Month: August 2017

Rise Up

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

Right when the season started, I penciled in this trip to Miami. I had a feeling that Aaron Judge was made for an event such as the Home Run Derby, and I had to see it first-hand.

Remember, at the time, Judge was coming off a big-league debut that saw him hit just four homers in 84 at-bats, but the guy is so big and so powerful that it was obvious he was going to hit. I definitely don’t consider myself some sort of genius for figuring that it might be worth checking out.

That said, it obviously paid off. I’ve been to the Home Run Derby seven times now, and it’s hard to express just how much MLB improved the event with the new rules that were introduced a few years ago (this was my first time seeing the new format in person). The four-minute rounds are dramatic. They’re fun. They are — when you’re in town to write a story about a guy who is in danger of not advancing out of the first round — kind of agonizing.

My story is about Judge’s incredible performance, but it also tries to make sense of this larger-than-life character who seems to prefer to blend into the background wherever possible. I tried to figure out how he feels about all the attention and intrigue of the first half, and how his life has colored his perspective. Judge is a great guy, extremely friendly and kind, but it’s nearly impossible to get him to talk about himself. So I tried to piece the puzzle together myself. How does he do it? He’s not saying.

In between, I tried to get in some fun anecdotes from the weekend, such as the balls off the roof, the opposite-field shots, and the general excitement in Marlins Park. Hope you enjoy.

The Official News of New York Yankees

Source: Aaron Judge dazzled in All-Star Game, Derby | MLB.com

The Road

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

This one will always have a special place in my heart. Donny Sands’ story is incredible, and I feel truly fortunate to have been able to tell it. But the nature of how I came to write about him is still amazing to me.

My plan, when I booked a trip to Charleston, was to interview Blake Rutherford, the team’s top pick in the 2016 Draft and the third-ranked prospect in the whole system. Along with my photographer, Jim Petrozzello, we were going to ride the bus with Blake from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, and my story would look at life in the low minors for a major prospect. I was excited about the story (and excited to visit Charleston and to see South Atlantic League baseball for the first time), but I’m not sure the feature would have been anything mind-blowing.

The night before I left, I was chatting with a Yankees PR staffer, and out of nowhere, he mentioned to me that Rutherford had just been placed on the disabled list. I had no idea. It hadn’t been announced anywhere (the team wouldn’t even announce it until late the next day, long after I arrived at the ballpark in Charleston). If not for that conversation, I would have gotten to the park and found out that the player I had traveled to see wouldn’t even be playing. Even if I somehow still got a story out of it, we wouldn’t have any photos of him in action. It would have been a disaster.

Instead, I had about an hour to research an alternate story, and with some help from a coworker and a tip from another writer in the Yankees press box — YES Network’s Lou DiPietro — I settled on Donny Sands. I had never heard of him before that moment, but it turned out that he was learned how to play catcher, transitioning from the infield, and I figured that could be enough of a story. Plus, it seemed like there was some vague tragedy in his past.

When I got to Charleston, Donny was totally willing to chat. He sat with us for a while as we went over the basics of what we wanted to do, how we wanted to follow him around for three days without having given him any notice, and how we wanted him to really open up to me, a guy he had never met or even heard of. But he was game for everything. And man, did he ever open up. I still can’t believe how raw the story he told was, how hard I found it to accept the way that he had totally been left behind by all of the people who should have been responsible for his education and even lodging. That he made it to the point he had was incredible enough; that he was so open about it was even more shocking. The luck kept going my way. While we were chatting that first day, I thought to myself that I needed to make sure to talk to Josh Paul, the Yankees’ roving catching instructor. Paul goes all around the minors, working with players, and he was playing a huge role in Sands’ position switch. As I’m thinking this to myself, Donny mentioned that Paul was actually in town. So instead of talking to Donny about the training and then talking to Paul, I was able to stand there with them and actually watch it happen. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.

Another key factor in my lucky streak: in mid-July, Rutherford was traded. It would have destroyed my story. Instead, Sands keeps developing. He’s still far away from themajors, but just a few days ago, he was promoted to High-A Tampa. It’s a long road to the majors. But Sands is doing his thing.

Donny has an incredible story. I hope I did it justice.

http://m.yankees.mlb.com/news/article/240570356/nyy-prospect-donny-sands-developing-as-catcher/?topicid=163658034

(I also recorded an audio feature for the story as part of the Yankees Podcast (please subscribe in iTunes or wherever you get podcasts!)

 

 

A Change is Gonna Come

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

Spring Training is often a time when I go around fishing for stories. The clubhouses are filled with players, and there are fewer amenities off-limits to media, which means that the players are generally more accessible. And they’re usually in a good mood, so you can be a bit more playful in terms of what you’re looking for. Where I’ll head to a clubhouse during the regular season with a definite idea for what I need and who I want to speak to, I’ll often just seek to chat with anyone I see during spring training. You never know what can come up.

So this year, with Commissioner Rob Manfred showing a willingness to evaluate the game’s practices (see: the odd new intentional walk, which I’m still not used to), I felt like it would be cool to talk to basically every player on the team about the same subject: What would they change if they could do anything?

A couple of interesting things happened: One, the morning after my first day of question the guys on the team on the topic, The New York Times ran a big package on the same idea — what would baseball writers change? So that bummed me out a bit. But the more players I asked, the more interested I got in how different the answers were. Some guys were totally selfish and playful — make the strike zone bigger, a few pitchers said; let me get a strikeout with one strike. Other players were totally into the idea of developing the ideas beyond the superficial. For instance, Brett Gardner and I got into a back-and-forth about his idea of limited pickoff attempts. How could you do that practically in a way that wouldn’t just eventually give a runner a free base? It was an interesting chat.

There was one topic I wanted to pursue further that I wasn’t able to. I noticed, anecdotally, that almost all of the Latino players I spoke with weren’t at all willing to criticize the game. Not in any way. Their quotes were all “I’m so lucky, this game is so great.” I tried to push further — was it too simplistic to attribute that feeling to their culture? Was there some other connection that I was missing? In the end, I dropped it. No one wanted to help me get into their own psyches on the matter, and I didn’t want to go psychoanalyzing them. I wish I would have been able to.

Either way, there’s some stuff in here I really like. I think that the Chase Headley stuff was really intriguing — he is a great guy to talk to, in that he’s completely willing to break down his swing and his thinking on everything. And he was very frank on both sides of the argument he was making, even as I pointed out that he was contradicting himself. I think he didn’t care, and I kind of think that made it feel authentic.

Anyhow, I hope you’ll read and enjoy.