The New York Yankees' Aaron Judge just made baseball history.
The 30-year-old hit his 61st home run of the season during a Sept. 28 game against the Toronto Blue Jays, officially tying Roger Maris' American League record. The historic shot came in at the seventh inning, when Judge smashed a ball from Tim Mayza over the left field wall at the Rogers Centre.
Prior to Maris, Babe Ruth held the record with 60 single-season home runs in 1927.
With seven more games remaining, Judge could very well surpass Maris' 1961 record for most home runs in a season. However, he'll still need a dozen more successful hits if he wants to match Barry Bond's MLB record of 73 single-season home runs, which was set in 2001 during the league's controversial "steroids era," per ESPN.
But that's not to say Judge can't make the history books again. After all, Bonds recently predicted that the outfielder will be able to make more home runs after his 61st hit.
"Trying to get to that 61 is the hardest one," he told the outlet on Sept. 26. "Trying to get to that one. Once he gets to it, he's probably going to hit five or six in a row after that. But trying to get to there, that's the hardest one, that 61 is going to be the hardest. It's a big moment on 61."
Bonds, 58, also said that he's "cheering" for Judge, adding, "Seeing what he's doing is amazing."
Likewise, Judge—who made his MLB debut in 2016—has nothing but praise for Bonds and his record. "The greatest hitter of all time, in my opinion," Judge said in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month. "After playing this game and realizing how hard it is, I look back to how he'd see one pitch a game, one pitch a series that was over the plate, and he didn't miss it."
He added that he "stayed up late" as a kid to watch the athlete play. "That's the record," Judge raved. "No one can take that from him."