TAMPA — When you go bust at the end of another World-Series-or-Bust season, when The Bronx Is Burning again under your watch, the shrill cries of “Fire Boone” raged in many precincts around East 161st Street and River Avenue and beyond.
Boone has been unable to climb Astros Mountain and as he enters his sixth season, it sounds like he is driven to put the fire out once and for all.
Here is one Yankee on the manager’s 2023 spring training address:
“We gotta have some balls, we gotta have that eff you in you to go out there and beat teams up.”
The Yankee added: “I think he believes in us tremendously. And when he speaks like that, obviously he’s been part of great teams, he had a great career, so for him to speak that about us and tell us that in front of us kinda gives that confidence to keep going.”
It is hardly unrealistic to think that The Boss whose name graces George M. Steinbrenner Field would have thrown red meat to the masses, but Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman did the right thing by sticking with Boone.
Because Yankees players in that clubhouse believe in him every bit as much as Boone believes in them.
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Of course it helps when Aaron Judge, long before signing his nine-year, $360 million contract, was and is in your corner.
“I wasn’t too concerned, because I know how this team believes in Booney,” Judge told The Post, “and the impact he has on a lot of players, and I think the organization spoke to some players on how they felt about him, and I think it was a good response.
“I’ve always been vocal about how I feel about Booney and what he’s done for us.”
Captain Judge talks about Boone the way Captain Jeter used to talk about Joe Torre.
“If you just look at his record this past five, six years as manager of the Yankees … not too many managers in this game have multiple 100-win seasons and done what he’s done the last couple of years. You just look at how he talks about this team, how his players react to him. I think he might have been close to leading the league in ejections last year (nine), the last couple of years. He fights for us on a daily basis and he’s in our corner through and through, and that’s no better guy you want steering the ship than that.”
Boone is 14-17 in the playoffs, compared to Torre’s four World Series championships. Boone has twice won 100-plus games and owns a .603 winning percentage. That he has not yet managed in a World Series does not dissuade one Yankee that the best is yet to come for Boone.
“It’s important to remember especially like the drastic comparison to the guy across town like Buck Showalter,” Gerrit Cole told The Post. “Managed in the minor leagues, managed for a long time, and Aaron’s in his sixth year of managing?
“It’s quite impressive how good he is … he’s only gonna get better.
“He’s got great tools, and he’s got great curiosity and the will to get better, and he’s really kinda just getting started.”
Asked what he meant by great tools, Cole said: “His communication tools. His baseball knowledge. His feel for the game … and all those things are probably born into him (grandfather Ray, father Bob and brother Bret played in the major leagues). There’s a lot of intangibles there. But they keep getting sharper the more and more opportunities he gets to manage, you know?
“He’s gonna be probably one of the great managers when it’s all said and done.”
More than anything else, it is Boone’s steady, soothing hand at the pinstriped wheel during the fierce New York storms that overshadow the occasional second-guessed pitching or bullpen faux pas. In this way, he is a young Torre, a young Showalter.
“He’s himself every day,” Nestor Cortes said. “He’s very even and very calm when it comes to different situations. Doesn’t get too hyped or doesn’t get too emotional whether we’re doing good or bad. I think him being even-keeled kind of gives us that security and that kind of self-awareness that we gotta be that way, too.
“I mean, he has one of the toughest jobs in the world. And I always say it to him like, ‘I don’t know how you do it. You gotta deal with the media, you gotta deal with us, you gotta deal with your family back home, you gotta manage the game.’ There’s so much on his plate, and like I said, he’s the same guy every single day. That’s tough to do.
“I personally love him as a manager.”
October is a long way away, but that is when Yankees fans will be demanding that their manager have that eff you in him because that’s when it all counts.
“He gives off a quiet kinda confidence to me and obviously every player knows that he’s got your back,” Clay Holmes said. “He doesn’t have to be seen, but you know he’s there for you.”
Ya Gotta Believe, right?
