In December of 2017, right after the Yankees had just gone to Game 7 of the ALCS against the Astros and a couple of weeks before Christmas, they traded for Giancarlo Stanton. He was 28 at the time and had just hit a Ruthian 59 home runs for the Marlins, before Mr. Judge would blow past that number later. Now Stanton is into his 9th season with the Yankees, and across nearly a decade with them has made the aging Mickey Mantle look like the Iron Horse in comparison. Of course it is not Stanton’s fault that he has been injured as frequently as he has, and almost perpetually snakebitten. But a ballplayer who looks like a tight end the same as Aaron Judge does has continued to break down the way Mantle did over time because of bad legs of his own.

So far this season, Stanton has only been healthy enough to play in 24 of the 93 games his team had played coming into the weekend before the All-Star Game. He played 158 games in his first season with the team, back in ’18. The closest he has come to that number since is the 139 he played in 2021.

Just counting the regular season, Stanton has now played 764 games in 8-plus seasons as a New York Yankee. He has missed 513. Even in the 60-game COVID year of 2020, Stanton played 23 games and missed the other 37. When he was on the field for the 24 he’s played so far in 2026, on legs every bit as fragile as Mantle’s were, he has run the bases — trying to protect those legs — looking like someone making their way across an ice rink in dress shoes.

For all the times Stanton has hit like a true giant in the postseason — generally producing better than Judge did before last October — he has still turned into one of the most star-crossed baseball stars any New York team has ever seen. It has happened across what was supposed to be his home run prime. He was a reigning MVP when he got to New York. He was in the early innings of a long-term, $325 million contract, most of which the Yankees would be on the hook for, for what seemed like forever when he first started breaking down.

We all know that when Stanton isn’t back on the injured list and they can get him into the batter’s box, he can still scare pitchers half to death; still get baseballs over the wall before the announcers can finish their home run calls. But now this is another season when the Yankees know when he will be back in the lineup. Once, Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman looked at this — all ways — as a home run of a deal. But what are they thinking now after the way after the way things have turned out for Stanton, and for them? He is a tremendous stand-up guy, that’s never been in question. Only he keeps having to sit out.

It is why no one was terribly surprised when we found out from Cashman this week that Stanton was still on the IL because of a leg injury different from the one that took him off the field again at the end of April.

“A whole new injury…..not a setback from the original injury,” Cashman told the media the other day.

A new calf injury sustained while running the bases, Cashman continued, but in a slightly different area.

“It kind of resets the whole thing,” Cashman said.

Finally the Yankees general manager said this, sounding a bit like Casey Stengel:

“We have to give him the time it takes. And unfortunately it takes time.”

So this year he has basically played a quarter of his team’s games. Between 2022 and 2024, he played 110, 101, 114. Last season, it was 77 in the regular season. A guy with Ruth’s power and Judge’s power, a guy who has shown up big in October, and the only time you feel is if he’s safe from injury on the basepaths is when he’s into another home run trot. Derek Jeter famously talked about ghosts at the old Stadium. Now, more often than not, Stanton has become a ghost of the new Yankee Stadium.

If you love sports, you gave up the notion long ago that sports is supposed to be fair. But what has happened to Stanton, and keeps happening, does seem terribly unfair. He is a complete professional through it all, he is a tremendous teammate, well-liked by the other men and the room and by Yankee fans. He has carried himself with grace despite being tackled from behind as many times as he has.

It is easy to forget that he was the MVP of the ’24 ALCS when the Yankees made it back to the World Series at long last. You remember a triumph like that almost as well as you do the ’19 ALCS, when he homered to win the Yankees Game 1 but then missed four of the next five games when he was hurt again. The Yankees lost all of them.

Remember: This all happened because Shohei Ohtani didn’t want Hal’s money. Once that became clear, Cashman pivoted to Stanton — hard and fast and perhaps even frantically — and made the big splash for the big man two weeks or so before Christmas. Stanton wasn’t Ohtani. No one is, or ever has been. But he was 59 home runs and at that time, only Babe Ruth had ever hit more. Just like that, he was a Yankee.

“I’m glad to be here and part of the New York Yankees. It’s going to be a great new chapter in my life and my career,” Stanton said the day the Yankees introduced him. “I think it’s going to be a fun new dynamic, but at the same time, it’s baseball. So I understand there will be some ups and downs, and I’ll have to deal with that on a bigger scale. But it’s the same game I played down in Miami — just a bigger scale, brighter lights.”

There have been ups, absolutely, especially in the postseason. There was a lot of October baseball when Yankee fans absolutely wanted Stanton up in a big spot before they wanted Judge. But the downs have been more than he could have expected. Maybe in the end it was harder keeping two sluggers as big as Stanton and Judge on the field at the same time, and over the long haul. Because, let’s face it, it’s not as if Judge hasn’t had injury issues of his own, starting with what’s going on right now with his rib.

The difference with the two sluggers is this: Judge’s legacy as a Yankee won’t ever be complicated. Stanton’s will be. Maybe that can change this October, which might be his last as a Yankee. Giancarlo Stanton is one of the good guys. Still time for him to be great as a Yankee one more time.

THE PULISIC HATE IS OVERBLOWN, HOW IS SONNY GRAY NOT AN ALL-STAR & FERY GOES FROM UNKNOWN TO BEST WIMBLEDON STORY

It was unclear to me after the USMNT lost to Belgium whether or not Christian Pulisic had to leave the game with an injury, or robbed a Wells Fargo.

A good friend emailed me when that match was over and asked how our guys lost the way they did.

This was my answer:

“Because the other team was better?”

Belgium was a lot better that night.

And the idea that Pulisic now has to be the villain of the piece is dumber than, well, pick whomever you think is the dumbest guy in Congress.

Take as much time as you need.

By the way?

On what planet is 11-1 Sonny Gray not an All-Star?

Can you imagine what the reaction is going to be if Tarik Skubal ends up with the Dodgers?

I was at Wimbledon on the first Tuesday of the tournament, and got caught up watching Arthur Fery — about whom I knew nothing about at the time — come back after losing the first set of his first round match on an outside court.

It was one of those really fun outside-court dramas you get the first week there.

Little did I know that Fery, who grew up a few minutes from the All-England Club was about to become one of the best stories the tournament has ever seen, all the way to his semifinal loss to Alexander Zverev on Friday.

He was No. 114 in the world and scraping around on the Challenger Circuit and now everybody who loves tennis knows his story and his name.

There’s an expression from tennis that has always covered a story like this, in any sport, really:

It’s why they put the net up.

I kind of hope LeBron ends up playing with Steph.

The only surprising thing would be if anybody is surprised at how great Larry David’s new HBO show is.

It would be kind of a neat change of pace if the Jets won some games this time around.

There isn’t anyone who has ever met my friend Chris Evert, or anyone who simply rooted for her across one of the great careers we’ve had in American sports, who isn’t praying for her to beat cancer again.

So somebody got into the Reflecting Pool and managed to put a gash in it the length of the football field at MetLife Stadium and nobody picked up on that?

Got it.

Wait, a pitcher gets to yell “Sit down, boy” at Willson Contreras and he’s the one who gets set down for five games

Got it on that one, too.

Finally today:

Happy first birthday this week to our first granddaughter, Gigi Taylor Lupica.

I will say about her what I’ve been saying for a very long time about her Aunt Hannah:

Boy oh boy, what a girl.

James Patterson and Mike Lupica’s new thriller, “The Country Road Murders,” goes on-sale tomorrow.