Yankees rookie Aaron Judge has best-selling rookie jersey ever
New York Yankees rookie slugger Aaron Judge has finished the regular season with the best-selling jersey in baseball.
In fact,Judge has the best-selling rookie jersey ever, according to Major League Baseball.
Judge bested Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs, who finished second and third, according to MLB, which released the list on Tuesday morning.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw and Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper rounded out the top five of the list based on sales from MLBShop.com from opening day through the last day of the season.
Four teams have multiple players on the top 20 best-selling list: The Cubs with four (Bryant, Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kyle Schwarber), the Dodgers with three (Kershaw, Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger), the Boston Red Sox with two (Mookie Betts and Dustin Pedroia) and the Yankees with two (Judge and Gary Sanchez).
At 25, Judge is not the youngest to find himself at the top of the list. Two years ago, Bryant finished the season as No. 1 at the age of 23.
The Yankees, not surprisingly, were always near the top of the list, including Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter, who finished No. 2 and No. 2 in 2013 and 2014, respectively -- the years in which they retired.
Last year the Yankees didn't have a single player in the season-ending top 20 list.
Along came Judge, who, amid all the hype, won the All-Star Home Run Derby in Miami and broke the rookie record for home runs with 52.
The collecting public couldn't get enough. His signed 2013 Bowman rookie cards sold for thousands of dollars, the price of his autograph on a ball, with an exclusive autograph deal with Fanatics, rose to $350, and Topps sold a record 16,138 cards of Judge in the 24 hours after he broke the home run mark.
Judge's game-used jerseys sold for astronomical prices. The jersey he wore in his major league debut in August 2016 sold in July for $157,366, the highest price paid for a jersey worn in the past 15 years. Judge's jersey from the Players Weekend with "All Rise" on the back was recently sold by MLB for $19,999, with 100 percent of net proceeds going to charity.
