Yankees slugger Aaron Judge made baseball history on Wednesday night, matching Roger Maris’s franchise and American League record with 61 home runs on the season. The monumental home run wound up in the hands of someone notable as well.
In the top of the seventh inning in Toronto, Judge hit a blast to left field, falling just shy of the glove of a devastated Blue Jays fan and into the home team’s bullpen. The person who ultimately came up with the ball: Jays pitching coach Matt Buschmann.
The 38-year-old was a long-time minor leaguer, who had a cup of coffee with the Diamondbacks in 2016. Three years later, he became the Blue Jays’ pitching coach. He is also married to a very notable sportscaster, Sara Walsh—a former SportsCenter anchor who now covers the NFL and soccer for Fox and NFL Network after seven years at ESPN.
While Buschmann is in Toronto during the season, Walsh is down in Florida, and her Twitter account was must-read as she went on the adventure of learning that her husband caught and then gave away the historic home run ball.
“Oh cool. He just handed that back without checking to see if our house is still here?” Walsh said in a follow-up tweet, a nod to the ongoing Hurricane Ian in Florida. “I’d next like to announce our divorce.”
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Walsh continued, sharing that early in their relationship she told Buschmann that her favorite movie is 61*, the 2001 HBO film about Maris’s historic season.
She then put on her reporter hat and shared how things played out with her husband’s decision to give the ball away.
“The Judge and Maris family have been flying all over the country,” he said. “They deserve to have that ball.”
Judge’s historic chase isn’t over yet. If he hits one more home run—No. 62—it will break Maris’s American League record. Given the controversial steroid era in which Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa recorded their own historic seasons, a large group of baseball fans will consider Judge the true single-season home run king if he reaches that mark.
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