by Bret Boone
I said, “Pedro, we both know what happened.”
We agreed to disagree. Pedro and I always had an understanding—he could throw at me, but I’d get my licks in anyway.
Pedro was back on the hill for Game 7 against Roger Clemens. The whole baseball world was buzzing. One more win and the Red Sox would go to the World Series with a chance to beat a hex dating back to 1919, when they sold twenty-four-year-old Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Eighty-four years and a million heartbreaks later, Boston had a chance to reverse the Curse of the Bambino. And my brother was part of it. Sort of.
Aaron was batting .125 in the series. He was miserable. He and his wife, Laura, hadn’t settled into New York yet. They were still living in a hotel room. On the night before Game 7, I knocked on their door.
Laura let me in. “Your brother’s having a tough time,” she said.
“That’s why I’m here. I want to talk to him.”
I walked in and Aaron looked beat. He told me why. “I’m two for sixteen. I’m scuffling so bad. I lost my swing.”
I wanted to shake him. I said, “Are you gonna sit there and act like a little bitch? Wake up!” Then I got brotherly. The first six games were done, I said, but there was one more to play.
“You don’t know what I’m going through,” he said. “You never struggle like this.”
“Oh yeah? Check my bubble gum cards for ’96 and ’97. I’ve been humbled big-time.” I said, “Arnie, I’ll admit it, you stink right now, but all it takes is one game. One swing. Especially in the postseason. You might drive in a run. Or the way you’re going, you might go oh-for-four and turn a DP to win the game, and all will be forgiven.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
The next day I got to Yankee Stadium and guess what? He wasn’t in the lineup. Torre had Enrique Wilson playing third.
So Aaron and I were both spectators—me in the Fox booth, him on the bench as the Red Sox took a 5–2 lead in the eighth inning. Jason Giambi had kept New York close with a pair of homers, a minor miracle considering Giambi’s commute to the game. On his way to the stadium he’d spent an hour in a miles-long traffic jam—until a cop recognized the tattooed dude in the Lamborghini and gave Giambi a lights-and-sirens escort to the ballpark.
Still, it looked like Pedro’s game. But the Sox were still cursed in those days, looking for their first world championship since 1918. And the Yankees were still the Yankees. In the home dugout, Jeter leaned over to Aaron and told him not to worry. “The ghosts will show up eventually,” Jeter said.
Pedro got Nick Johnson to pop out in the bottom of the eighth. Trailing by three, New York had five outs left. Then Jeter doubled. Bernie Williams singled him home. It was 5–3. Hideki Matsui doubled Williams to third. You could see the sweat on Pedro’s forehead and in his curly hair. He was gassed. Sox manager Grady Little let him throw his 123rd pitch to Jorge Posada, who doubled in both runs and the game was tied. In the ninth, Aaron took over at third for Wilson. Game 7 went into extra innings, and the score was still 5–5 when Aaron led off the eleventh.
Boston’s Tim Wakefield was looking like the MVP of the Championship Series. Wakefield, a knuckleballer, had won Game 1 and Game 4, allowing only 3 runs in 13 innings. He’d retired the Yankees in order in the tenth, and he pretty much owned Aaron Boone. They’d faced each other five times so far in the ALCS. Aaron was 0-for-5 with three lazy fly balls and two strikeouts. But Joe Torre had an idea.
Torre had watched Aaron getting anxious, swinging too soon, yanking Wakefield’s floaters foul. So he pulled Aaron aside as he left the dugout to lead off the bottom of the eleventh.
“Try going to right field,” Torre said. “Line one to right. That’ll help you keep it fair.”
While Wakefield finished his warm-ups, Aaron was thinking, Keep it simple. It’s just an AB. Right field, right field.
Watching from the Fox booth, I thought, Wakefield! A knuckleballer screws up your timing. On the other hand, it depends. Aaron’s so screwed up right now, it could work the other way. Maybe a knuckler’s what he needs to come out of it….
Wakefield’s first-pitch knuckler floated toward Aaron, who forgot all about right field. Torre’s advice might have helped him let the ball travel an instant longer, but this pitch wasn’t going to the opposite field. It wanted to be pulled, and hard. As the ball hung over the plate, muscle memory took over. Aaron planted his front foot and swung hard.
Our dad, watching on TV in a hunting lodge in Idaho with our brother Matt, jumped out of his chair. They both did. I stood up in the TV booth, watching the ball fly toward the left-field seats while the Yankee Stadium crowd stood and held its breath. There was a moment before we all took in what was happening—and then the ball came down in the left-field seats. Wakefield went to his hands and knees on the mound. Aaron raised his arms as he rounded the bases, then jumped into his teammates’ arms at the plate.
Cameras flashed everywhere. Loudspeakers played “New York, New York” fourteen times in a row. The Yankees charged out to mob my brother, the unlikely hero, who had a weird thought as he rounded third. He thought, What are all these people doing in my dream?
I was supposed to be describing the moment for millions of viewers, but my mic might as well have been dead. For once I was speechless, just overwhelmingly happy for Aaron. Thinking of him tagging along with me and my friends when we were twelve and he was eight, when we were sixteen and he was twelve, always hustling to keep up. Thinking of all the questions he’d had to answer about his grandpa and his dad and his big brother, as if he should outdo us. Thinking of our talk the night before, when he looked beat. Awesome, awesome. That was my analysis. That’s the sum total of what was in my head, watching my brother jump into the crowd of Yankees at home plate. Awesome, awesome, awesome!
The director was yelling in my earphone, “Bret, say something!” But I couldn’t. Not without busting out crying. Buck and McCarver were looking at me, waiting for me to speak. A minute passed. I was breaking out in goose bumps, trying to get a handle on my emotions while “New York, New York” rang out and the fans danced. My lips moved, but nothing came out.
Finally the director said, “Bret, that’s genius! Letting the moment speak for itself.”
A minute later, I pulled off my headphones and headed downstairs to the Yankees clubhouse. Not as a journalist, as a brother. Ordinarily I would never set foot in the Yankees’ locker room. That’s enemy turf. It’s like going to the wrong church, or buying a drink for a pitcher. But I had to see my brother.
I ran into Billy Crystal waving his arms at the clubhouse door, trying to join the party. He was one of the most famous Yankee fans, but he was still an outsider. The guard ignored him and waved me through. I found Aaron in a scrum of teammates spraying champagne on him. I waited for a minute, feeling awkward. Then he saw me and we had one hell of a hug. We both had tears in our eyes. The best hug of my life wasn’t with a groupie or even a wife, as much as I loved my wife. It was hugging my brother after he made baseball history.
Neither one of us could speak. There was nothing to say. I didn’t have to say, Arnie, I love you. He knew.
That night the Yankees held a victory party in the back room of a Manhattan tavern. I went. Someone grabbed me and said, “Boonie, you’ve got to make a toast to your bro,” so I stood on a rickety table. The room got quiet. I looked around the table at Jeter, Torre, Giambi, Clemens, Mariano, Matsui, Posada, Andy Pettitte, David Wells, Soriano, and the rest, all waiting to hear what I had to say.
Lifting a beer toward the ceiling, I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, for one night, and one night only, I am proud to be known as Aaron Boone’s brother!” They all laughed. I hopped off the table and shook a few hands. But this was their party, not mine. They were still cheering for Aaron as I slipped out of the bar.
The off-season after Aaron’s famous home run brought more drama. For starters, our kid brother Matt retired from pro ball. In parts of seven seasons in the low minors,
Matt showed occasional power but never got fully healthy. He needed back surgery just to stand up straight. When he could stand, Matt stood six two and weighed a wiry 180. Dad called him the best physical specimen of us all. I don’t know about that, but it hurt to see Matt hang up his spikes at age twenty-three. And yet, as much as I loved my youngest bro, I’d always wondered if he was too nice to make the majors. The pro game’s so hard that you need some fuck you to survive, and he had no meanness in him. A person like that might be better suited to the business world. Today Matt is president and CEO of Boone Action Turf, Dad’s artificial-turf firm, installing soccer pitches, putting greens, and baseball fields all over the country.
Matt has his own view of our family story, the outlook of an insider who wound up on the outside looking in. He remembers that night in 2003 when he and Dad were on a hunting trip, watching Aaron hit his Sox-killing homer, jumping from their chairs. The Boones aren’t big leapers—between the two of them, they might have a six-inch vertical—but they made up for that with hugs, hollers, and hours of phone calls and texts to relatives and friends. Later, Matt told me he was busting with pride for both of his big-league brothers. “You were always the first among us, but even you had your ups and downs,” he said, “and now Aaron’s had a moment that’s as big as it gets.”
Dad’s still competitive enough to think he could have matched Arnie’s heroics. “Aaron hit a knuckleball that didn’t knuckle,” he says. “I mean, come on. I could have hit that ball out.” To this day we argue about stuff like that, one-upping each other every chance we get. I pull rank in the power department, but Dad lasted longer and won more Gold Gloves. Aaron stepped into the ESPN booth as an expert analyst after his homer provided the biggest Boone moment of all. And Gramps lorded it over us all, naturally, because he played back when men were men and the game was ten times better.
For the record, Dad’s wrong about that Wakefield knuckleball. Dad never had Aaron’s power. If he swung at the same knuckler he’d hit it to the warning track, maybe.
Arnie, full name Aaron John Boone, got more than a place in baseball history that night in the Bronx. He got a new middle name. In Boston he’s been “Aaron Fucking Boone” since 2003. Bostonians figured Aaron was golden—postseason hero of the game’s top franchise, tall and handsome, happily married to the former Laura Cover, Playboy’s Miss October 1998. (Laura’s become a sister to me. She’s hardly what most people would expect from a former Miss October—a strong woman, a wonderful wife and mother, a crucial part of Team Boone.) I wonder if Sox fans would have liked Aaron better if they’d known how hard he worked for everything he had despite the heart condition that scared all of us. Or if they’d seen Aaron’s face after he tore up his knee in a pickup basketball game.
It happened in January 2004, three months after his historic home run. He’d just re-upped with the Yankees, a one-year deal for $5.75 million. The fine print said no basketball, so the press gave him hell for violating his contract after his injury. They said Aaron was stupid, when he was actually trying to stay in shape for the next season. Contracts contain all sorts of provisions you never hear about. No motorcycle riding, no skiing. There are clauses about drugs, diet, drinking, and probably flossing your teeth. Most of those provisions go unenforced. I’ve broken a few myself. To me, what mattered was that Aaron wasn’t screwing around, he was being the total pro he’s always been, trying to do all he could to stay fit and help the Yankees win another pennant. But now his career was in doubt.
Some guys lie to avoid contract trouble. Aaron could have said he hurt his knee jogging or falling down the stairs, but that never occurred to him. Aaron doesn’t lie. He’s Mr. Integrity. He called Dad first, then Yankees GM Brian Cashman: “I hurt my knee playing basketball.” The second call cost him $5 million. Three months later, the Yankees voided his contract. Cashman called it a business move.
“I know Aaron wanted to come back for us,” Derek Jeter said. “You feel bad…you don’t want to see anyone go through an injury like that.” Or a long rehab with no team to go back to.
Weirdly enough, Aaron’s pickup hoops game changed baseball history in ways that go on today. After dumping Aaron, Cashman needed a third baseman. He traded Alfonso Soriano to the Rangers for shortstop Alex Rodriguez and his ten-year, $252 million contract. With Jeter at short in New York, Rodriguez moved to third and helped the Yankees win six division titles and a World Series from 2004 to 2014. After serving a year’s suspension in 2014 for lying about using steroids, forty-year-old A-Rod bounced back with 33 homers to lead the Yanks to last season’s playoffs.
Aaron spent months wondering if he’d ever play again. The 2004 season started without him while I was riding high, coming off a 35-homer, 117-RBI, $8.3 million All-Star season for the Mariners. Six months after the thrill of his life, my brother was as downcast as I’d ever seen him. The only plus for him was getting more time to spend with Gramps.
If you’re thinking 2004 wasn’t our favorite year, you’re right. Not long after Aaron came out of knee surgery, Gramps went into the hospital. Our patriarch was diabetic, with aching knees of his own. He was slowing down, not that he’d ever admit being a step slower than in 1955, when he led the American League in RBIs. Grandma Patsy practically had to tackle her eighty-year-old husband to keep him from taking grounders with their great-grandchildren. Gramps was pleased that he’d gotten to know my kids Savannah and Jake, just like I’d known my great-grandfathers Don Boone and Bud Brown.
My first clue that he wasn’t immortal came in the ’90s, when Gramps and Grandma came to stay with my wife and me in Orlando. Suzi and I were sleeping one night when I felt someone pulling my toe. Instant déjà vu—that’s how I woke Gramps up when I was a toddler.
Grandma said, “Your grandpa needs you.”
I ran in and found him on the end of his bed with his hand over his heart. “My chest’s real tight,” he said. I called 911. Five minutes later an ambulance zoomed into my driveway. A couple of paramedics jumped out and hurried to Gramps, but he wouldn’t let them put him on a stretcher. He sat there arguing. “It’s going to take more than this to bring a Boone down!”
And I thought Dad was the toughest guy I knew.
Gramps had had a heart attack. “A little one,” he said. Two days later I picked him up at the hospital, where the nurses were fawning over him like he was Justin Bieber. They didn’t want to let him leave, but forty-eight hours was all the recovery time he said he’d “waste” on a heart attack. One nurse told me that the one good thing about seeing him go would be getting a break from his baseball stories. He would never tell Aaron and Dad and me we were hot stuff, but he’d been wearing the nurses out with tales of our exploits. “I started out as the second-best ballplayer Hoover High ever had,” he once said, “and wound up as the patriarch of the first three-generation family of major leaguers. That’s a pretty good ride.”
Even after retiring as a full-time Red Sox scout, he kept his hand in by scouting part-time. Gramps liked to say his tools were his eye and his gut, “none of that technical baloney. I don’t need a machine to tell me a kid throws hard.” He might have been the last scout who didn’t use a radar gun.
Every spring training, wherever I was, I’d rent an adjoining room for Gramps. We’d get up early and meet for breakfast. He’d scan the baseball news while I did the USA Today crossword, and then we’d drive to the ballpark. I’d have workouts, drills, and a ballgame to play, but I never had to worry about Gramps getting bored. He knew everybody. He could spend the day schmoozing with former players, coaches, managers, and other scouts. They’d help him up the steps to his seat in the sunshine, telling him how good he looked and asking questions about the old days, our family, and the young players he had an eye on.
In March 2004 he joined me in Peoria, the Mariners’ spring-training home, near Phoenix. Coming off my 35-homer season for the Mariners, entering the third year of my $25 million contract, I had a new Gold Glove in my trophy case to go with my second Si
lver Slugger Award as the league’s best-hitting second baseman. When Gramps held court with writers or other scouts, he called me “the best of us” but reminded them that he was no slouch in his day. “Who are the only grandfather and grandson who ever led a league in RBIs?” Us.
I’ll never forget how good he looked in that spring of 2004. I drove him to our spring training complex—me in my shorts and flip-flops, him spiffy as usual in shiny shoes, crisply pressed slacks, and a button-down shirt with a plastic comb in the pocket. Even at eighty he took pride in his full head of hair. It was white by then, slicked back with gel.
One morning he brought a duffel bag. “Bret, I want you to have this.”
I looked inside. The bag was full of baseballs, gloves, and other gear. There was a ball autographed by Babe Ruth. The next two I pulled out were signed by Ty Cobb and Connie Mack.
I said, “Gramps, you should keep these. They must be worth—”
“Keep ’em,” he said. “You never know how long your old Gramps is going to be around.”
I thought he was joking. What could take him down? But he knew something he wasn’t saying.
His gut, the one thing he always counted on, was turning against him. His stomach was killing him. An operation helped at first, but a couple of months after he gave me that duffel bag he was back in the hospital for more surgery.
He liked the nurses but hated the pain, the needles and tubes, the bedpan. Aaron, rehabbing his knee, joined Grandma Patsy at Gramps’s bedside when he could. Mom and Dad and Matt were there all the time, and I’d visit when the Mariners went to Southern California on road trips.
That summer, Gramps lost his voice. From then on, he used a little chalkboard to communicate. SCHIL meant Curt Schilling, the best player he’d ever signed. Schilling was leading Boston, Gramps’s team, to the playoffs that year, and with Aaron on the shelf the Red Sox might finally win one. Gramps liked that. I told him my fourth-place Mariners still had a shot at the 2004 playoffs. That was a white lie. We were 12 games out of first in June.