Hour 1: Judge 'Not Happy'

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**Michael Kay** (0:41)
And a good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 Me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagement. It's the fastest moving two hours in sports talk radio history. And one of the reasons is I have great co-hosts. And the co-hosts are you. And you know the membership number 1-800-919-3776, 1-800-919-3776.
And if you are engaged with us by watching us on the Espn New York YouTube channel, that's tremendous. We thank you for that. And we also thank the people at the Parisman firm for making it happen. And of course, you can consume us on the Espn New York app or on 880 Espn. So that's all out of the way. And let's get rolling. Big Wednesday, which means that in the 2 o'clock hour, we'll talk to our good friend, Mike Lupica. He joins us every Wednesday at 2.30. All right, we'll start off with the return of Aaron Judge.
You can't write it. If you wrote it as a fictional novel, and the novel's a fiction anyway, so that's redundant, you would say, well, there's no way he missed 99 days, the same number that he has on his back, but that's it. He missed 84 games and 99 days. And then he was in the line up yesterday batting third in the Yankee order. The Yankees ended up winning 5-3 over the Rockies. And Judge was for 3 with two strikeouts. My review of him is his timing looks off. He looked like he was late on some pitches. He fouled a couple pitches off to the right side, two sliders and a 93-94 mile an hour fastball. Those are pitches that he usually crushes. And I think what we are in the middle of seeing everybody is we're seeing a guy who is actually not the beginning of spring training well before that. We keep saying, well, this is like the beginning of spring training for him. It's not, because Judge already brought this up on the Yes! broadcast yesterday. At the beginning of spring training, you're working out during the entire off season.
You're lifting weights, you're running, you're in great shape when you go into spring training. Not like the old days when they would work in a men's store and be a haberdasher or work in bowling alley. So they use spring training to get into shape. But spring training in the last 30 years, these people have money. They don't have to work during the off season. So what they do is they work out during the off season. They come into spring training, they're ready. They're ready to play. And let's be honest, I don't think Aaron is at that point yet. Because he wasn't allowed to lift, he wasn't allowed to run, he certainly couldn't swing a bat. All of those things started taking place about two weeks ago. So he is far behind the beginning of spring training. And that's why there's no minor league rehab. He's using this time, these three weeks, these 19 games, now 18, to get ready for the postseason. And that's all there is to it. So they gave him three at bat, six innings and then take him out of the game. Now, the one thing that surprised me yesterday, last night, is that Judge seemed to be, I wouldn't say angry because I know he really loves Aaron Boone, but he seemed to be a bit miffed that he couldn't talk Boone out and letting him stay in the game. That didn't make sense to me. You know, he used the phrase when he met with the media after the game, he wasn't happy with being taken out. And then, you know, there seemed to be a discussion in the dugout when he took him out. Now, it worked out for the Yankees because they replaced Judge with Elliot Ramos. And Elliot Ramos ended up hitting the three-run home run that made it 5-1. And they held on and won the game 5-3. But that stuff should be worked out. I'm surprised that that's being brought in to the public realm. You got to sit down a judge if you're Boone and you're Brian Cashman and all the trainers and you have to lay out the plan. I mean, this can't be something that's being discussed in the dugout in the sixth inning.