Mayor Adams’s ‘Aaron Judge Year’

New York has always been a baseball town, and it appears as if Mayor Adams has gotten the memo. According to Bloomberg News, Hizzoner has given himself a B+ on his first year in office, suggesting that grade inflation is not confined to the Ivy League. Mr. Adams reached for the diamond to explain that “2022 was my rookie year. 2023 is my Aaron Judge year.” After enduring a mayor who rooted for the Red Sox, at least Mr. Adams has the right team.It should hardly be a surprise that Mr. Adams would seek to steal some of Mr. Judge’s bases. The outfielder just signed a nine year, $360 million contract after a season in which he set the American league record for home runs in a season and won Most Valuable Player. He has also been named a team captain, just the 16th in Yankee history. His immediate predecessor is no less than Hall of Fame shortstop Derek Jeter. It is good to be Mr. Judge. It is less peachy to be Mr. Adams, these days. That Bloomberg News story notes a “25 percent rise in major felonies during the former cop’s first year in office.” A June poll pegged his approval rating at 29 percent, with one Gothamite telling the New York Times that Mr. Adams “thinks he’s kind of a celebrity when he should be down on the ground rolling his sleeves up doing the work.” He plays hard, but working hard appears to be the rub.In this respect, Mr. Adams has much to learn from the taciturn Mr. Judge, who lets his bat do the talking and his glove do the walking. Unlike flashy New York sports stars of yore like Reggie Jackson and Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Mr. Judge is all business off the field; a metronome in pinstripes. We appreciate Mr. Adams’s joie de vivre. However, Aaron Judge years don’t, to say the least, come easy, when they come at all.Forget about Mr. Judge; this year, Mr. Adams has barely cleared the Mendoza Line. In April, we noted that “heavily-taxed New York lost nearly two percent of its population in the last census, the worst performance in the nation.” In October, we wrote that “his track record to date has been disappointing and he’s caught in the doom loop.” Confident, bordering on cocky, he once asked our C.M. Vik “when the hard part starts.” Hint: a year ago. After Mr. Adams was elected, we wrote that rarely has a “new mayor been handed such an opportunity for a historic mayoralty as New Yorkers have just given Mr. Adams.” If the reality has fallen short of that promise, it is worth remembering that last spring, Mr. Judge rejected a contract that he thought — correctly — he could outperform. Mr. Adams is no longer a rookie, and with memories of Mayor de Blasio’s ineptitude fading, he needs a Judgian blast.

Mayor Adams’s ‘Aaron Judge Year’

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