There are big October baseball games this week at Yankee Stadium, the place where there have been more big October baseball games than anywhere else on the planet. The Yankees, even though they haven’t won the very biggest game in 15 years, still believe this is their time. It is why it should be Aaron Judge’s time, too. Should be and probably will be, from now and maybe all the way to next month. That is where Judge hits baseballs when he’s going good. Into next month. Why not let it be November this time? Giancarlo Stanton hit the most important home run of the most important game of this Yankee postseason so far, Game 3 against the Royals. It was a loud one at Kauffman Stadium. Judge’s bat has been mostly quiet. It’s happened before, even though his career numbers aren’t as bad as you think they are in October. They’re just not up to his own lofty standards. But now this is his chance at everything. To be a great Yankee on a World Series team. To be as big this week, and next week, and beyond, as he has been since he hit all those home runs, 52 of them, as a rookie. The Yankees have already won a round without him doing much of anything. It is time for that to change, because it is impossible to believe that it won’t. This isn’t Stanton’s team, or Juan Soto’s. It is his. You know how Aaron Boone always says that it’s right there in front of the Yankees. It is all right there in front of No. 99, starting Monday night. Not necessarily a defining moment for him as a Yankee, or even a great Yankee, not after the way he has become not just the face of this Yankee generation, but a Ruthian slugger, 50 or more home runs three times in his career and 62 two years ago. Around here, we want to see another Subway Series, the first between the Mets and Yankees since 2000, an event of immense baseball romance in New York, evoking what it was like in the ’50s when the Yankees played the Brooklyn Dodgers four times in the Series and the New York Giants once. But there are an awful lot of baseball fans around the country, here to Los Angeles, who would like to see Judge and Shohei Ohtani — the first 50-homer player the Dodgers ever had — swinging for the fences in the same World Series. For now, there are four more games for Judge and the Yankees to win. We all know that October is such a small sample size, every single year. But for now the best playoff series Judge has had for the Yankees is one they lost, in 2018, in four games to the Red Sox. He hit a couple of home runs and had six hits in 16 at-bats and ended up batting .375. It was one of seven playoff appearances for Judge’s Yankees. Once they made it as far as Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Another time they made it to Game 6. Both against the Astros. The last time, in 2022, they got swept by the Astros. Now they are back. Four wins away from Judge’s first Series, the Astros finally not in the way. There are a million ways to keep score for the Yankees. Judge has made us keep score big time in home runs, him against Ruth and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. But there is one way, above all others, where just about every great Yankee except Don Mattingly is measured, and that is by the World Series. Maybe Judge makes it there as soon as next week. And listen up: Not everybody gets to be Derek Jeter in the playoffs, because in the playoffs Jeter so often turned into Michael Jordan. He played 158 postseason games in his life, batted .308., hit 20 home runs. Mickey Mantle. It was different for him when he played, because the only postseason he got was the World Series. But in his first 45 Series games, he had 45 hits and a .281 batting average, 14 home runs and 31 RBI and 19 extra-base hits. In Judge’s first 48 postseason games, he had 38 hits, 13 homers, 25 RBI, 18 extra-base hits. Mickey was better over roughly the same sampling of games, and over a much longer period than Judge has had in October starting in 2017. But not crazy better. The Yankees didn’t need Judge to do much of anything to beat the Royals. The Yankees didn’t score very much, but pitched the way they did early in the season so it didn’t matter. Now the lights get brighter and the stakes are raised again. The Yankees are where they are, with this kind of shot at the Series, after having had that dreadful 10-23 stretch in the middle of this season. Judge ended up with 58 homers and 144 RBI and the highest batting average of his career at .322. He ended up with a stat line like that after doing nothing in April and even hearing boos. His team showed it could get back up. Judge showed the ability to get back up first this season. He is asked to get back up again in the series that might finally put him in the World Series. The Yankees can beat the Royals without him. But can’t make it to the end of October. “Since I’ve been here, we haven’t secured a pennant,” is the way Judge put it the other night as the Yankees celebrated their victory over the Royals. They do believe it’s their time. How can anybody not believe it’s Aaron Judge’s? At a time when the Yankees are this close to being the Yankees again and just as desperate to fully be the Yankees again, Aaron Judge is more the Yankees than any of them.