NEW YORK _ As Aaron Judge walked into the Yankees clubhouse a little before 11 on Sunday morning, an ESPN "SportsCenter" feature about him had just finished playing on two of the large TV screens facing his locker.
Part of the piece was about Judge's gum-chewing habits. We kid you not.
Pretty soon, there's not going to be anything left to say about Judge. He has his own cheering section at Yankee Stadium, the Judge's Chambers. And now he has his first career grand slam, a rocket to right-center that was the big blow in the Yankees' 9-5 win over the A's.
Judge's third-inning grand slam off right-hander Andrew Triggs (5-4) came on a 2-and-1 pitch and had an exit velocity of 111.5, courtesy of the new exit-velo feature on the stadium's center field scoreboard _ another sign of the Judge effect.
The grand slam turned a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 lead and got the Judge-loving crowd of 45,232 on its feet. The fans probably didn't know this at the time, but the Yankees were on their way to improving to 13-1 this season when Judge homers. And 1-0 all-time when he hits a grand slam.
In his previous at-bat, Judge had lined out to right. That bullet had an exit velocity of 112.6 _ even harder than the grand slam.
Michael Pineda threw six innings and allowed three runs (two earned) for the win as the Yankees took the rubber match from the mistake-prone A's and finished 4-2 on their homestand.
All of the runs that scored on Judge's grand slam _ and another run in the next inning _ were unearned because of Oakland errors. The A's have 49 errors, which is by far the most in the American League.
The A's took a 2-0 lead in the second inning on Ryon Healy's two-run single. The Yankees scored in the bottom of the inning on Aaron Hicks' sacrifice fly to deep center.
Ronald Torreyes led off the third with an infield single. Gary Sanchez singled with one out before Matt Holliday sent a drive into the right field corner that Matt Joyce reached after a long run and dropped for an error to load the bases.
After Starlin Castro struck out on three pitches, Judge hammered his 16th home run of his amazing rookie season to the right of the Judge's Chambers to give the Yankees their first lead of the day. The blast tied Judge with Mike Trout for the major-league lead in homers. All rise indeed.
The Yankees made it 6-2 in the fourth when Hicks singled, stole second, moved to third on catcher Josh Phegley's throwing error and scored on Chris Carter's sacrifice fly.
Pineda allowed an unearned run in his final inning, the sixth, when he walked Jed Lowrie, balked him to second and then threw away a comebacker by Khris Davis for a run-scoring error. All Pineda's doing, but still an unearned run on his record. Pineda (6-2) allowed three hits, walked three and struck out five.
Sanchez smocked an RBI double off the glove of a diving Oakland left fielder Davis in the seventh to make it 7-3.
Chad Green allowed a two-run homer to Davis in the eighth as the A's pulled to within 7-5. Tommy Layne and Adam Warren combined to throw three pitches to get the final two outs of the inning.
Brett Gardner dunked a two-out, two-run single to left in the bottom of the eighth to make it 9-5, allowing Joe Girardi to keep Warren in the game rather than bring in Dellin Betances, who had a five-out save on Saturday. Warren pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his first save of the season.
