For more than 45 years, Reggie Jackson set the standard for drink-stirring amongst New York athletes: The spotlight-loving superstar who enjoyed generating the chaos in which he thrived.
But in 2022, Jacob deGrom and Aaron Judge at least briefly redefined the concept of straws stirring the drink in the Big Apple.
From Opening Day — occurring weeks after deGrom declared he would opt out of the final season of his contract with the Mets and hours after Judge and the Yankees couldn’t agree on a long-term extension — until the opening hours of December, a pair of reticent superstars on potential Hall of Fame tracks dominated the discourse in New York with their unusual free agent pushes.
DeGrom was a mythic and ghost-like figure for the Mets — an ace performing at superhuman levels who was nowhere to be found for a full calendar year. He morphed from indispensable in 2021, when the Mets squandered a 5 1/2-game lead in the NL East following his elbow injury and finished 77-85, to the highest of high-end luxury items in 2022, when the Mets maintained a 100-win pace and a healthy advantage atop the division.
The Mets both needed deGrom and had gotten a glimpse at a future without him — a strange juxtaposition but no odder than the one displayed by deGrom, a solitary figure uninterested in the spotlight into which he was thrust as the person responsible for the decision that would shape the Mets’ off-season.
In the end, deGrom flashed his independent streak by doing what would be unthinkable to most: Taking a lucrative offer from the Rangers without circling back to the Mets to see if it might be topped by the billionaire owning a big market club that’s never had a Hall of Famer spend his entire career in the blue and orange.
Judge was both mythic and omnipresent for the Yankees — the record-setting slugger who might have single-handedly prevented the biggest collapse in baseball history. The Yankees went 52-19 through June 24, a 119-win pace over a full season and 47-44 thereafter in a stretch that began with three Astros pitchers combining on a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees hit .239 with 136 homers and an OPS of .740 in that span, during which Judge hit .320 with 35 homers and an OPS of 1.163.
With the AL East safely in tow — after their lead dwindled from 15 1/2 games on July 8 to 3 1/2 games on Sept. 9 — Judge turned Yankees games into must-watch affairs over the final month of the season, when he broke Roger Maris’ team and AL home run records and fell just shy of the Triple Crown.
And while the otherwise silent deGrom’s repeated declarations that he’d opt out of his contract offered hints at what he was thinking, there was no gray area regarding Judge’s displeasure with how contract talks stalled out and Brian Cashman subsequently holding a press conference to explain the terms of the deal offered by the Yankees.
While deGrom’s camp went underground until his deal with the Rangers was announced on Friday, Dec. 2 — call it the anti-news dump — Judge, whether intentionally or not, continued stirring the drink by revisiting the circumstances of the contract snafu in a Time Magazine cover story that appeared on Dec. 6. Hours later, the New York Post reported Judge appeared likely to sign with the Giants.
Judge signed with the Yankees the following morning, rendering the Time piece a coincidence and the erroneous report an instantly meme-able moment — but serving a reminder this New York drink stirrer isn’t going anywhere.
