2022 Joe Brackets Male Athlete of the Year

It's crazy that there's only a week left in 2022!  With the end of the year fast approaching, we've been seeing all of the "Year In Review" and "Best of" lists.  Now it's my turn.  There were a number of great performances in 2022, but only one is worthy of being named Joe Brackets Male Athlete of the Year.

Sports Illustrated went with Stephen Curry, but I did not.  Yes, the Warriors were back on top, with Steph leading them to their first championship in four years.  He was named MVP of both the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals, as well as the All-Star Game.  An impressive performance, to be sure.  But enough to earn a Male Athlete of the Year nod?  Sadly, no.

Mondo Duplantis, meanwhile, continued to make his case as the best pole vaulter ever.  He broke the world record in March, then did it again at the World Indoor Championships a few weeks later.  Duplantis bettered his own record again in the final event of the final day of the World Outdoor Championships in July.  With all of Hayward Field watching him, he easily cleared 6.21 meters (and probably could've gone higher!).  Oh, yeah, he won the European Championship, too.  The scary thing is Duplantis is only 22 years old!

And I can't forget about Lionel Messi.  His club season at PSG wasn't Messi-like, but he more than made up for it at the World Cup!  He won the Golden Ball after scoring seven goals in seven matches, including two in the final.  Messi also converted a penalty kick in the shootout, as Argentina lifted the World Cup for the first time in 36 years and Messi had the one trophy that he was missing.

Finalist number 4 is Joe Burrow.  The Bengals' run to the Super Bowl was technically part of the 2021 season, but the playoff games were in January, so I'm counting them for this year.  And he was spectacular in Cincinnati's three wins, including road upsets over the No. 1 seed (Tennessee) and the two-time defending AFC champions (Kansas City).  The Super Bowl was another road game, and they almost won that one, too.  He's followed it up with a sensational 2022 regular season, leading the Bengals back to the playoffs and earning his first Pro Bowl nod.

Then there's Rafael Nadal.  As you know, I'm not a fan of Rafa by any stretch of the imagination.  But even I have to respect his becoming the all-time leader in Grand Slam titles.  After winning the Australian and French Opens, Nadal now has 22.  He withdrew from Wimbledon before the semifinal, so his only Grand Slam loss all year came in the fourth round at the US Open.  Simply put, Nadal had one of the best seasons of his career at 36.

However, when I was thinking about whose 2022 story was the best, whose 2022 story is the one that kept everybody talking night after night, whose 2022 season became must-see viewing, it all came back to one man.  The man whose excellence in 2022 will long be remembered.  The man who bet on himself and cashed in big time.  Aaron Judge.

Prior to the season, the Yankees offered Judge, a pending free agent, a seven-year extension worth $213.5 million.  He rejected it...and went on to have a season for the ages!  His reward?  Nine years for $360 million and being named captain of the New York Yankees. 

Judge's pursuit of the American League single-season home run record was well-documented.  But his season was so much more than that!  Judge led the Majors in homers, RBIs and runs scored, and, had his batting average been six points higher, he would've won the AL Triple Crown.  Not only that, he put the Yankees on his back, almost single-handedly winning games when the team was struggling mightily in August.

There's something else that I think is just as important that was often overlooked during that whole ridiculous "Ohtani should be MVP" "debate" during and after the season (Judge got 28 of the 30 votes, BTW, with only the two Angels representatives voting for Ohtani...but, yeah, it's New Yorkers who have the hometown bias!).  Judge is an elite right fielder...who spent most of the year playing center field.  And playing it well!  It was a move first made out of necessity because of how awful Joey Gallo and Aaron Hicks were, but Judge more than held his own at a demanding defensive position while still putting up historic offensive numbers.

But it was his pursuit of the AL home run record that had people talking (and coming out to the ballpark) all season.  Judge's 60th home run started a ninth-inning rally in a come-from-behind win over Pittsburgh at Yankee Stadium.  He tied Roger Maris in Toronto on Sept. 28.  Then, after going nearly a week without homering, he finally broke the record leading off the second game of a doubleheader in Texas on Oct. 4, the second-to-last day of the season.

During his re-introductory press conference at Yankee Stadium last week, Meredith Marakovits joked with Judge that his hitting at least one home run had become such a nightly occurrence that people were disappointed when he went "only" 2-for-3 with two walks and a double in a Yankees win.  That really says all you need to know about his 2022 season.  He had everyone's attention every night, and, more often than not, he delivered.

That's the other than about his remarkable 2022 campaign.  He played in 157 games, and one of the five he missed was the Yankees' last game when they desperately wanted to give him a day off after the record pursuit.  His last off day prior to that one was on August 3.  That's 55 consecutive games over the final two months of the season for a guy who had the pressure not only of a home run chase, but of carrying his underachieving teammates.  None of which seemed to faze him in the slightest.

Oh, yeah, and he did all this while playing in New York as the face of one of the marquee franchises in all of sports.  When Hal Steinbrenner named him captain, it was really more of a formality.  Because he already was.  Aaron Judge wasn't just the team's best player, enjoying a historic record chase that captivated the nation.  He was also the team's leader, in more ways than one.  Yet none of it affected him.  He went out and performed for a team that won 99 games and reached the ALCS...largely because of Judge's exploits.

Just try to imagine how the Yankees' season would've gone had Judge not put up those numbers!  That's obviously why he was the near-unanimous AL MVP and why he won so many Player of the Year awards.  That's what makes his season stand out so much more to me.  Putting up record-setting numbers is one thing.  That would be worthy of accolades all on its own.  But to put up those numbers for a team that really needed them is something else entirely.

For all these reasons, I can't think of anybody else for the 2022 Joe Brackets Male Athlete of the Year.  What Aaron Judge did this season wasn't just historic.  It was necessary.  It truly was a season for the ages.