become complicated by performance-enhancing drug suspicions.
There's one way in which Judge will likely surpass both Bonds and Maris, no matter how many more homers he hits. Right now, he has an incredible 20-homer lead over Kyle Schwarber, who is second in the majors. Nobody has led baseball in homers by at least 20 since Babe Ruth finished with 54 in 1928 and nobody else had more than 31.
Maris only led the majors by seven when he hit 61, and Bonds led by nine when he hit 73.
