As the ball disappeared deep into the California night, it was impossible to be unmoved by what Aaron Judge had just done. It was impossible to ignore history in real time. He had reached 50 home runs, again. It is a rarefied place in baseball’s slugging pantheon. Moments like this must never be taken for granted. Not ever. 

Even as we have recalibrated just about every statistic that’s ever been important to us as baseball fans, there are a few things that still genuinely matter. You can say batting average and runs batted in have been marginalized; tell that to a major league hitter that finishes a season hitting .299, or stuck on 99 RBIs. 

For 102 years, 50 home runs in a season has been a platinum-plated yardstick in the game. Yes, the 60-homer mark has been reached (even cleanly, twice) and so has 70 (also twice, muddied up but good by PEDs). But 50 has a magic attached to it. In the modern history of the game, which stretches to 1901, it’s been reached only 46 times. 

“When I hit my 50th home run in 1956,” Mickey Mantle once wrote, “I figured I’d never touch the ground again. It was like a magic had taken over my body. I figured I’d never do anything like that ever again.” 

Of course, five years later Mantle did do it again, landing on 54 after a summer spent chasing Babe Ruth side-by-side with Roger Maris. When he did that, he joined an exclusive club that at the time numbered three: only Ruth (4), Jimmie Foxx (2) and Ralph Kiner (2) had ever swatted 50 in multiple seasons. 

So consider this the first of the many remarkable things Judge will accomplish in this epic season of his. Judge crushed a 1-1 curveball from Jose Quijada 434 feet to dead center field at Angel Stadium with one out in the eighth inning not long after Monday night bled into Tuesday morning back home in New York. It was his 50th home run of the season. It was the second time he has reached that plateau (he hit 52 as a rookie in 2017). 

It barely mattered that the Yankees lost a third straight game, 4-3 to the lowly Angels. A moment like this allows for such indulgence. 

Much of the conversation surrounding Judge’s magnificent walk year, as he’s spent the season straddling some historic home run paces, is whether the true single-season record is Roger Maris’ 61 (which no longer wears an asterisk) or Barry Bonds’ 73 (also asterisk-free except in the hearts and minds of most baseball fans, in which case the * is as boldfaced as your supply of ink allows). 

But that’s chatter for another day. Before he gets to 62, or to 74, Judge now sits on 50. And that alone deserves a moment of awe. More than 22,800 men have played major league baseball. Judge is the 10th who has ever reached 50 homers in a season twice. 

Think about that. 

The 50-homer club has had some unexpected one-timers. A couple of unlikely Orioles, Brady Anderson and Chris Davis, have done it. Jose Bautista has done it. The Fielders, father and son, Cecil and Prince, did it once apiece. It has also been closed off to the likes of Lou Gehrig (career-high 49, twice), Harmon Killebrew (49, twice) and Hank Aaron (48). 

But before Monday night only nine players had done it more than once. We can divide them, as we do most offensive stats now, into “clean” — Ruth (4 times), Foxx (2), Ken Griffey Jr. (2) Kiner (2), Mantle (2) and Willie Mays (2) — and “dirty” — Mark McGwire (4), Sammy Sosa (4) and Alex Rodriguez (3). Six clean, three dirty, nine in all. 

And Judge makes 10. 

Ten in the whole history of baseball. And you’ll also notice something that the nine prior multiple-50 folks have in common: 

All are either shoo-in Hall of Famers (Ruth, Foxx, Mantle, Mays, Griffey), or a Hall of Famer forced to wait longer than he should’ve because of an injury-shortened career (Kiner), or would-have-been-first-ballot-tap-ins-if-they’d-made-smarter-choices (McGwire, Sosa, A-Rod). 

This is the company Judge now keeps. 

When he hit his 52 as a rookie, that seemed a stunning number. When he reached 50 this time — and wherever he ultimately lands — well, by now, nothing Judge does is terribly surprising. Including standing where he now stands — at the crossroads of history and immortality. Maybe he’ll start breaking records in September, maybe he won’t. Plenty of time for that. 

But he’s already done something only nine other men have done in the history of professional baseball, which only dates to 1869. We shouldn’t take one bit of this for granted. Not one bit.