Judge says Bonds is the single-season HR king: 'The record's the record'

Aaron Judge has rendered his verdict on baseball's home run record books.

While the New York Yankees superstar's chase of 60 home runs has again stirred debate about who owns the official single-season record, Judge thinks it unquestionably belongs to Barry Bonds.

"The record's the record," Judge said Thursday of Bonds' 73 homers in 2001, according to Dan Martin of the New York Post. "That's what I go by. I watched him as a kid flip the ball into the bay with ease. That hasn't changed."

Bonds' mark, which he set with the San Francisco Giants, has come under scrutiny because of his alleged performance-enhancing drug use. He was implicated in baseball's BALCO scandal in the early 2000s. Later, he was tried for, and acquitted of, perjury relating to his grand jury testimony about BALCO. Bonds, who's also the majors' all-time home run king, never failed an MLB-administered drug test after the league instituted testing in 2004.

Because both Bonds and Mark McGwire, whose record he broke, had ties to steroids during their careers, some fans still consider Roger Maris' 61 homers in 1961 to be the single-season mark. MLB officially recognizes Bonds' 73 as the record, although Maris continues to hold both the American League and Yankees single-season marks.

Judge, a Bay Area native who grew up a fan of Bonds and the Giants, is five home runs shy of just the ninth 60-homer campaign in MLB history. It'd be only the third by an AL hitter. Babe Ruth hit 60 for the Yankees in 1927.

The 30-year-old, an impending free agent, says he's not trying to break anybody's record and is at peace with whatever happens. He also thinks Bonds' mark of 73 may stand the test of time.

"That was a pretty unreal year," Judge said of Bonds. "That's a hard number to catch."