Tag: Gary Sanchez

Opening the Perfect Present

(This story originally appeared in the May 2021 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

Six months later, it’s weird to look back on Opening Day; I had already forgotten that there were just 10,000 fans at Yankee Stadium that day. But the thing is, even that was amazing at the time. After a deeply upsetting year, least of all for baseball reasons, it was completely amazing to be back at Yankee Stadium, listening to real fans have real conversations and real cheers. The “roll call” was incredible.

I chose to write this story backwards for two reasons: First, it’s not super fun to build up to an eventual loss in a publication like Yankees Magazine. It’s not that often I write about a single game for a long, 3,000-plus-word feature, but it’s even less common for me to write about a loss. So since I wasn’t going to climax with some sort of dramatic victory, it made sense to get rid of that fact early.

But I also loved the emotion from the line that I chose to end with, the idea of welcoming fans back to Yankee Stadium. I think that the was the 118th season in Yankees history, so there have been plenty of Opening Days. But I’m not sure there has ever been one like 2021. There certainly hasn’t been anything like a return to baseball after a year spent playing in front of empty seats. So this year’s curtain-raiser was always going to be special, no matter what happened on the field.

There’s baseball in here, sure. There’s a Gerrit Cole start, a Gary Sánchez rebirth, some fun during pregame introductions. But that’s stuff that we can get at any game. The truest joy in here is just writing about baseball, about baseball fans, and about a somewhat normal day at the ballpark.

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-magazine-2021-opening-day-recap

Known Unknown

(This story originally appeared in the August 2019 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

This must have been part of a masochistic streak, trying to get a real good sense of DJ LeMahieu, by far the most reticent and reluctant interview on the 2019 Yankees. But I actually had a ton of fun with this piece, and if I had to guess, I think LeMahieu even enjoyed a bit of the ping-pong match.

The story really began on my first day in spring training this year. Walking around the Yankees’ clubhouse in Tampa, I introduced myself to LeMahieu, one of the new guys, and tried to engage him in a “Quick Hits” interview — real lightning-round style questions that show a bit of personality, quirk, etc. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. He wasn’t rude, but he still answered “pass” about half the time. I walked away figuring I would never need to talk to him again.

But then LeMahieu turned into the Yankees’ best hitter, and found himself at the All-Star Game. And I kept trying to get to know him as best I could, and he kept demurring. Again, he wouldn’t blow me off, and he wouldn’t bristle or scowl. He just had very little to say. He’s a private guy, intense, but you can tell that he’s genuinely nice and probably pretty interesting.

In Cleveland during All-Star Week, I plopped myself down in front of him about four different times. Each time, he seemed to find the whole experience progressively funnier. It was a media circus, so it’s not like it was 1-on-1, but I still got in more questions in those settings than I did in pursuing the line of questioning for a few weeks around the Yankees’ clubhouse.

In the end, I think the story does a good job showing who LeMahieu is and why we shouldn’t be surprised to see him doing this well. The best thing I can say about it is that I don’t think that you can tell when you’re reading it how hard I had to work to get the quotes.

https://www.mlb.com/news/dj-lemahieu-rises-to-the-top-with-yankees

No Excuses

(This story originally appeared in the May 2019 edition of Yankees Magazine.)

Much like when I wrote about Clint Frazier, Gary Sánchez presented the perfect subject fo the type of story I like to write. He’s remarkably talented, with an incredible resume to date, and yet he draws the ire of so many fans because of whatever imperfections he might show. Undoubtedly, some of it is also racism; no one on the Yankees works harder than Sánchez, and you have to think that some of the accusations of laziness might be less prevalent if he looked more like Austin Romine.

In 2018, nothing went right for the young Yankees catcher. He couldn’t hit much, but more than that, he seemed to spend half of every game running to the backstop to chase passed balls. In reality, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed, but it wasn’t good.

There were a couple of trips to the injured list on account of groin injuries, but when the year was done, the team announced he was having shoulder surgery on his catching arm. And suddenly things started making more sense. How hard must it be to catch a ball moving across the strike zone — especially in cases of cross-ups — if your shoulder is busted?

I chased Sánchez around for a few weeks, trying to get the interview I needed for this story. Mostly, he wouldn’t engage with my central question: What’s wrong with admitting that you’re hurt? What’s wrong with saying, “Yeah, I missed that ball, and it sucks, and I feel badly about it, but I’m doing the best I can.”?

When he finally answered me, I thought it was an incredibly illustrative look into the person he is, the competitor he wants to be, and the standards to which he holds himself.

“The fact of the matter is, we call it The Show. Our fans, they come here to watch us play, and they come here for the show. And I can say, in my experience, if I go to an event — it could be a concert, it could be a basketball game — I don’t go there to see them practice. I have no idea what they do to get ready for that. I just show up for the performance. And like fans, I judge them on what they do on the field. But yes, there’s a lot of work behind the scenes. There’s a routine that is done every day, many, many, many hours before the first pitch of the game. Some fans don’t know that or don’t see that, and that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it should be.”

https://www.mlb.com/news/gary-sanchez-doesn-t-make-excuses

The Understudy

(This story originally appeared in the July 2018 issue of Yankees Magazine.)

I’ve always wanted to write a story about the sensation of being a big-league backup. The fact is, though, most guys don’t want to talk about it, for obvious reasons, and it’s hard not to come off as a bit of an ass when you’re asking them.

This season, though, Austin Romine was thriving in his role as Gary Sanchez’s back-up, and I felt that I had a good enough relationship with Austin to give it a try. What ensued was a really interesting, sometimes uncomfortable conversation with one of the most interesting guys in the Yankees’ clubhouse. Romine was very clear that the team is best when Gary Sanchez is catching, and he understands his role. But he also acknowledged that no one wants to play for the B team.

Of course, all this was before Sanchez got hurt, and Romine was thrust into the starting role, which, conveniently, was a hypothetical we discussed.

I really liked the conversation, and I appreciated Romine being willing to have the chat. Hope you’ll read and enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/austin-romine-thrives-as-a-backup-catcher/c-284048780