AARON CAN DO THIS

This is about a Yankee who was famous for what he did in October, a Yankee moving into a big job for which he had no formal preparation or experience other than his playing career. Nope, not talking about Aaron Boone, about to become only the fourth manager the Yankees have had in the last-quarter century. Talking about Derek Jeter. He has gone from being a Yankee legend to a rookie running a franchise, and acting like one, all over the place. And you have to say, the way things are going in South Florida, that you hope Boone comes out of the blocks a whole lot better than the Captain has.

Boone, who in so many ways provided the last great moment in the old Yankee Stadium, in the bottom of the 11th of Game 7 against the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series in 2003, now succeeds Joe Girardi as Yankee manager, a month after Girardi had the 2017 Yankees within one win of the team’s first World Series since 2009, and what would have been the second since Boone’s home run off Tim Wakefield.

Aaron Boone, of course, doesn’t come straight to this moment and this job from his playing career, just from all his years doing Sunday Night Baseball for ESPN. And he comes to it from a three-generation baseball family, one that saw his grandfather play major league baseball and his father both play and manage in the big leagues, and a brother, Bret, play longer in the big leagues than Aaron did.

I saw Aaron Boone last spring at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches on West Palm Beach, where both the Astros and Nationals now train, and asked why he wasn’t in a broadcast booth somewhere, hanging out with all his television friends.

“I like it up there,” he said, gesturing to the press box level of the new ballpark. “But I’ve always been happiest down here.”

I am happy he is getting this job. I happen to think he will be terrific at it. I think the Yankees will win another World Series with him as their manager, and maybe more than one. I think there are obvious comparisons to be made with A.J. Hinch, who just won the Series managing the Astros, who managed almost a perfect Game 7, and Dave Roberts, who managed against Hinch. I know Boone hasn’t coached or managed anywhere in his baseball life. But he sure has scouted, passionately and tirelessly, because anybody who ever worked with him or around him at ESPN knows what a bear he was for preparation, and not just about the game he was watching on a particular Sunday night.

In so many ways, I believe he is amazingly qualified to do this kind of work, with this team and in this city, and not just because he hit one of the most famous postseason home runs in Yankee history. From everything I have heard and know about the interview process conducted by Brian Cashman, everybody was playing catch-up with Boone from the time Boone walked out of the room.

When he spoke to the media this day, and was asked a general question about lack of any kind of on-field experience since his retirement, he said this: “It’s certainly fair to question, I guess, my experience in actually doing the job. But I would say, in a way, I’ve been preparing for this job the last 44 years.” Hinch had been the manager of the Diamondbacks’ minor league operations when he became their manager in 2009, a week before his 35th birthday. He was eventually fired there, after his own on-the-job training, before the Astros eventually gave him a second chance. You see how that worked out for him, and for the Astros. Joe Torre’s first managing in the big leagues was as a player-manager with the Mets. He got fired later in Atlanta, and St. Louis, before succeeding Buck Showalter and becoming the most important Yankee manager, because of the winning his teams did here and what they did for the Yankee brand. We talk about the new Stadium being the House That George Steinbrenner Built. The truth is that Torre and Jeter and Mo Rivera and Pettitte and Posada are the ones who really did that. Terry Francona, as good a manager as there is in this world and one of the best ever for my money, failed in Philadelphia before succeeding, historically, with the Red Sox. Then he went to Cleveland and nearly won another World Series there, what would have been his third, before the Cubs came back from three games to one down to beat him.

So Hinch failed in his first shot. So did Francona. So Joe Torre got fired three times. Girardi was Manager of the Year with the 2006 Marlins, Jeter’s new team, when Girardi somehow managed to win 78 games with a team that had a payroll of just $15 million. And got fired when that season was over, anyway.

I honestly believe that Aaron Boone, because of a feel for the game all of us who ever covered him as a player know he has, because of an ability to communicate that matters as much in baseball as it ever has – and because he does so seem to fit the profile of the successful modern manager — will succeed here and mightily. It just doesn’t mean that he will, no matter how much all of us who do know him will be rooting for him.

Torre faced tremendous pressure replacing Showalter, who was such a popular figure here – remember the ovation he got when he was introduced in 1995 before the first Yankee postseason game in 14 years? – even though the Yankees had lost a heartbreak division series to Seattle in ’95.

Boone’s pressure is greater, as much as any incoming Yankee manager has ever faced, even as he inherits a young, talented team that ought to get better, with young, talented reinforcements on the way. Much better. Buck’s Yankees had lost in a division series. Girardi’s Yankees needed one more win to get to the World Series. The stakes, then, are as high as they could be.

Boone has a great chance to be a home run for Cashman and the Yankees. Guy did hit a real big one for the Yankees once. So did another ex-Yankee manager named Bucky Dent.