Baby Bombers Page 13

  Though the fun-loving Swisher was an Ohio State University alum who unofficially renamed a section of Cleveland’s Progressive Field as “Brohio,” the excitement over his homecoming faded when injuries limited Swisher to a .208 batting average in his first season with the Tribe. When the Braves released Swisher in spring 2016, eating the remaining $15 million on his contract, the thirty-five-year-old gave his career one last chance by returning to the Yankees organization on a minor league contract.

  As one of the oldest players in the RailRiders clubhouse, Swisher submitted his surgically repaired knees to 220 Triple-A at-bats and became a regular at the tiny Waffle House restaurant on Davis Street in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He’d order his hash browns “smothered, covered, and chunked”—onions, cheese and ham, for the uninitiated—while inviting all of his teammates to enjoy breakfast on his tab. Judge, Gary Sanchez, Ben Gamel, and Luis Cessa were among those who took Swisher up on the offer regularly.

  “It’s definitely not the best food to be putting in your body,” Swisher said, punctuating his observation with a loud cackle. “We ate at Waffle House, I don’t know how many times. I think it was almost like a competition, who could eat the most waffles. I feel like that was the hot spot in Scranton. By the way, that was like the cheapest meal I’ve ever bought in my life. I’m like, ‘Bro, you guys can come here all the time, no problem!’”

  With the clatter of dishes and the hum of traffic on the two-lane roadway serving as their background ambiance, Swisher and Judge spoke often about baseball and life in general. Over twelve years in the majors, Swisher said that he saw plenty of players struggle after enjoying immediate success, but those meals reinforced that there would be no such concerns about Judge.

  “I think Aaron has got that right idea,” Swisher said. “He knows the man that he is, he knows what he stands for and he’s continuing to do that. I think that’s his parents. They built such a good man. As a role model, now that I have kids myself, that’s the kind of guy that I want my children to look up to. I think he’s doing it the right way. That smile is infectious.”

  At the time of his major league call-up, Judge was ranked second in the International League in RBIs and home run/at-bat ratio (18.53), and fourth in runs (62), homers (19), and slugging percentage (.489). With Beltran on his way to join the Rangers, right field had become wide open, and Cashman said that Judge was guaranteed to play every day.

  When the transaction hit the wire, Yankees director of amateur scouting Damon Oppenheimer sent out a celebratory e-mail blast to the scouts who had been involved in delivering Judge and Tyler Austin to the organization. Watching Austin and Judge make their major league debuts on the same day would be, Oppenheimer said, like watching two sons walk to collect their college diplomas.

  “There are so many times where in scouting you feel like an independent contractor,” Oppenheimer said. “You don’t have that daily connection with the organization. You don’t go into an office, you’re not with the team. You have hours and hours and days and days in a car or hotel rooms, losing your mind because you’re by yourself. When that kind of stuff happens, it’s huge to the guys. It’s a camaraderie builder. There’s a real feeling of euphoria for the whole group: look what they accomplished and what we were part of.”

  Dating to that spring of 2016, Girardi had been impressed by the cohesive nature of the minor leaguers, noticing that they tended to congregate in groups of eight, nine, or ten like a jovial college team. He hoped that Austin and Judge saw something of themselves in the collection of graying ex-ballplayers who ribbed each other that day.

  “I think it’s good for them to be here today to see that these guys were young, these guys performed at a high level, and they had a long run,” Girardi said. “Let’s go do the same thing.”

  As it had been in Spring Training, Judge’s size 52 jersey was embroidered with the uniform No. 99, which his teammates saw as a perfect numerical representation of his supersized appearance. Judge had not originally requested the number. With No. 44 retired for Reggie Jackson, Judge had favored No. 35, which had been his father’s favorite number. That was also already assigned, to pitcher Michael Pineda.

  No. 99 grew on Judge, and equipment manager Rob Cucuzza made him the third Yankee ever to wear it in a big-league game, joining outfielder Charlie Keller in 1952 and pitcher Brian Bruney in 2009. It hadn’t brought Judge much luck in the spring of ’16, when he went 1-for-19 in Grapefruit League play, but spending the spring in big league camp added value because Judge’s locker had neighbored Carlos Beltran’s.

  “There was actually a moment when we were doing relay throws on the back fields, and I asked him, ‘How’s it been for you, with the ups and downs each year?’” Judge said. “He said, ‘You’ve got to realize, you could be hot for the first couple months, or you could be bad the first couple months, but that’s baseball. It’s all going to even out. If you can stay as even-keeled as possible, don’t try to ride the ups and downs, try to stay positive with everything, your results and the team’s results will even out at the end of the year. So, to hear that from a veteran presence in that situation was pretty cool to hear.”

  The locker setup was an arrangement that Beltran had personally requested, hoping to impart some wisdom on his heir apparent. Beltran remembers hearing coaches talk about how inconsistent Judge was with his swing at that time and what they would do to fix him, but Beltran thought that Judge showed more polish than he was being given credit for.

  “Watching him in spring training, when I saw him hit and I saw him coming to the ballpark every day, the guy is mature,” Beltran said. “He just needed the opportunity. Sometimes when you get called up, maybe for a time he wanted to try too hard, he wanted to do more than he’s capable of doing. He didn’t need to try to do anything different. He just needed to put the barrel on the ball and the ball will fly. The guy is a huge human being.”

  Judge had been nervous on that first day huddling up with Beltran, and he sensed similar anxiety here in the Bronx. So did the twenty-four-year-old Austin, who had a wide-eyed look as he surveyed the scene. Austin had been at the team hotel in Rochester, New York, the previous afternoon, preparing to take the second bus to Frontier Field—home of the Rochester Red Wings––the Twins’ top farm affiliate—when Pedrique’s number lit up Austin’s cell phone, ordering him to get to the clubhouse as soon as possible. It could only mean one thing.

  “I was excited,” Austin said. “I called my mom. It was an emotional phone call; same with my girlfriend. This is something that I worked for my entire life. To finally get an opportunity to come up here and play, it was a special moment.”

  Tyler Austin was the fourth Yankees player ever to homer in his first at-bat, joining John Miller, Andy Phillips, and Marcus Thames. 114 seconds later, Aaron Judge became the fifth. (© Arturo Pardavila III)

  Once a high-ranking prospect whose stock had dipped due to a nagging wrist injury, Austin was hitting .323 with 13 home runs and a 1.051 OPS in Triple-A at the time of his promotion. The Yankees booked Austin’s travel to New York, but when that flight was canceled, he audibled by taking two car services—one from Rochester to Scranton, and then another from Scranton to New York.

  For Austin, a 350-mile highway trek was nothing worth complaining about. He overcame testicular cancer at age seventeen, having been diagnosed with a fast-growing teratoma that required surgery. Fortunately, Austin mentioned the pain and his cancer was discovered early, blocking it from spreading. He vowed not to let the diagnosis change his life. A few days after having his stitches removed, Austin was strapping on his catcher’s gear in San Diego, playing in a major high school showcase game.

  Austin’s tenacity impressed a Yankees area scout, Darryl Monroe, who pushed the organization to select him in the thirteenth round of the 2010 draft. Austin signed for $130,000, with the club envisioning him as a corner infielder or corner outfielder. After an impressive start to his pro career, the wrist injury popped up at Double-A Trenton in
2013, forcing him to repeat the level the next season.

  When the Yankees designated Austin for assignment late in 2014, he passed through waivers unclaimed and attended big league camp as a non-roster invitee the next spring. Austin could handle that challenge; as a senior at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, he’d experienced far more daunting situations while making summer money assisting his father, Chris, in his duties for a local eviction company.

  “It was pretty scary,” Austin said. “The cops are there every time you’re there, so nothing really gets out of hand, but you’ve got to deal with the people. There was one in particular that sticks out. My dad goes up and knocks on the door with the cops and it’s just this woman and her kid, a young infant. It sucks to do it, but when the bank says you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to do it. They didn’t have anywhere to go, I don’t think. It’s sad, but what can you do?”

  • • •

  Yankees broadcasters Michael Kay and John Sterling had completed their emceeing duties in front of the first-base dugout, and an employee wheeled a mahogany podium bearing the team’s interlocking NY logo to its usual place in the press conference room. As the grounds crew made their final preparations to the diamond, pounding the dirt on the pitcher’s mound and touching up the chalk baselines, the ’96ers had already started to enjoy cocktails and snacks in a luxury suite upstairs.

  Other than a possible hit on the Yankees’ TV and radio network, their work was done for the afternoon, and now it was time for the kids to take over. Andy Pettitte watched with interest as Rays right-hander Matt Andriese turned the Yankees aside in the first inning, pitching around a single and a stolen base. Pettitte recalled that he anticipated the post July-trade Yankees were headed for a rocky patch, one that never materialized.

  “I thought it would be a little bit of a lull and these guys would have to develop,” Pettitte said. “They developed real quick. You just didn’t think that was going to happen, but they’ve done it. Now what you have is, you start feeling like, ‘OK, we’ve got a chance to have something real special here with these guys’ ages. I think everybody thought that this team was a few years away from being where they’re at right now.”

  Austin waited on deck, then prepared to walk to home plate after Gary Sanchez grounded out for the second out of the second inning. Gripping a bat at the dugout steps, Judge leaned over and told his teammate, “Do your thing, T.”

  With those words of encouragement, Austin stepped into the right-handed batter’s box for his first at-bat in The Show. His upper cheeks streaked with heavy black smears, Austin worked the count to 2-2 before Andriese tried to put away the rookie with a 92-mph fastball. Austin swung hard and caught up with the heater, barreling it toward right field.

  Austin tracked the ball’s flight as it pelted the first row of seats beyond the 314-foot marker down the line for a home run. Austin quickly pumped his right fist, then charged quickly around the bases. Yankees 1, Rays 0.

  “There’s no other feeling,” Austin said. “You know the people that have worn this uniform throughout history with the NY on their chest. It was just an overwhelming, special day, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

  The last Yankee to have homered in his first big league at-bat was Marcus Thames, who happened to be in the first-base dugout on that afternoon, serving as the club’s assistant hitting coach. Thames hit the first of his 115 big league homers on June 10, 2002, a shot to left-center field off future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson at the original Yankee Stadium.

  It was a moment that diehard Yankees fans still recalled fondly, and the 41,682 sweaty witnesses on hand for Austin’s homer only had to wait 114 seconds to see the feat equaled. Judge said that he had been “ecstatic” for Austin while waiting on deck, thinking to himself, “Oh man, I’ve just got to make contact now.”

  Andriese got ahead of Judge with two strikes before missing outside the zone, then tried to float an 87-mph changeup by him. Judge unloaded on the pitch, clubbing a drive to center field that struck a small ledge atop the restaurant before plopping onto the netting that covers Monument Park. Yankees 2, Rays 0. The blast was calculated at 446 feet by MLB’s Statcast system, and as researchers would quickly discover, Austin and Judge had become the first teammates to hit home runs in their first big league at-bats in the same game.

  After homering in his first big league at-bat, Aaron Judge promised that there were more memorable moments on the way. “We have a lot of guys coming up. It’s exciting. It’s a great time to be a Yankee,” he said. (© Rich L. Wang)

  “I couldn’t believe that it happened to me, let alone when he did it back-to-back,” Austin said. “That was unbelievable. It was special. It had never been done before. I was just super excited for him because I know the path that he has taken, the work that he has put in to get up here.”

  Some 3,000 miles from Yankee Stadium, the scout who’d been credited with selecting Judge from Fresno State three years prior beamed.

  “It was awesome. It was the first guy that I’d ever had drafted, period, in my whole career,” Troy Afenir said. “You knew that it was in there. I’m fifty-four, so I had seen guys like Dave Winfield, which was a good example of a guy that’s close in size and hit the ball with the same ferocity and consistency. He had the same kind of power—had that unbelievable rising line drive type of power. You dream. You hope, and you think, ‘Maybe someday.’”

  Someday was today. Judge was the third player to hit the ball off or over the glass panels above Monument Park, joining the Mariners’ Russell Branyan in 2009 and the Astros’ Carlos Correa earlier in 2016. Judge was about to make the rarely-seen feat a regular occurrence, especially in batting practice, when teammates and opponents would make it a point to be on the field when Judge’s group was scheduled to hit.

  “It’s must-watch TV,” Dellin Betances said. “We take turns in what time we shag [fly balls] for bullpen guys. Some guys go out for the first half, some guys go out for the second half. I try to make sure I’m always out there for Judge because I’m just trying to see where that ball is going to land.”

  Meredith Marakovits, the YES Network’s clubhouse reporter, was assigned to speak with the parents of both Austin and Judge during the game. She also interviewed the tandem on the field after the Yankees’ 8–4 victory.

  “What made it even more unbelievable was that they were honoring the ’96 team that day,” Marakovits said. “It almost seemed like they were passing the torch a little bit and you were seeing the new young guys who were supposed to be the core. The fact that they were there, seeing these young kids we’d heard a lot about, it was a big day for the organization and for the fans to get that first peek.”

  Judge’s first 27 big-league games produced mixed results—both of which would hint at performances to come. The first player in Yankees history to record an extra-base hit in each of his first three games, Judge also struck out 42 times in his first 84 big league at-bats. Cashman and Girardi shrugged the 50 percent strikeout rate off as growing pains, believing that Judge was in the early stages of adjusting to the best pitching in the world.

  “He always will have strikeouts as a part of his game,” Girardi said late in 2016. “He won’t always have strikeouts like this.”

  Though the Yankees ultimately fell short of qualifying for postseason play in 2016, finishing with a negative run differential of 680-702 that identified them as a poor hitting club, Hal Steinbrenner’s hopes had been buoyed by the late-season surge. A 9-17 start forced them to battle until June 10 to get over the .500 mark, and they had been 53-53 on the morning of August 3, when Gary Sanchez was summoned from Triple-A.

  Though the Yankees finished fourth in the American League East, missing the playoffs for the third time in four years, they posted a 48-33 (.593) mark at home and were 32-26 (.551) from August 1 through the end of the season. Didi Gregorius saw evidence that this refreshed group could play at that level over the course of a full season, which would make them capable of ac
complishing some special things.

  “Everybody gave up on us, that’s the first thing,” Gregorius said. “And then we knew that we were not giving up. We all talked to each other. They made all the trades but you’ve got to stay positive and push each other, help each other out any way we can. I think we scared everybody, to be honest, because nobody expected us to be all the way here.”

  No wonder they were able to laugh as the rookies dressed in Yankees onesies, complete with bonnets and pacifiers, to embrace the Baby Bombers theme for their flight home following a September 22 game at Tropicana Field. Unfortunately, Judge missed out on that fun, having landed on the disabled list with a season-ending right oblique strain after taking a mighty cut eight days earlier against the Dodgers.

  The injury saved Girardi from having to make a tough call; he’d penciled Judge’s name in the lineup regularly down the stretch, but indicated that might not have been the case if Aaron Hicks had not been mending a hamstring injury at the time. The strikeouts didn’t bother Judge as much as his overall lack of success. In his first 84 big league at-bats, Judge had managed 15 hits, a .179 batting average.

  It echoed the adjustment process that Judge had gone through after being promoted to Triple-A for the first time, when he’d hit .224 with 74 strikeouts in 61 games. The addition of a leg kick had helped Judge identify pitches better then, and now he needed to make another alteration. Aiming for more consistent contact, Judge spent time working with Rowson during the offseason, and also traveled to New York to drill with Cockrell and Thames, the Yanks’ hitting coaches.