A plattah that mattahs. Or doesn't.

 Or to put it another way: When is a record not a record?

This because Aaron Judge hit No. 62 last night, and now Roger Maris and everyone who ever played in the American League before is in his rearview. He's the single-season home run king of the AL, and you're not.

But he's still only No. 7 on the alltime MLB list. No matter how fervently some are trying to rewrite history this morning.

The sticking point for these folks, as always, is the Steroids Era, when MLB secreted more juice than a ripe peach. Back when  Barry Bonds was hitting 73 home runs (the actual record) and Mark McGwire 70 and Sammy Sosa 66, the majors were crawling with PEDs because the majors had no coherent policy about them. And so baseballs kept artificially jumping out of ballparks.

Because of that, the endless debate is on again. Do we count Steroids Era records? Or should we bring back the asterisk and affix it to Bonds, to McGwire, to Sosa?

The Blob says that's absurd. And here's why.

It's because Bonds and McGwire and Sosa and the numbers they put up are the products of their time, just as Aaron Judge's 62 dingers is the product of its time. The latter happened in an era when everyone is swinging for the fences on every pitch; the former in an era when a good portion of the majors was juicing on some sort of high-octane chemistry.

If Bonds and McGwire and Sosa and their contemporaries were artificially muscling up, so were the pitchers throwing to them. And PEDs didn't help them make contact with the BBs being flung by those supercharged arms. It only ensured the ball would travel farther when they did.

Everything is what it is. Babe Ruth, the guy everyone once chased, hit 60 home runs in an era when he never had to play at night and never had to play against blacks. Maris eclipsed the Babe because MLB had expanded the season from 154 to 162 games, and Maris swatted No. 61 in game number 162.

Baseball commissioner Ford Frick wanted a notation acknowledging that (not an asterisk, despite the mythology) placed in the record book. Folks were outraged, and should have been.

Not so, at least in some quarters, about judging Judge the "real" home run champion.

He's not. Just as the Babe was not, once Maris sent No. 61 on its way.