Published September 19, 2022

Aaron Judge and I haven’t reached 61 yet, but we’re close. Neither of us is promised we’ll get there, but our odds look pretty good today. Judge has 59 home runs this season, and he has until Oct. 5 to tie or break the New York Yankees (and American League) record for home runs in a Major League Baseball season.

My date with 61 will be four days earlier than his deadline.

It’s my birthday Oct. 1, but that’s just where this story begins. It’s a story with a lot of asterisks, and it’s a long time in the making. I’ve told it many times, but not like this, and not with a grand new angle overshadowing it.

The record Judge is chasing was set by Roger Maris on Oct. 1, 1961. On that day, the last day of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run. The other event that day that’s integral to this story came early that morning — when I was born.

For years when I was young, I told myself that my cosmic connection to the home run record was a sign that I would one day break it. And why not? I came into the world just a few hours before Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record. I played baseball. I hit home runs. Why not?

An Oct. 1 baby did, in fact, break Maris’ record, but by now you know it wasn’t me. Mark McGwire, who was born two years to the day after I was, shattered the record by hitting 70 home runs in 1998. Three years after that, Barry Bonds hit 73 to break that record. I’ll let you decide whether those performances are tainted by the use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. They are not the point of this story.

For many baseball fans, Maris’ record was tainted because it came in an expansion year, when the American League grew from eight to 10 teams, diluting the quality of the pitching. The regular season also expanded, from 154 games to 162, giving players eight more games to catch the Babe. As Maris (and teammate Mickey Mantle) chased Ruth’s record in 1961, there was talk that unless the record were broken in 154 games, there should be an asterisk accompanying the new achievement in the record book.

There never was an asterisk. Instead, MLB commissioner Ford Frick ruled that there should be a distinction between records set in the first 154 games and those set in the final eight games of a 162-game season. But the popular misconception that there was an asterisk has endured, so much so that the typographical symbol is part of the title of a 2001 movie about the Mantle-Maris home run chase of 1961 — a movie largely faithful to the history, a credit to longtime Yankees fan Billy Crystal, the director.

(The asterisk in the title is not a mistake; Crystal knows the story all too well for that, but it was the right choice creatively. What’s that saying? When the legend becomes fact, print the legend? Something like that. Baseball fans of a certain age, upon seeing the image above, immediately understand the presence of the asterisk.)

More than a year ago, I envisioned doing a blog post this year with a simple headline — 61* — on my birthday. It was a Plan B. I’d intended to do a photo shoot for my 60th birthday, and when it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, I started thinking about 61. And ’61. And 61*. Long story short, we did the photo shoot anyway, and I bookmarked the idea of having a post like this one on my birthday this year. I knew it would need an asterisk as my Plan B, and maybe for more reasons.

Aaron Judge’s season gave me at least one other reason, prompting me to move up the date of publication 12 days early. I don’t know yet what I’ll write about for my birthday, but at this time I’m hoping I can artfully avoid coming right out and saying I just turned 61. That’s math that still doesn’t make sense to me.

I came out as transgender on my birthday in 2017. Each year since then on Oct. 1, I’ve written about some aspect of my transition. It’s a special birthday/anniversary day.

My friend Patti sent me the link to an NPR story Saturday about Judge’s home run chase. I told her that I didn’t have a plan for a birthday post this year but that it might have to be about the runup to 61 for Judge, and for me. Noting that I still love baseball, Patti said, “Maybe you can reflect upon what you keep, what you let go, and what you create new.”

I let that thought simmer. The next day, Judge hit home runs 58 and 59, putting him on the cusp. That made it pretty clear that this story couldn’t wait any longer.

The silver lining is that it frees me to start writing a birthday story about what I’ve kept, what I’ve let go, and what I’ve created new. And maybe I can keep it under 30,000 words. After all, I got through this one without telling you everything I know about Mantle and Maris and the home run chase. I didn’t tell you everything about my days as a home run hitter. Or that I played right field, like Ruth did, like Maris did, and like Judge often does. I didn’t tell you much of anything about my long, unplanned career as a sports journalist when it didn’t work out for me to be a home run champion in professional baseball. I didn’t veer off into story after story of what it was like to become a sportswriter years after reading story after story about how sportswriters treated Maris during that 1961 season. Or how in retrospect I was thrilled for him that on Oct. 1, 1961, he was set free from the pressures of the chase, and how special it still is for me that, unlike on every other day of that season and that chase, I was alive and breathing and kicking and screaming.

(See? Get me started and I just go and go.)

If you had told me at any point in my baseball-playing days that they would come to an abrupt end in college, that I would go no further as a player, it would have been hard to accept. As it was, it took me years to come to grips with having been told my services were no longer needed. It’s small consolation that I was told that very thing the day after hitting a home run 460-plus feet to straightaway center field, the perfect swing on a slider thrown by a Double-A pitcher working on his stuff before spring training. “Damn, Dubois,” the coach said. “Every time I think I’m going to cut you, you do something good.” In his office the next day, he cut me.

And if you had told me back then that one day I’d not only be following one of the Yankees in his pursuit of Maris’ team and American League record but also editing stories about it for a journalism organization owned by The New York Times, it would have sounded like science fiction to me. But that’s exactly what’s been happening lately. For all I know, at some point after I return to work Wednesday, I’ll get to edit a story about Judge hitting No. 61.

He’ll likely add to that number. How many more I have after 61, who knows? I’ve been thinking about my own mortality, and as corny as it sounds, the best thing I can do at this point is to keep swinging.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to click on play and rewatch a favorite movie.