Aaron Boone, Lost in Cleveland
By Potfry
It seems like 10 years since Aaron Boone stood 60 feet and 6 inches from Tim Wakefield and made a dancing knuckle ball fly true into the chilly October sky. On television, the ball came off his bat fast but high, so you weren’t completely sure it was gone until the cameras cut from the batters box to left field. Then, as it soared high against a backdrop of New Yorkers bundled in autumn attire, you knew. You knew that underneath that high arc, Manny Ramirez was running out of Bronx real estate, and the Red Sox had run out of time.
Every time I watch the clip of his homerun, I marvel that Boone is able to stay upright as he runs the bases, that his legs are able to function while his brain processes the magnitude of what his body has just done. That the history he just created doesn’t simply press him flat to the earth.
Aaron Boone had arrived in NY about 150 at-bats before, the latest bounty of the Yankees’ crop-burning approach to farm system management. His lineage proved that genetics had something to do with hitting a speeding ball: he was a third generation major leaguer and his older brother was an All-Star second baseman for the Seattle Mariners. Aaron could hit homeruns and steal bases, a desirable combination if you could overlook the strikeouts and batting average. The Yankees felt they secured the final piece for the stretch run, not the man who would hit the most dramatic homerun since Bobby Thompson.
Boone's season had been an awkward mix of family and job. His father and manager, Bob, had been fired in Cincinnati. Aaron's loyalty to his father led him to demand a trade from the Reds; when his request was honored, he cried openly at the press conference. As Boone sobbed, you sensed the conflict of loyalty to his father and fear of the unknown, the realization of a young man that he was off to the big city, away from everything and everyone he was comfortable with.
There was plenty of symbolism in Boone’s arrival at home plate that night, as he paused to take the last few steps and leap into a welcoming sea of pinstripes. Despite his struggles since arriving in New York, fans rooted for Boone because he earnestly seemed to want to fit in, to be part of it all, to follow where Jeter and gang led. But when he was swallowed whole that night by his team, you knew that he had found a home. At that moment, the possibility of Alex Rodriguez playing third base for the Yankees the next season was as unlikely as — well, as the possibility of Aaron Boone tearing his ACL in a basketball game.
Life is not a steady diet of fastballs. You get the curve, and sometimes it’s got so much movement that you want to inspect the ball for scuff marks. Aaron Boone got his that off-season, and you wonder what went through his head as he writhed around on the basketball court and clung to his unhinged knee. Did he immediately think of his contract? Did he think of Jeff Kent, who almost got away with lying about the circumstances of his off-the-field knee injury? Or did he think of Hal McCoy, the Cincinnati sportswriter who Boone convinced to keep writing when his vision deserted him? Whatever went through his mind at that point, we know what ultimately came out of Boone's mouth: the truth. He did not make excuses, or tell us that he had to feed his children. Just like he had so wonderfully owned the magical moment of his epic homerun, he owned this moment, in all its embarrassing ugliness.
Today Aaron Boone is hitting .142 for the Cleveland Indians. There’s something rather cruel about that sentence; you'd think that God might allow him to suffer the total desertion of his abilities in San Diego or Florida. And it's beyond the point where such a shocking batting average can be dismissed as early season struggles. Aaron Boone is officially horrible right now, and pudgy businessmen with soft paper-pushing hands are not far from the truth when they snicker that they could hit better.
It is a long way from October in New York for Aaron Boone. He'll come to Yankee Stadium on July 7, and perhaps by then, this horrid slump will be a distant memory. Either way, Boone will settle in to the batter's box where he made magic three years prior, and the fans will welcome him warmly.
And if he creates magic again, I don't think anyone in New York will really mind.
