Learning to fly: Teammates try to loosen up Yanks' Wandy Peralta

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Word slowly circulated in the Yankees’ clubhouse after a recent game in Minneapolis: Because of storms in the Southwest, and over Texas in particular, that night’s team flight to Dallas for a four-game series against the Rangers might be a bumpy one.

This meant two things: Wandy Peralta would be absolutely terrified. And his teammates would be there for him.

Depending on one’s definition of “there.”

Peralta, the amiable lefthanded reliever who is among the most popular players in the clubhouse, at various times has been described by his manager, coaches and teammates as “fearless” since he arrived via trade from the Giants in 2021.

But that’s on a major league mound. Not at 30,000 feet.

Worst flier on the team?

“Oh, that’s an easy question,” Michael King said with a laugh. “Wandy.”

“Wandy,” Ron Marinaccio said, as did everyone else in a recent straw poll, not hesitating for even a half-second.

“Wandy,” DJ LeMahieu said with a half-smile. “Easy.”

“Oh, I’m sure you got it unanimously,” Clay Holmes said. “Wandy.”

A big-league clubhouse is a sacred place, one in which outsiders are at best tolerated, with shots taken at teammates from the outside not accepted.

It is an exclusive society reticent to give up its secrets. First baseman Anthony Rizzo, a clubhouse leader at the same level as captain Aaron Judge, abides by the strict code.

“Per our team rules, we’re not allowed to take anybody inside of our team plane, so I will refrain from commenting,” Rizzo said, his smile a mile wide.

He added with emphasis, smiling again: “Per our team rules.”

The cat, however, already was out of the bag.

There are no sacred cows when it comes to clubhouse members. That extends to the team plane, a place where just about every player’s quirks, mannerisms, habits, etc. are fair game for exploitation by the collective.

And Peralta’s fear of flying — “I mean, he is really terrified,” Nestor Cortes said — is a season-long source of amusement.

For everyone but Peralta, of course.

“Among the creative things they do is they unbuckle their seat belts and they start walking around, especially when there’s turbulence, and they’ll come by and start moving and they try to take mine off, which I can’t do,” Peralta, 31, said quite seriously. “I have to have my seat belt on the whole flight. They’ll make announcements over the speaker that turbulence is coming; they play certain music that’s not enjoyable when you’re flying.”

Music?

Indeed, on one flight, Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” suddenly began playing loudly for the benefit of Peralta.

“We play a lot of songs about death,” Gerrit Cole said almost sheepishly.

Whether it’s when the music plays or when players make the requisite comments about the plane being “on fire,” or broken if anything resembling smoke is seen, or there’s rattling of any kind, or if it’s just an uneventful flight, Peralta spends most of his time in-air clutching the seat in front of him.

“He grabs on for dear life and just looks down,” Marinaccio said.

“It could be even more drastic than that. A lot of shaking, a lot of head-bobbing,” said Clarke Schmidt, whose father is a longtime Delta Airlines captain. “One of our last flights, there was really bad turbulence, and he was shaking really bad. By the end of it, he just had like a circle of people around him coming up messing with him. Talking about how the plane looks a little messed up, the wing looked a little messed up.”

“People constantly acting like the plane’s broke,” Holmes said. “Every little noise or saying, ‘Hey, the plane’s smoking over here, check it out.’ ”

Said Peralta: “Yeah, that’s not fun because anything that moves on the plane makes me nervous, you know?”

It is important to note that Peralta, who gives as good as he gets when it comes to these kinds of things, takes the ribbing in stride.

The lefthander, acquired from the Giants for Mike Tauchman in April 2021, quickly fit into the clubhouse and became one of its leading practitioners of barbs and one-liners. But he also is seen by his teammates as a bulldog between the lines — he appeared in all five games of last year’s Division Series against the Guardians, for instance — a player whose desire to make his teammates laugh is equaled only by his desire to win.

“I think the combination of those two things is what makes him so respected,” Cole said.

And Peralta does see the in-air torture implemented by those teammates for what it is.

“In the end, they’re trying to get me to relax, really, and laugh,” Peralta said.

But does it work?

“No!” Peralta said.

LeMahieu said he generally steers clear of it all.

“I’m not the best flier,” he said. “I had a lot in and out of Colorado [while with the Rockies from 2012-18] that kind of scarred me.”

Peralta, a native of the Dominican Republic, is in elite company as far as bad Yankee fliers go from the last 30 years. Mariano Rivera, for instance, hands down would have won a “worst flier” poll during a career that lasted from 1995-2013.

Mike Harkey, the club’s bullpen coach from 2008-13 and then from 2016 to the present, said players from Rivera’s teams — Derek Jeter very much at the forefront — “wore him out” when it came to the Hall of Fame closer’s fear of flying.

When informed that he shares the same anxiety Rivera did, Peralta said: “It feels good to hear somebody else kind of struggles flying just like I do.”

And it’s not as if Peralta doesn’t engender some sympathy.

“There’s a real-life side of it where you feel a little bad for him,” Marinaccio said.

The reliever, who can do deadpan with the best of them, paused. “But not too bad.”

Cortes, laughing, put it another way.

“We joke about it, but if it was the other way around for me,” he said, “I think I would hate everybody on this team.”