Let's take a trip back to 1941.
It was just before Major League Baseball's biggest stars left for the war. And it was a magical season.
There are two memories that stand out in the well-studied baseball fan about that campaign.
Ted Williams batted .406.
And Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak.
Now potentially less certain in your mind: Which of them won MVP?
Williams had pretty much every conceivable statistic in his favor.
DiMaggio had the story, though, the one that would be passed down for generations.
And it was Joltin' Joe that won the MVP.
MORE: Guardians complete unprecedentedly impossible MLB history
There are surely some that disagree with that. After all, it looks even more notable in retrospect, since no one has gotten to .400 since.
But there's something contained within those three letters of MVP that suggests something more than just raw value.
Baseball is a game of stories, of nostalgia, of interconnectedness through the generations. And nothing captured the baseball world's imaginations like the fact that for 56 consecutive ballgames, DiMaggio had a hit.
And so, this long aside brings us to Cal Raleigh vs. Aaron Judge.
The Yankees' 6-foot-7 superstar has all the advanced hitting metrics in his favor. But it's the Mariners' beloved catcher who has the story.
It's not like his numbers are bad, either. He hit 60 home runs while playing pristine defense at catcher. He broke the single-season records for homers by a catcher (Salvador Perez 48), switch-hitter (Mickey Mantle 54) and Mariners player (Ken Griffey Jr. 56).
And maybe it's hard to make the case that the story of an MLB season will be told by a catcher from the Pacific Northwest and not the captain in pinstripes.
But in the moment, that's how this feels.
The Big Dumper will be the guy we remember from the 2025 MLB season.
And when we look back, much in the same way it just sort of makes sense for DiMaggio to have that MVP next to his name despite Williams' .406, that's the same way it'll feel with Raleigh.
More MLB News:
- Aaron Judge is in rare air with Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds
- Cal Raleigh officially resides with Babe Ruth in history books
- Julio Rodriguez made his choice to opt out of the All-Star Game look brilliant
- Shohei Ohtani is MLB's first member of a very specific 55-HR club
- Mets' epic collapse summed up by 0-67 stat