New York Yankees Mike Vaccaro An Aaron Judge dilemma hangs over his Yankees return decision By Mike Vaccaro Published Oct. 1, 2026, 6:34 p.m. ET Yankees Aaron Judge on the dugout steps during the wild card series against the Red Sox. Robert Sabo/New York Post You’re Aaron Judge, and you are the captain of the Yankees, so you know better than most what that designation means. With the Yankees, the metaphorical “C” comes with gravity and gravitas.
Lou Gehrig was a quiet but powerful captain who may have done the job best once his body began to betray him. Thurman Munson always had a knee, or a shoulder, or an elbow, and snarled through all of it, and he was revered.
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Don Mattingly? By the final days of his captaincy, his teammates made it their sacred mission to nudge him into the postseason, and when that glorious task ended one awful night in Seattle, the Yankees wept, the way a high school football team does when it loses at states.
“I hurt for myself,” a young Bernie Williams said that night. “But I really hurt for him,” pointing to Mattingly, who’d just played his final game as a baseball player.
