YANK ERR-BALL!
Boone recalls infamous basketball injury
AARON Boone doesn’t play basketball anymore. “Just free throws,” the first-year manager of the Yankees tells the Daily News in his office at Steinbrenner Field late in the spring.
Fourteen years later, though, Boone still remembers crying in his car on the way home from the infamous pickup game that changed the course of his career and Yankees history. An injury that ended Boone’s days in the Bronx and paved the way for Alex Rodriguez to become a Yankee.
But to this day, he doesn’t have any regrets.
“I don’t view it as something I shouldn’t have been doing,” says Boone. “It sucks I got hurt and I was bummed about it, but I don’t feel like I was doing anything reckless or irresponsible. I was getting a little running in on a Friday night. So there was no thought of anything other than what’s next, go fix it, and it’s part of my story.”
It happened on Jan. 16, 2004, Boone playing in nothing more than a standard 5-on-5, full-court game at a local health club in Newport Beach, Calif. where he and his wife, Laura, lived during the offseason. Boone’s brotherin-law, Race Brown, was staying with them and wanted to go shoot some hoops.
Boone, the hero of the 2003 ALCS just months earlier, etching his name in Yankee lore forever with his pennant-clinching, walkoff homer against Tim Wakefield in the 11th inning of Game 7, had nothing going on that evening, and he hadn’t done any cardio work with his trainer that day, so he decided to tag along and get a workout.
Just a few minutes into the game, Boone’s team was on defense when one of his teammates saved the ball from going out of bounds. Boone began heading up the floor to catch it like a wide receiver over his shoulder as the team readied to transition to offense when a random guy he now refers to as “Johnny Hustle” came out of nowhere, collided with Boone’s left knee and wiped him out.
Boone, who had signed a one-year, $5.75 million deal to remain with the Bombers in December 2003, had torn his left ACL in 2000 while with the Cincinnati Reds, but this was worse — way worse.
“The first time, I almost didn’t know it happened,” remembers Boone. “This time when I went down, it was really painful, just violent. I felt like I mangled myself, and I just remember hopping off the court and to my car, and I kind of cried my way home.”
Boone, though, woke up feeling optimistic as he got ready to visit Dr. Lewis Yocum in Los Angeles, hopeful that it was just an MCL injury that wouldn’t require surgery. But after undergoing an MRI, Boone could soon hear Yocum in the next room reading the results. “Torn anterior cruciate ligament ...”
“Oh man,” Boone says. “I knew right then. So that’s when we called the Yankees.”
Boone’s agent, Adam Katz, who still represents him, phoned Brian Cashman, who was vacationing in Anguilla at the CuisinArt Resort and Spa. “All of a sudden all hell broke loose,” Cashman says. “One of our beat writers was on vacation with his family at the
same resort, so when I took the call I had to be very careful and tell my family not to talk about it because I had to figure out what we were going to do. So we sat on it for a little while until it became public and I got back to the States.
“I just remember being shocked, like what the hell are we going to do here?”
Boone could have concocted a story, a perfect lie to explain his injury, but didn’t. “My mama taught me better than that,” he told SI at the time. But he still violated the terms of his contract by playing basketball.
Nearly six weeks after the injury, Boone was released by the Yankees. Two weeks prior, the Bombers executed the blockbuster trade, sending Alfonso Soriano to Texas for A-Rod, who willingly moved to Boone’s position at third.
And now, in 2018, Aaron Boone is running the show in the Bronx, with A-Rod replacing him in the ESPN Sunday Night broadcast booth . Boone and Cashman both say the pickup game never came up during the managerial interview process. But it was a topic recently, when Cashman’s favorite college basketball team, the Kentucky Wildcats, got bounced from the NCAA Tournament.
“Phil Nevin asked me how I was doing, and I said I was a little down because my basketball team lost,” Cashman says. “And then he made some comment about Boonie and how, ‘Well, Boonie’s a good basketball player.’ And I didn’t get it at first because that was a long time ago, and it just went right over my head. I was like, ‘What? Boonie played basketball?’ I took it literally. And then I’m like, ‘Oh, I get what you’re doing there.’”
Boone missed the entire 2004 season before coming back with Cleveland. Speed had been a big part of his game, but it wasn’t for the rest of his career. “Looking back, I never had the same burst or the same legs,” says Boone.
Still, that infamous pickup game is all part of his journey.
“I always just try to continue to move forward and take on the day, and I think there’s a part of going through adverse situations that makes you stronger, makes you better and I’d like to think that was the case.” DAILY NEWS