ATLANTA — Aaron Judge let a small smile creep across his face.
He knows the feeling, when the game slows down and every pitch looks as if it were a full moon. You see the ball clearly. You feel everything. The euphoria, the dominance, the creeping paranoia of when it might all come to a sudden halt. It’s baseball, after all. Failure isn’t just present; it takes control of the wheel. It’s a corrosive companion, if you let it.
“You just hope it doesn’t end,” the Yankees slugger said Monday afternoon during All-Star media availability. “You just try to stay in the moment. Stay locked in. Don’t try to think about it, because you’ll be good for a couple of weeks. Then you could have a bad couple of weeks, but as long as you just try to stay consistent, don’t get too high, too low, hopefully you can kind of ride out those tough storms a little easier and do what you need to do.”
For Cal Raleigh, the newly crowned Home Run Derby champion, the skies are still holding back. The Mariners catcher just turned in a historic first half, batting .259/.376/.634 with a 1.011 OPS, second only to Judge. His 38 home runs are the second most ever in a first half, trailing only Barry Bonds. He’s on pace to beat Judge’s single-season American League home run record. In a baseball landscape of very few giants, Raleigh this season has become one too.
The catching part was a given for the Platinum Glove winner. But this? This is something else. Not only is Raleigh doing it better than almost anyone else, but he’s doing it while having to command the most important position on the diamond. Oh, and he’s a switch hitter too.
“You know, I’ve only got to worry about managing one swing,” Judge said. “He’s got to try to manage two swings from both sides of the plate along with the pitching staff. It’s an incredible, incredible accomplishment.”
The slow heartbeat that should exist in catchers is ever present in this one. He doesn’t see what he’s doing as incredible, per se. He’s more so immersed in the work of it all because there is no time to breathe.
“It’s just about compartmentalizing,” said Raleigh, who was named an All-Star this year for the first time of his career. “You set a good routine, obviously. Taking care of yourself physically, mentally. The catching comes first, hitting comes next. And you just learn as a catcher, you have a lot going on all the time, so you learn to compartmentalize really well and not take other things elsewhere.”
In other words, you don’t take the at-bats to the field, nor the field to the plate.
There’s no secret sauce to what Raleigh has added to his entree. Just development. Even at 29, Raleigh still had plenty of room to grow and potential to release. With Julio Rodriguez turning out more above average than superstar as the Mariners had hoped, Raleigh has been thrust into the spotlight. He’s taken control of an organization that prides itself on pitching, flaunting one of the best staffs in all of baseball for some years now.
“I think a lot of pitcher-and-catcher relationships is just trust,” said Seattle starter Bryan Woo, who, like Raleigh, is participating in his first All-Star Game. “I think in today’s game, everybody’s got good stuff and everybody can pitch. But for us, it makes our job a lot easier if we can just go in and be like, ‘whatever he puts down, I’m trusting and I can commit to it.’ If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I still trust the guy behind the plate.”
Trust surrounded Raleigh, who said he had more family in Atlanta than he could count. He grew up in North Carolina, but Georgia’s a hotbed for baseball talent, among the best in the country. So Raleigh crossed a couple state lines to the south to get the exposure he needed to rise through the ranks.
Summer vacations were minimal. Just dreams imagined and then answered. Dreams fueled by his parents, Todd and Stephanie Raleigh.
“I think [about my parents] and their ongoing support,” Raleigh said. “I feel like the parents go through it just as much as the kids do.”
Raleigh fulfilled another dream by participating, and winning, Monday’s Home Run Derby and he brought his family along again. Todd was rewarded with the job of throwing to him. His 15-year-old brother, Todd Jr., took Cal’s usual spot behind the plate.
This was their success just as much as his. Raleigh advanced past the first round, edging out Brent Rooker. Both finished with 17 home runs, but Raleigh’s longest traveled 470.62 feet — just barely topping Rooker’s 470.54. In the second round, he faced another giant in Oneil Cruz, whose production hasn’t quite matched his freakish ability to square up a baseball. Raleigh made quick work of him, launching 19 homers to Cruz’s 11. He set the tone in the final round with 18 and not even the electric Junior Caminero could catch him.
In a season full of moments, this one is at the top of the list.
So much so that he cracked a smile, too.