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BOSTON — There was a period — a long one, in fact — when baseball would have stopped … and probably more than that. 

This was before the surge and splurge in steroids did so much to diminish the aura around the home run. 

This was before baseball kept getting relegated, not just behind football, but lost in the haze of hundreds of channels and social media and the ebbing away of broadly accepted American achievement at which the home run was certainly central. 

So there was a time when Aaron Judge passing Joe DiMaggio — especially because it was DiMaggio — on the Yankees’ all-time home run list would have caused a cessation of play even at Fenway Park for a moment of acknowledgment and a coast-to-coast trumpeting of the achievement.