SKY’S LIMIT FOR CASH
Plane & simple, jump to Aaron is GM’s risk
I’ll always remember sitting just a few feet from Brian Cashman as the Yankee GM sat perched by an open door in a military plane, ready to jump from 13,000 feet and experience skydiving for the first time. I was along for the ride to chronicle the event, during spring training in 2013, but even as a non-participant I felt a little weak in the knees, as a rush of wind blew through the plane. Cashman looked at me and forced a tight-lipped smile, but it seemed clear he was having second thoughts about agreeing to his adventure. “The nerves hit me there,” he told me later, “but I wanted to do it. It’s called living. If you don’t take some risks along the way, you’ll never know what you may be missing.” Which, of course, brings us to the hiring of Aaron Boone. Cashman hasn’t gone skydiving since that day in Florida, when he helped raise awareness for the Wounded Warriors project — and broke his leg, you may recall, on the landing — but from a baseball point of view he just jumped out of a plane again. Boone has a lot to offer, obviously, or he wouldn’t have convinced Cashman to hire someone who hasn’t even coached, never mind managed, since his playing career ended in 2009. In fact, the former Yankee third baseman checks many of the boxes of the modern manager: he’s smart, personable, renowned in baseball circles as a good communicator, and brings a lifetime of big-league savvy that comes with growing up as a third-generation major-leaguer and the son of a former manager.
So in that sense I like the thinking behind the hire, and yet the overwhelming takeaway is more about the GM than the new manager: that is, Cashman is being true to his risk-taking nature at a time when logic would call for a more conventional choice.
Meaning that with all of their young talent, much of which has yet to arrive in the Bronx, the Yankees appear to be set up as championship contenders for years to come, to the point where the manager just needs to stay out of the way.
That’s oversimplifying the job, of course, especially with the scrutiny that comes with managing in New York. And as we saw with Joe Girardi in the postseason, the game can speed up on even the most experienced managers at times and cause poor decision-making.
Still, what makes the Boone hiring especially gutsy is that Cashman is putting his neck on the line at a time when he is the toast of the town for the moves he has made over the last few years to set up the potential for multiple championships over the next several years.
In fact, he couldn’t be riding any higher at the moment, having pulled off a rebuild without the years of pain it brought for fans of teams like the Cubs and Astros, a feat that recently earned him Baseball America’s Executive-of-theYear honors.
All of that would change in a hurry, however, if Boone flops as a manager. To some extent the Yankee GM had already taken that gamble by dumping a successful manager like Girardi, but now he’s doubled down on it by hiring a guy right out of the TV booth.
Don’t forget, it was only a couple of weeks ago when Hal Steinbrenner said he’d have major concerns about hiring someone without any type of managing or coaching experience, and yet he signed off on Boone at his GM’s recommendation.
Such is the power that Cashman wields in the organization these days, and obviously he must have made a strong case to the owner regarding Boone.
Indeed, the GM has thought highly of Boone going back to his knee injury in the weeks after his famous ALCS-ending home run in 2003, an injury that ultimately made Alex Rodriguez a Yankee.
Boone, remember, owned up to getting hurt playing pick-up basketball rather than inventing some story that would have made him less culpable.
“That told me a lot about his character,” Cashman told me once.
All of which is well and good but doesn’t necessarily mean Boone will succeed as manager. You just never know how someone is going to react to the pressures of the job, from being secondguessed for his ingame decision-making to dealing with players regarding playing time, work habits, etc.
I always go back to Buddy Harrelson with the Mets, who was beloved as a player and even a third-base coach. Much like Boone, he was a smart, funny guy who everyone thought would make a good manager, yet in his first year he crumbled under the pressure, among other things sending pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre to make pitching changes because he didn’t want to get booed.
There’s no reason to think Boone can’t handle the job but we won’t know until we see him do it.
That’s what makes this hire so fascinating. Baseball is going in this direction, with GMs wanting smart, young managers who can implement analytics and still connect with players, but by putting a relative novice in such a high-profile job with huge expectations, Cashman has raised the bar on outside-the-box thinking.
It’s a decision that has potential for high reward. As long as the parachute opens.