World Series: Yankees manager Aaron Boone needs a championship to establish a meaningful legacy
Yankees' Aaron Boone speaks before a workout at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
LOS ANGELES — The last time the Yankees fired a manager, or declined to renew his contract, if we’re going by the technical language, was on Oct. 26, 2017, when Joe Girardi was jettisoned after finishing one win away from the World Series.
It just so happens that’s almost seven years to the day the Yankees will take on the Dodgers in Game 1 of this Fall Classic, under the guidance of Girardi’s successor, Aaron Boone, who is trying to win his first championship.
Boone, like Girardi before him, is on an expiring contract. But the Yankees do hold an option on their manager for 2025, and now that they’ve finally snapped a 14-year World Series drought, dating to the team’s last title, it would be shocking if a longer-term deal for Boone doesn’t immediately follow, regardless of the outcome.
Midway through this season, as the Yankees battled through their annual Boone swoon, it was only logical to wonder just how far he’d have to advance this October to remain in pinstripes. With Hal Steinbrenner shelling out a franchise-record $314 million, and GM Brian Cashman swapping a handful of A-list pitching prospects for Juan Soto last December, the pressure on Boone to get it done this year — especially after falling short of the playoffs in 2023 — was at an all-time high.
While reaching the World Series should keep Boone entrenched in the big chair, however, he’s got to win it to establish any sort of meaningful Yankees’ legacy. Plenty of people have worn the pinstripes. But there is a monumental difference between just passing through the Bronx, like dozens of high-paid mercenaries, and being the guy who delivers title No. 28, which is now right there for Boone.
After all, even Girardi led the Yankees to a World Series ring, in only his second season on the job, and he got shown the door anyway. Boone has a .584 winning percentage that ranks sixth among Yankees managers (minimum three seasons), right behind Billy Martin (.591), but none in that group has failed to win a World Series title. In Boone’s favor, not only does he have a great relationship with Cashman & Co., but he’s also earned mostly A’s this October, with superb bullpen usage and effective lineup tweaks.
Exactly the kind of postseason you’d want in a walk year, and considering the heat Boone’s endured over his seven years at the helm — something his former bench coach and current Mets manager Carlos Mendoza alluded to during his own NLCS — it’s reaffirmed Cashman’s unwavering faith in the manager he hand-picked from the ESPN broadcast booth for the 2018 season.
“You pour so much into it, and I couldn’t be more proud to do it with this organization,” Boone said after the Yankees’ Game 5 clincher in Cleveland. “The Steinbrenner family has been amazing to me. Getting to work with Brian Cashman, who’s been amazing to me and all his front office, and then the guys I get to go to work with every day, my coaches and these players, that’s why you do it . . . This group is as close as I’ve ever seen, and they trust each other.”
If anyone understands Boone’s situation, it’s his Dodgers counterpart, Dave Roberts, who is taking L.A. to the World Series for the fourth time during his nine-year tenure, but has only one title to show for the achievement — and that deserves an asterisk for coming in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Roberts and Boone have known each other since they played on opposite sides of a fierce SoCal rivalry — UCLA and USC, respectively. But the stakes have never been higher for the two managers, as the Dodgers rank second in payroll ($334M) and the Yankees third amid the revival of a bicoastal feud that ran hot from 1977 through 1981 (not counting, of course, the old Subway Series days before the move to L.A.).
“Aaron and I have a good history,” said Roberts, whose Dodgers contract runs through 2025. “We played against each other in college. We’ve got a lot of mutual friends, so we sort of have similar circles. We talked before he got the Yankees’ job, and we have a very good relationship. During the season, we talked a little bit, but haven’t reached out in the postseason, either way. So we’ll catch up on Friday.”
Both have big October moments on their resumes, too — involving a more bitter rivalry back on the East Coast. Boone has the walk-off homer that beat the Red Sox in ’03, put the Yankees in the World Series (which they lost to the Marlins) and certainly helped launch his managerial career in the Bronx. For Roberts, it was the stolen base behind Mariano Rivera in Game 4 of the ’04 ALCS that set up the tying run and . . . well, everyone knows how that turned out for the Yankees.
Roberts said they don’t talk about those heroics, joking they’d give each other “a lot of grief” about their Red Sox-Yankees past. But it’s all about the future for Boone and Roberts now, with some big legacy-building on the line at this World Series.
Someone is going home without a ring, faced with a winter of wondering what might have been. Getting this close doesn’t guarantee anything, not even an opportunity to try again.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.