Inside Aaron Judge’s Yankee captaincy — and why he’s the best leader GM Brian Cashman has ever had

Adapted from The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era, by Andy Martino, published by Doubleday, May 21, 2024, Copyright © 2024 by Andy Martino.

I was not looking forward to asking Aaron Judge about the sunflower seeds. For all I knew, he would be upset that I had heard the story.

This was last summer, in a mostly empty Yankees clubhouse after a loss. Judge had committed to an interview for the book I was working on, The Yankee Way, and followed through despite the bad team vibes. In fact, he talked until nearly everyone else had dressed and gone, providing fresh insight into his approach to leadership.

By the end of my book reporting, I would be convinced that Judge was the most inclusive, authentic and effective leader that the Yankees have had during Brian Cashman’s long tenure as Yankees GM.

He had a knack for avoiding the types of high-profile rivalries that had followed the Yankees since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig fell out over a family disagreement in the early 1930s.

This was a generally positive topic for Judge -- but my opening question was going to be tricky: I had heard that, a few years into Judge’s career, he objected when a camera for the YES Network shot slumping catcher Gary Sanchez in the dugout. On other occasions he would block the camera operators from filming other teammates.

“He threw sunflower seeds at the camera and stared down the cameraman,” a team official told me. “Finally, there were complaints.”

Finally, Cashman asked Judge to stop, and Judge agreed to do so. But before long, the behavior resumed.

“Dude, you have to stop,” Cashman would say. “This is the Yankees-owned network. You can’t do that.”

“I’m just protecting my teammates,” Judge responded.

The answer was clearly sincere; Judge wanted to help Sanchez and others avoid scrutiny during low moments. Cashman understood that the behavior was coming from an impulse to lead and support — but still, it was a GM’s job to address it.

That night in 2023, I guessed that Judge’s actions toward the camera operators were rooted in a desire to protect his teammates. Was that correct?

“Hell yeah,” Judge said, comfortable with the question after all. “I really don’t care about the media. I don’t care about anybody who is not in this room. I can see when guys are going through it. I can see when guys have a weight on their shoulders and the last thing they need, in my opinion, is another million people staring at them when they just gave up a three-run homer or lost a game for us or struck out for the fourth time. That’s the last thing we need.

“I’ll be the guy who stands in front of it and kind of blocks him from that. They told me to stop it, and I said, ‘Tell me all you want, but it ain’t gonna stop.’ I can be the bad guy.”

This topic can’t help but read as an implicit criticism of the previous captain, Derek Jeter, but it is not meant to be a strong one. Jeter was a complicated case — deeply beloved by some teammates, but distant to others. Examples of Jeter’s class and kindness are not difficult to find.

But many team sources recall that, as the 2000s progressed, an “artificial class system” developed in the Yankee clubhouse, as assistant GM Jean Afterman put it: Those who had won championships in the ‘90s and in 2000, and those who had not.

When the Yankees traded for A-Rod in early ‘04, Cashman called Jeter to inform him.

“Okay,” Jeter said, after a long pause. That was pretty much it.

In fairness to Jeter, A-Rod had already blindsided him with unfair criticism in magazine and radio interviews, violating Jeter’s trust.

And it is well-documented that the front office urged Jeter, without success, to make Alex Rodriguez feel more welcome, and to ask fans to support him.

“Derek had his guys – [Jorge] Posada, Bernie [Williams],” one teammate on the 2004 Yankees told me. “Alex was never going to be one of Derek’s guys. It was tense.”

Every case contains different variables, but consider the way Judge reacted after the 2017 season, when the Yankees traded for reigning National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton. This was right after Judge had set a new rookie record with 52 home runs, and taken over as face of the franchise.

“I was excited about it,” he told me (Judge was not comparing himself to Jeter, but answering a question about his own experience).

“I was at this Fanatics appearance and I got this phone call from Cashman. ‘Okay, this is either good or bad. I don’t know what’s about to happen.’ But he called me to just give a heads up. He’s like, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about making a big trade for Stanton. What do you got on that?’

“He said, ‘I know he’s a right fielder and he just won MVP. What do you think?’ I said, ‘You’re adding an MVP guy to a team that was just one win away from the World Series. I’m all for it. I’ll do whatever I can. If it’s me playing left field, center field -- whatever I’ve gotta do, I’m here to bring that guy in.’”

Stanton and Judge had met the previous summer at the pre-All-Star Game Home Run Derby in Miami. Stanton was the hometown star, and Judge the young upstart who ended up winning the Derby. Because both were tall, good-looking, marketable athletes of color, they often found themselves lumped together — or, as they saw it, pitted against one another.

Their initial bond came through a shared interest in de-escalation.

“The media was trying to make some tension between us with the Home Run Derby stuff,” Judge says. “We talked before that. We just said, ‘Let’s go out there and have some fun. Screw what everybody keeps asking us about, like, ‘Is there a competition?’ and this and that.’ It was like, ‘Let’s just have fun.’ So for us, it started there in Miami, getting to know each other.

“And once he came to spring training, it was like, ‘Hey, let’s go get dinner. Let’s find a place to just hang out.’”

Adds Stanton, “I think we both opened it with, ‘We want to make it clear that it’s not a competition. You help the team tonight and I’ll help the team tonight. That’s most important.’ And I think that was the best way for something like this to work.”

Yankee lore is filled with stories of superstar feuds and frenemies. There was Ruth versus Gehrig, Reggie Jackson versus Thurman Munson, and Jeter versus A-Rod.  Each case presented a similar dynamic: a larger-than-life celebrity failed to mix easily with a quieter team captain.

Ruth and Gehrig were friends throughout the 1920s, socializing and barnstorming together to make extra money in the offseasons. Their relationship started to fray after the 1929 season, when Ruth proposed a joint holdout from spring training and Gehrig demurred.

A few years later, they split for good over a family disagreement. Ruth brought his daughter Dorothy and stepdaughter Julia to visit Gehrig’s mother at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. Julia arrived dressed in the flashy style of the jazz age, while Dorothy’s clothing was more modest and conservative.

After the visit, Lou’s mom was overheard gossiping about Babe’s wife Claire. “It’s a shame she doesn’t dress Dorothy as nicely as she dresses her own daughter,” Mrs. Gehrig said.

The remark got back to the Ruths, and the two icons barely spoke again. They mended their friendship only at Gehrig’s retirement ceremony in 1939, when the onset of a deadly disease that would come to bear Gehrig’s name moved Ruth to throw an arm around his old teammate.

Jackson, during his first spring training with the team, spoke critically of Munson during a now-infamous magazine interview. A generation later, A-Rod essentially did the same to Jeter.

For Judge and Stanton (and now, for Judge and Juan Soto), it is different. In fact, they became friends, Yankee stars who actually liked one another, as Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris had before them.

“We have the personalities so it didn’t become what it previously was with some of those other dynamics,” Stanton told me.

As the years progressed and Judge grew from young man to player-in-full, his inclusive style of leadership was also a relief to Cashman.

In the Judge era, no one is asking whose clubhouse is this? It’s clearly Judge’s, but he does it in a way that does not provoke jealousy. This works because Judge does not protect the clubhouse like it’s his territory.

“We have been blessed with so many great stars that come in here and check their egos when they walk through that door,” Judge said. “They understand that there is a bigger picture here. This game is grueling. This game is hard. If we’re going to win a lot of ballgames, we need every single person in here pulling on the same rope.

“When you’re able to welcome in an MVP, and then welcome [third baseman Josh Donaldson] another MVP. With certain guys here, it’s like, ‘How can we get you comfortable?’ And if you’re comfortable you’re going to play your best.

“That’s one thing I want to do as a leader: It’s like, your role adapts. Sometimes you have to be the guy who stands up in front of the room and talks. Other times, you have to be that guy that sits back and it’s like, ‘I’ve gotta let Stanton do his thing. I’ve gotta let him be the guy who leads us out there that time.’ I’ve gotta let Cole be the guy where it’s, ‘Hey, you’re on top of the world. Go lead us.’ So it’s just about understanding that and adapting to whatever the team needs.”

The only other star player during the Cashman era whose leadership philosophy resembled Judge’s was CC Sabathia, but he was a starting pitcher with an individual routine. Position players are more connected to the daily rhythms of an entire team.

As Judge’s stature in the organization has increased, he has become an important advisor to Cashman and managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner, helping the front office tweak its delivery of analytics to players, and recommending the popular hitting coaches James Rowson and Pat Roessler, hired last winter. He helps manager Aaron Boone, another leadership natural, stay connected to the entire roster.

In the clubhouse, you won’t find a single player to dispute that Judge’s authentic interest is in helping them. They all truly know their captain — and given Judge’s superstar status and the demands on his time, that is both significant and rare.

It is also a major part of why the Yankees’ player culture is as strong as it has been in many years.