Aaron Judge hits home run No. 62 to pass Roger Maris

Only record-holder Barry Bonds (73), Mark McGwire (70 and 65) and Sammy Sosa (66, 64 and 63) have hit more than 62 homers in a season. All three played at a time when MLB did not test for performance-enhancing drugs as stringently as it does now.

So Judge, with his iconic No. 99, has emerged as a new modern prototype, a new home run hero for a new era, the latest in a long line of Yankees legends. Like all the Yankees legends before him, Judge proved himself capable of withstanding all that New York throws at its most treasured sports stars. But even the stoic 30-year-old, known for a team-first demeanor that does not wax and wane with his performance, had begun to show the strain of his pursuit by the time the Yankees’ last series of the season began.

Cameras normally have no trouble catching Judge wearing a smile. But with each at-bat that went by, the smiles became fewer and farther between, his brow a little more furrowed. For so long he seemed to have so much time. Suddenly, he didn’t.

“It’s a big relief,” Judge told reporters Tuesday night. “Now everybody can probably sit down and watch the ballgame.”

When Judge hit his 60th homer Sept. 20, he had plenty of at-bats left to catch and pass Maris, whose family began to follow him from city to city. For days, fans fell silent every time a pitcher delivered a ball to Judge, who went seven games between hitting Nos. 60 and 61, a drought that must have felt like eons to the slugger before he ended it last week.

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The Yankees played their last home series of the regular season, with their division title already sealed, through rain and cold this past weekend. Fans packed the stands anyway, but the Baltimore Orioles walked Judge five times in three games and struck him out six times.

So Judge was left to take his pursuit to Texas. The Maris family went home. Judge went 1 for 4 in Monday night’s game and 1 for 5 in the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader. Manager Aaron Boone told reporters earlier in the day that Judge, who might normally play just one game of a doubleheader for a team with a first-round bye locked up on the penultimate day of the season, would play both if he did not homer in the first.

He didn’t, and the largest paid crowd in the brief history…