Aaron Judge does not get quiet homecomings. He gets a Subway Series. The Yankees have spent his absence trying to stay within shouting distance of Tampa Bay, and now the guy who makes that lineup a different animal is back in it, with the Mets standing in the way of the next step.
For the Mets this game does not care what the Yankees need. Beating the Yankees means something on its own terms, Judge or no Judge, and a crosstown spoiler job hits different in September than it does in April. That is the tension sitting on top of this one: New York's other team returning at the exact moment New York's team needs the room cleared.
Nobody in Queens is scripting a welcome party. The only question that matters walks into the box with him. Mets or Yankees, who wins this one?