Month: July 2017

Love Story

(This story originally appeared in the May 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)

I’m so happy I got to write this story about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. It’s really a testament to my bosses at Yankees Magazine that they let me do this stuff. This is barely a Yankees story — I tried to get some Yankees and Yankee Stadium connections in there, but this is clearly a story about a museum in another city.

I was so lucky to be shown around the museum by Bob Kendrick and Ray Doswell. Kendrick, the president of the museum, is the voice of the late Buck O’Neil. His work is to keep Buck’s memory alive and vibrant, and throughout the museum, it’s so clear that he succeeds.

In my effort to expand the scope somewhat, I tried to focus on ways that the Negro Leagues endure in culture, and what that can help us understand about the way the game was played in that time and under those conditions. I focused on two things: Fences, the August Wilson play-turned-Denzel Washington/Viola Davis movie; and The Summer King, a new opera about Josh Gibson that debuted this past April in Pittsburgh. It was fascinating to dive deep into these two works, and I tried my best to do them justice.

This piece was an absolute joy for me in all facets. I hope you’ll read it.

http://m.yankees.mlb.com/news/article/227851232/yanks-play-kc-celebrate-negro-leagues-museum/?topicid=163658034

In His Blood

(This story originally appeared in the April 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)

So this one was weird. It basically started by sheer luck. I was trying to plan an offseason reporting trip, looking for ways that I could get a few things done in one swing. I knew that Jacoby Ellsbury — who is believed to be the first player of Navajo descent to reach the majors — ran a camp for Native American youth in Arizona every year, and I thought it would be a good thing to cover.

As I kept doing more research, though, I kept finding amazing things that drew me in even more. By the end, I think I had enough for a book.

Ellsbury’s mother is from Parker, a town on a little reservation in western Arizona which belongs to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, collection of the Mojave, Hopi, Chemehuevi and Navajo tribes. His mother, Margie, is full-blooded Navajo, and in my research, I learned that she actually designed the CRIT flag.

Well, that was interesting. I started making random phone calls to anyone number I could find for the tribe and the town. One of the first calls I made went to voicemail. “Hi,” it said, “You’ve reached Esther McCabe.” Another McCabe (sure enough, Esther is one of Margie’s sisters). The whole thing kept going like that. It kept pulling me in.

Ellsbury is generally extremely private, not the easiest person to track down in the clubhouse, so I wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about my picking around in his past. But obviously, with his holding the camp for the kids at the same time, he was fine talking to me about the heritage, what it meant to him, and the like. His eyes lit up a bit when he heard that I was going to Parker. And he encouraged me to meet up with anyone I could from his family. I was honestly surprised that he didn’t push back at all, but I was grateful.

The last thing that happened, about two months later, when I was still writing — I ran into Ellsbury in the clubhouse in spring training. And he mentioned something to me that made me know I wasn’t making a story out of nothing, that the story I was telling was one that was deeply important to him. He told me (unprompted, out of nowhere) that when his wife gave birth to a daughter a month earlier, they had given her the middle name Parker.

The story that I tell isn’t particularly happy. The tribes have had a rough go of it, which isn’t surprising. But everyone I spoke with was so open, so warm, so interesting. Two members of the tribal council actually sat me down for a PowerPoint presentation about the whole history of the reservation. It was really incredible.

I’m so glad that I got to tell this story. I hope you’ll read it.

http://m.yankees.mlb.com/news/article/222040346/ellsbury-honors-his-native-american-heritage/?topicid=163658034

Short Track

(This story originally appeared in the 2017 New York Yankees Official Yearbook)

As I write this, Gleyber Torres is injured, and out for the rest of the 2017 season, which is a shame, because I can’t wait to see what happens when New York gets to know this kid. Acquired by the Yankees in the 2016 trade that sent Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs, Torres was said to be a stud, but as someone who pays incredibly little attention to midwestern teams’ farm systems, I didn’t really know anything about him other than what I could see on his Baseball-Reference page.

But in August, soon after the trade, I headed down to Tampa to meet with him and some of the other newly acquired prospects. And I was absolutely blown away by his poise, his maturity, his savvy. After he posed for a bunch of photos, he asked the photographer to let him see them. It was a small move — most guys just want to move on as quickly as possible, but he cared about how he looked. It didn’t come across as vain, just a kid in control.

Similarly, during the photo shoot, we were hanging out at second base (when I’m not interviewing, I’m often helping out by holding a light or something else in these situations). We were making easy small talk in English, just a normal conversation. Torres, from Venezuela, didn’t even appear to be struggling. But when it came time to sit down for the actual interview, he called over a translator. Again, he wanted to be perfect. I have no doubt that he would have been just fine doing the interview in English, but I totally respected the fact that he wanted to do it his way. I think that as long as translators are available, players should use them if it makes them comfortable.

Anyhow, no one should care about how Torres behaved toward me the first times I met him. But I honestly think that it was indicative of a guy who just won’t settle for anything other than perfection, and if he’s that way with interviews, I expect him to put similar work into what he does on the field. Watching him at the Arizona Fall League a few months later, and then during spring training this year, the impression stuck.

I figure he’ll be competing for a role with the big club when spring camp opens in 2018. I hope so. I really can’t wait to see him play in New York.

Hope you’ll enjoy.

http://m.yankees.mlb.com/news/article/221541182/yankees-gleyber-torres-living-up-to-hype/?topicid=163658034

 

Workingman’s Blues

(This story originally appeared in the Spring 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)

When I visited Arizona in January of 2017, my plan was to come back with two stories. One on Tim Raines, who was up for election to the Hall of Fame, and I was pretty confident that he would get it. The other would be spending some time at Jacoby Ellsbury’s camp for Navajo youth (more on that in an upcoming post), then visiting the reservation in western Arizona where his family has deep roots.

The day we landed, though, Ellsbury’s agent called with a surprise offer. After telling us that our time with Jacoby would be extremely limited, the center fielder agreed to let us come out to watch him work out the next day at his offseason training facility.

EXOS, where Ellsbury and a host of professional athletes work, is an absolute factory of fitness and nutrition. Every single thing that happens there is carefully crafted to be perfect for each individual player. It’s really a sight to see. While we were there, there were a bunch of players from other sports, including players preparing for the NFL Combine. But Ellsbury’s group also had a handful of notable MLB players, such as Evan Longoria, Miguel Montero and others.

Because I was already writing an Ellsbury story, I wanted to make sure that I got some other players involved, so I decided to check out the spectrum of how different players — with different salaries and therefore different spending abilities — handle their offseasons. We met up with Rob Refsnyder for a workout of his (conveniently, he’s also in Arizona), then met with Chase Headley in New York later that month. I think the story does a good job of showing how different each player is, but how hard they all work. There really is no offseason anymore. That was definitely clear through the whole process of reporting this one.

I hope you’ll enjoy.

http://m.yankees.mlb.com/news/article/216825336/no-offseason-for-yankees-pre-spring-training/?topicid=163658034