New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone has gotten the boot quite a few times this season. He led all managers with a whopping nine ejections last year and is nearly halfway there with an AL-leading four this season.
Aaron talked about his ejections and why he fights so hard for his players with his brother Bret on the Audacy Original Podcast “The Bret Boone Podcast” this week.
“I’m not getting kicked out for a while. I haven’t been kicked out for a while,” Aaron said (7:58 in player above). “I had one rough week, other than that I’ve only been kicked out once.”
Boone hasn’t been ejected in nearly a month now, the last coming on May 25th. However, that was the third ejection in a span of 10 games for the Yankees clipper.
A lot of Boone’s frustration with umpiring comes from behind the plate. He knows what it takes to stand up there and watch a close pitch go by, so he’s going to stand up for his players.
“There are certain things that I really am passionate and fight for. We have always preached and are on our players about controlling the strike zone,” he said. “Because I know as a player – not being as good as some of the guys that I’ve gotten to manage – there were times I was up there and I didn’t have the nerve to take one in that big spot a couple inches off the plate. I was going to go touch it, hit some weak grounder or whatever.
“It takes a lot of nerve to be able to sit up there and take a 3-2 pitch an inch and a half off the plate, and if you do it and you do it well, I’m going to fight for that. Sometimes it gets a little escalated.”
We haven’t seen a manager get ejected double-digit times in a season since the great Bobby Cox back in 2007. Cox is still tied for the single-season record of 11 ejections set back in 2001.
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