Yankees' Mark Leiter Jr. becomes the third Leiter to pitch for the club

Former Yankees pitcher Mark Leiter Sr. was in the Cincinnati area on July 30 to watch his son — also named Mark — play for the Chicago Cubs against the Reds.

It was the afternoon of the Major League Baseball trade deadline.

Mark Sr. was walking with his girlfriend across the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge from his hotel in Covington, Kentucky, to Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park when all of a sudden . . . 

Let’s let him tell it.

“We’re walking over the bridge from Covington,” Leiter told Newsday this past week. “We’re walking over the bridge because Mark didn't know what's going on. I said, ‘OK, we’re going to come over and say hi, if nothing else. Six o’clock, whatever the deadline is, we’ll see what happens. We'll go have lunch.’

“I’m going over the bridge and my phone is on fire. I never felt it [vibrate]. But then I looked and I'm like, ‘Oh, [shoot], Mark’s called five times.’ It was only a mile-and-a-half walk from the hotel.

“He said, ‘The Yankees.’ ”

Mark Leiter Jr.  indeed had been traded to the Yankees. When he made his Yankees debut later that same night — more on that in a minute — Mark became the third Leiter to pitch for the Yankees, joining his father and his uncle Al.

Said Mark Sr.: “I was excited for him. But I knew it’s stressful, so I kind of went in ballplayer mode. He’s got to pack his [stuff], he’s got to get out of here. But I was very excited to know he was headed to first place. That was exciting.”

The younger Leiter did pack his stuff, said some quick goodbyes and hopped on a flight from Cincinnati to Philadelphia, where the Yankees were playing the Phillies.

Leiter arrived at Citizens Bank Park in the second inning. He entered the game in the 10th inning of a tie game, introduced himself on the mound to catcher Austin Wells, and worked around the ghost runner at second to send the game to the 11th still tied.

The Yankees won in 12 innings, 7-6.

Mark Sr. was still in Cincinnati. Even though he knew there was a chance his son might get traded away during the visit, the father wanted to be there for him.

“My dad, he's got a way about him to always kind of have a little bit of a feel of what's going on,” Mark Jr. told Newsday at Yankee Stadium. “He knew there was a chance I might get traded. So I think maybe it was either a version of seeing me for the last time in a Cubs uniform or just kind of being there if it was a harder situation, if I had to go somewhere else or whatever.

“But it was funny. It happened so quick that he was coming over for lunch, and by the time he got there, I was traded and 20 minutes away from going right to the airport. I didn’t even get a chance to hang out with him that day.”

That day will live on in the Toms River, New Jersey-based Leiter family lore. The family business for the Leiters is pitching, and business is good.

Mark Jr. went into Saturday with a 1-0 record and 1.80 ERA with seven strikeouts in five innings in his first five appearances as a Yankee.

There are four big-league pitchers in the Leiter family: Al, 58, a former Yankee and Met who won 162 games in a 19-year career and is now an analyst on MLB Network; his brother, Mark Sr., 61, who broke in with the Yankees in 1990 and went on to pitch for eight teams in an 11-year career; Mark Jr., 33, who was a 22nd-round pick out of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and has pitched for five teams since making the majors with the Phillies in 2017, and Al’s son Jack, 24, the second overall pick in the 2021 draft, who made his big-league debut with Texas earlier this season and currently is pitching in Triple-A.

Mark Jr. was the one who was least likely to make it to the majors, let along become one of manager Aaron Boone’s trusted relievers as the Yankees try to win the AL East title.

“Look,” Al Leiter — who began his major-league career with the 1987 Yankees and ended it with the 2005 Yankees — told Newsday. “My nephew’s best Division I opportunity was NJIT. He was a kid that believed in himself. Tough SOB. Doesn't back down. He's fearless. He will not be intimidated, and everything he's gotten out of baseball, he's deserved. Every single year. Twenty-second round. Goes to the Phillies, and all he did was prove himself every year. It's really a great story because 22nd-rounders who don't get a big signing bonus, they're not supposed to make it.”

Mark Leiter Jr. made it not because of the blazing-type fastball his uncle used to have and his cousin currently sports. Leiter, whose fastball averages 92 mph, made it because of a splitter Boone called “a really good pitch . . . A big reason we got him is that pitch.”

Leiter learned how to be a pitcher while embracing what it meant to grow up with a father and uncle who were big-leaguers. He said he never thought about being anything else.

“This is it,” Leiter said. “This is all I ever wanted. This was plan A, plan B and plan C, so go at it with everything you’ve got.”

Growing up in that atmosphere, Leiter said, “was a huge advantage for me. It's something that I really didn't take for granted. I understood in real time how much of a privilege and an advantage that I was kind of lucky to have . . . It's really something that, like, when you have veteran teammates, you can learn from them. Fortunately for me, I had a veteran teammate that was a parent.”

Said Mark Sr.: “I always brought him to the locker room every time I could. So he grew up around it. I think he just expected that this is what I want to do someday. Until high school, he started seeing the size and the velocity that everybody is after, all these colleges — they don’t scout pitchers, they just look for a big, strong arm — and I told Mark he had to pitch. In the event you don’t throw gas, you’ll know what you're doing on the mound, and he's always been a great student. He really has. He just loves the game. As a little boy — 7, 8, 9, 10 — he was asking me questions that normal kids would never ask.”

Now Mark Leiter Jr. is a veteran himself, the kind of guy who made it after being waived, released, signed and re-signed and who now is pitching for his hometown team in a pennant race in the footsteps of his father and uncle.

“I really loved Chicago,” Leiter said. “I really did. I wasn't hoping to get traded. I wasn't necessarily expecting to get traded, but I had heard that there were some possibilities of it. When ultimately I found out that it would be the Yankees, it was pretty awesome, because I think extremely highly of this team, and just watching from the other side, I saw something special over here. To get to be a part of it and to help contribute is really all you want to have a chance to do. As far as my dad and my uncle both having played here, I think that's a really cool thing, too.”

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.