The manager had heard the noise, because it was impossible not to hear the noise. The starting third baseman was knee-deep in a flummoxing funk. He’d scratched out only two hits and a walk in 17 plate appearances. He looked hopeless and helpless at the plate.
Even as he was offering public encouragement — “He’s a good hitter. You don’t stop being a good hitter because of a bad week” — the manager couldn’t tolerate another full day of empty at-bats. He’d benched his struggling third baseman for the most important game of the year.
But late in that game, with Yankee Stadium on tenterhooks, with the clock having raced past midnight as they prepared to play the bottom of the 11th inning of a winner-take-all game, all the money on the table, that struggling player was about to walk to the plate, having entered as a pinch runner a few innings earlier. And while the fans may have been seized by nerves, there were a few who remembered and took care to boo the struggling player as he was introduced.
Before he could leave the dugout, the manager offered a final bit of wisdom, since the manager, a former player himself, knew well the vagaries of hitting and the mysteries of a slump:
“Just hit a single. It doesn’t mean you won’t hit a home run.”
If you have even a passing knowledge of Yankees lore, you already know the identities of the principals of what sounds like a fable but is absolutely true. The hitter was Aaron Boone. The manager was Joe Torre. The date was Oct. 16, 2003 — although, as it was 12:16 a.m. when this all happened, it was technically Oct. 17 — and a few seconds after nodding at Torre, Boone took a mighty whack at a Tim Wakefield knuckleball, depositing it over the left field wall at the old Stadium, and delivering the Yankees to the World Series.
A little later, still dazed, mobbed by his teammates, his ears still ringing from the grateful cheers of 56,279 fans, Boone said: “What I want to know is, what are all these people doing in my dream?”
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Perhaps you wonder how it can be, all these years later, that Boone, now the manager of the Yankees, can be so relentlessly positive even during stretches of seasons when his players can barely get out of their own way. Perhaps that drives you to frustration. It happens. It does. Social media posts are time-stamped. So are email complaints. The receipts are all there, available for anyone to see.
And sure, much of it is probably Boone’s personality. He has been an affable and agreeable soul ever since he first arrived in New York earlier in that summer of 2003. There is a fire that burns; nobody achieves any level of success as a professional athlete without it, and it’s most visible in those regular occasions when he files a public grievance with an umpire. But he is a man whose default position, always, is to spin the positive.
But there’s something else, too.
He has seen, firsthand, the benefits of such positive reinforcement.
You could argue that it changed his life, because you could argue that without that moment in 2003, Boone would have been nowhere near Yankees radar 14 years later, when they were in the market for a manager. What is inarguable is Torre settled Boone down in a moment when his nerves were jangled and his confidence shot — and not just the talk with Torre at 12:16 a.m., but Torre’s public proclamations of support before that.
It’s funny. Most of the qualities for which Torre was lauded can be found in the makeup of Boone. Torre, of course, was wise enough to win a championship in his first year. It has taken Boone seven to make a World Series after 603 regular-season wins.
Still, it doesn’t take long for a faction of fans to quickly yearn for the days of Billy Martin when Boone lauds a player in a 2-for-25 slide, insists he’s close to breaking out, and refuses to blink when called on his optimism, rather than overturn a buffet table and air that player out. Once upon a time, Boone learned that there’s another way, too.
And that way will be introduced in the image of the manager of the American League champions Friday night. Good for him. Better for the Yankees.
