Aaron Judge's high school numbers are going viral. Joe Mauer's were even more impressive

Mauer was a dominant three-sport athlete at Cretin-Derham Hall in the early 2000s.

Minnesota Twins first baseman Joe Mauer (7) salutes the fans after the game against Chicago White Sox at Target Field in Minneapolis on Sept. 30, 2018. / Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

With his New York Yankees set to take on the Los Angeles Dodgers, Aaron Judge’s standout numbers in football, basketball and baseball during his senior year of high school have gone viral on social media. 

A Yankees fan on X, formerly Twitter, made a post that reads, “Reminder that senior year Aaron Judge may be the greatest year for a high school athlete of all time,” with a graphic below showing his statistics in the three sports.

In football, Judge had 54 receptions for 969 yards and 17 touchdowns; in baseball, he hit .500 with seven homers and 32 RBIs; and in basketball, he averaged 18.2 points and 12.8 rebounds per game and was an All-State center in California. 

Reminder that senior year Aaron Judge may be the greatest year for a high school athlete of all-time https://t.co/q0tgSnfZ8K pic.twitter.com/SlDpiWB07z

— Addison (@YankeeWRLD) October 23, 2024

Any one of those seasons would be impressive in and of itself, but to post those kinds of numbers in three different sports in the same year is nothing short of incredible.

But to the poster’s point, is it really the greatest year for a high school athlete of all-time?

Not quite.

There’s another standout Major League Baseball player who had an even more impressive high school stretch: former Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer, who also played three sports — also football, basketball and baseball — at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minn. Well, Mauer didn't just play three sports, he excelled in three sports.

Mauer was such an impressive high school athlete, in fact, that he was named USA TODAY’s High School Player of the Year in football in 2000 and USA TODAY’s High School Player of the year in Baseball in 2001.

He was the first athlete to be named the player of the year in two sports.

Mauer turned down multiple college football offers to instead by selected by the Twins No. 1 overall in the 2001 MLB draft. In 2000, he led Cretin-Derham Hall to a Prep Bowl title, and in two years as the starting quarterback, he threw for nearly 6,000 yards and 73 touchdowns. In his senior season alone, he threw for 3,022 yards and 41 touchdowns. 

In basketball, Mauer was a 1,000-point scorer and averaged over 20 points per game as a senior. 

And in baseball, Mauer hit a whopping .605 his senior season and had a stretch when he hit homers in seven straight games. He had 15 homers and 54 RBIs that season, and finished his high school career hitting .567 with 43 homers and 170 RBIs. More impressive than anything was that Mauer struck out just once during his entire high school career. 

Judge’s senior season of high school was nothing short of incredible, but it also just puts in perspective how truly astonishing Mauer’s senior season was. That he went on to have a Hall of Fame career with his hometown Twins makes it even more special.