We're a quarter of the way through the 2022 Major League Baseball season, and Aaron Judge continues to make it impossible to look away from him.

Really the only thing that's changed is the focus of the attention on Judge. Back on Opening Day, it was on his unsuccessful contract negotiations with the New York Yankees. Now it's where it rightfully belongs: on all the baseballs that he's pulverizing.

After collecting what's already his fourth multi-home run game of the season Monday, the 6'7", 282-pound right fielder's home run tally stands at a league-leading 17 through 41 games. No other hitter has more than 12 home runs.

MLB

Three ways Aaron Judge increased his value with early surge, and why he could become Yankees' best-paid player

This, folks, may be Yankees franchise history in the making.

If it seems like someone is missing here, you're probably thinking of Roger Maris' 1961 season.

That would be the one in which he didn't record his 17th home run until the Yankees' 49th game on June 7. He nonetheless went on to hit 61 homers, topping Babe Ruth's 60 from 1927 to claim the major league record for home runs in a single season.

Maris' 61 blasts from '61 still stand as the Yankees' club record for a season. And because both shot way past Maris in the thick of MLB's Steroid Era, some will argue that neither Mark McGwire's 70 home runs from 1998 nor Barry Bonds' 73 from 2001 represent the "true" home run record for all of Major League Baseball. 

We'll get to that, but first things first. If we're going to dive into the possibility of Judge matching or even surpassing Maris, we must begin by acknowledging that the merits of his pursuit are nothing if not compelling.