And now to the confounding part.

Interim White Sox manager Grady Sizemore decided to intentionally walk Juan Soto to get to Judge. The move didn't work, and it motivated Judge to hit his milestone home run.

"I was mad about the intentional walk. So that kind of fueled it," Judge told YES Network's Meredith Marakovits on the field after the game. "Usually 3-0, I'll take a pitch, see a pitch, pass it on to the next guy. But in that situation, if they want to pitch to you, you gotta come through."

Soto was the Yankees' hottest hitter entering that at-bat. The first-year Yankee hit three home runs in Tuesday's win and hit a solo shot in the first inning of Wednesday's game. So with the White Sox's deficit just four runs, Sizemore explained he didn't want to pitch to Soto.

"It's pick your poison. I'm not trying to get to Judge. I just got a base open, [Soto's] had four homers on us," Sizemore said after the game. "There's no solution or easy way out of that jam, but Soto's definitely been the hotter of those two bats even though Judge has been hot, too.

"So again, we're just playing with the situation there. We were already in trouble, we had a base open. Just trying to get out of it any way we can."

"You guys all saw how [Soto's] swinging the bat this week," Judge said of the intentional walk. " Yeah, it makes sense. The guy had three homers yesterday, homer to start the game today, wouldn't you [walk him]?"

"I was really thinking they were going to do back-to-back intentional walks when they walked me," Soto said. "I didn't know that they were going to try to pitch to him."

Aaron Boone said he was "caught off guard" by the intentional walk, but he was not surprised by the milestone as he continues to manage a player who tends to do something historic annually.

"It's incredible. We almost talk about it every night," he said. "Seeing what him and Juan are doing. It's not something you ever see two guys doing. And what Aaron's doing, a select few in the history of the game that you start talking about this kind of season he's having."

Judge is having a season that is eclipsing his 2022 MVP year, when he broke the AL home record.

So far this year, Judge is hitting .333 (second in MLB) with an MLB-leading .467 OBP, 707 slugging percentage, and a 1.174 OPS. He also leads baseball with 43 home runs, 110 RBI and 102 walks. But despite the numbers, it's the milestones that give Judge pause.

When he hears about the company he's in when he hits these milestones and breaks records, he's humbled.

"It's a great achievement," Judge said of his milestone and the baseball players he's surpassed. "It's tough to say [what it means], those are some guys that have done a lot of great things in this game and to throw around a lot of those names, even people that don't know baseball they know who they are. It's a special group to be in.

"It's just an honor to be in the same category as and mentioned in the same sentence. So hopefully we keep doing some things to stay the likeness of them."

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