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By Sonny Jones

Whether you call them taters or dingers, four-sack jacks or long balls, or, better yet, simply home runs, there’s some historic slugging happening in Major League Baseball.

The New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge is drawing lots of attention in his pursuit of the American League single-season home run record and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols is trying to become only the fourth player in league history to reach 700 career home runs.

Some sports networks are cutting away from programming to show the at-bats of both sluggers. As well they should.

While watching the Rays lose again to the AL front-running Astros on Wednesday night on the main TV, I had a computer screen tuned to the Yankees-Pirates game and stopped to watch when Judge came to the plate, then flipped to the Cardinals-Padres game to check on Pujols. Hey, the MLB Extra Innings package has its advantages.

Judge came within a few feet of tying Roger Maris’ AL record of 61 home runs in 1961 when he lined a ground-rule double deep down the left field line. The ball landed about 15 feet in front of the fence and bounced into the stands.

Lost in Judge’s home run power is his chase to become only the 11th player in major league history to win the Triple Crown. He, of course, leads the AL in homers with 60, which is 23 more than second-place Jordan Alvarez of Houston, and is tops in runs batted in with 128. He’s tied with Boston’s Xander Bogaerts for the top AL batting average at .317 after both went 2-for-4 Wednesday.

Best of all, for Judge, is that he’s a free agent at the end of the season. How much are the Yankees, or another team, willing to pay him and for how many years? He’s 30 years old and has been healthy the past two seasons. We’ve seen that most long term contracts don’t work well for the team in the end. It will be interesting to follow news of Judge’s off-season.

Pujols is at 698 career home runs with two weeks left before he retires after going 1-for-3 with a single Wednesday at San Diego. Only Barry Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755) and Babe Ruth (714) have hit more career regular season home runs than Pujols. Can he smack a couple more homers before Oct. 5? With the Cardinals comfortably in front in the NL Central, he likely will play nearly every game down the stretch. Let’s hope he gets it. It would be a perfect way for him to end his career, well, other winning a World Series with St. Louis this season.

The baseball season is long, can be dull and often has several meaningless games this time of year.

Two players — Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols — are creating must-watch TV with their taters or dingers, four-sack jacks or long balls, or, better yet, simply home runs.

Enjoy every pitch.

THURSDAY’S PICK TO CLICK

Cleveland’s Nick Chubb has averaged only 67 yards rushing per game and hasn’t run for a touchdown in eight career meetings against Pittsburgh. Time for that to change. Chubb runs for more than 100 yards and a touchdown against the Steelers.

WEDNESDAY’S PICK: This is as good of day as any to pick Aaron Judge to hit a home run. He’ll go deep for No. 60 against the Pirates. RESULTS: Judge almost hit No. 61, lining a ground-rule double deep down the left field line. He was 2-for-4 with 2 runs scored.

TODAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

• 2018 — Jess McDonald scores two goals and the North Carolina Courage win the National Women’s Soccer League championship with a 3-0 victory over the Portland Thorns.

WHAT TO WATCH TODAY

• TENNIS: Metz, San Diego, 8 a.m., TENNIS

• GOLF: Presidents Cup, 1 p.m., GOLF

• MLB: Minnesota at Kansas City or LA Angels at Texas, 2 p.m., MLBN

• MLB: St. Louis at San Diego or Seattle at Oakland, 5 p.m., MLBN

• MLB: Atlanta at Philadelphia or Boston at NY Yankees, 7 p.m. FOX

• FOOTBALL: West Virginia at Virginia Tech, 7:30 p.m., ESPN

• FOOTBALL: Coastal Carolina at Georgia State, 7:30 p.m., ESPN2

• WOMEN’S SOCCER: Clemson at Wake Forest, 8 p.m., ACCN

• NFL: Pittsburgh at Cleveland, 8:15 p.m., PRIME VIDEO

• TENNIS: San Diego, Tokyo, Seoul, 8:30 p.m. TENNIS

• MLB: Arizona at LA Dodgers, 10 p.m., MLBN