Aaron Boone faces the ultimate test as Yankees manager

The visiting manager's office at Dodger Stadium is about the size of a small laundry room, and with nine announcers crammed into the room before Game 2 of the World Series, Aaron Boone had to take long steps to enter. “Everything,” the New York Yankees manager said kindly.

About 18 hours earlier, Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman had hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history, an early blow for the Yankees in a best-of-seven series. Boone was asked how he was doing. “I’m fine,” he answered calmly.

Yankees fans around the world criticized Boone's bullpen decisions, his baseball skills and his ownership of the team – as they often did during his seven-year tenure as manager.

After Game 1, Derek Jeter, Boone's former teammate and current Fox analyst, was among those who ripped into the whole thing and questioned Boone's decision to shut out Gerrit Cole after 88 throws. Others criticized Boone's decision to use Nestor Cortes – who gave up Freeman's grand slam in his first appearance in 37 days – instead of replacement Tim Hill.

In his office before Game 2, Boone reviewed his decisions, went through his reasoning dispassionately and even expressed his own doubts about a decision that hadn't really been expressed by fans or the media. He wondered if he should have asked Luke Weaver, who had collected 19 pitches by the end of the ninth inning, to at least start in the bottom of the 10th inning. “That's it…” before his voice trailed off.

With the Yankees now trailing 2-0 to the Dodgers in the World Series, it seems inevitable that there will be a chorus of boos when Boone is introduced at Yankee Stadium before Game 3 on Monday. It's likely to be repeated every time he steps on the field to influence pitch changes. Long before Boone's tenure, this was the reality for every Yankees manager or general manager. The mob reflex echoes the reaction of one of the franchise's icons, late owner George Steinbrenner: If you lose, every decision you make is undone.

The intensity of the reaction increases the inherent pressure of these forward-facing Yankees jobs, and the cumulative effect can bend or even distort a personality. Billy Martin's health appeared to decline during his five terms as manager of the Yankees. When Joe Torre's book about the Yankees' years was published, criticism of Cashman hardened the general manager – forcing him to approach the job more forcefully rather than appease, as he often did with Torre. Joe Girardi, Boone's predecessor, felt responsible for everyone around him because of the looming possibility of layoffs. Looking back, he says he may have put too much pressure on himself.

But some of Boone's colleagues, as well as his brother Bret, believe Aaron has remained largely unchanged over the years in this management slow cooker, with his typically positive demeanor and feisty gregariousness even at his worst moments.

“It’s almost like he was born to do this,” Cashman said. “He diffuses credit and takes the blame. Because of his behavior, he keeps a cool head in the dugout. …This job will toughen you up and make you do things you wouldn't do. Sometimes you go along to get along and you none of it ever happened. He's still the same one we hired.

In a telephone interview before the World Series, Boone said: “I always imagined that coming in I would be able to do this. I still feel the same way. That's not to say there haven't been some difficult moments or difficult times that you go through – moments where it gets a little lonely, but overall it's been incredibly rewarding and overall I love it.

Girardi remembers that when he served as Joe Torre's replacement coach, he thought he had a sense of the challenges that came with being Yankees manager.

“But you really don’t until you’ve actually gone through it,” he said, reflecting on his time from 2008 to 2017 — a period in which they last won a championship. “And I think you have to go through both sides to really understand it – the good and the bad. When you think about it more, you understand the pressure the players are under – all the coverage they get – – and you understand how important it is to be positive and support the players no matter what.”

Because while they play a sport full of failures, the Yankees are often surrounded by negative feedback. They'll be cheered at the start of Game 3, and that fervor from Yankees fans can rub off on opposing players. But when the Yankees start struggling, the frustration in the stands will flow freely — and the person responsible for the lineup and pitching decisions will hear it. That was once Girardi, and now it's Aaron Boone.

“I think he does a fantastic job because he's always under observation,” Girardi said. “Because that’s the job in New York unless you win a championship. You could overachieve with a team that people thought would win 90 games, and you win 92-93 games – and the answer is, 'Yeah, but they did it.' “I’m not winning a World Series.”

Cashman said he wasn't sure how often Boone listened to talk radio or whether he took in the criticism from fans and the media. “I don’t feel like it guides him in any way,” he said. “He puts everything he has into (the work) and then lets it go.”

Bret Boone said: “He’s the same guy…He hasn’t changed one iota. As a 51-year-old man, he is the same person he was as a child.”

Aaron has been ejected by referees more times than any of his peers in recent years, and when such outbursts occur, their mother calls Bret and asks him, “What's your brother doing?” They'll laugh together, because through the lens of time see how he reacted, as he did as a child, when Bret – four years older than Aaron – robbed his little brother of Wiffle Ball glory by calling a home run a foul ball. Aaron would react the same way he reacts to referees: outraged, with an outward expression that he had been unfairly wronged.

Bret Boone sees a lot of his father in Aaron. Bob Boone, now 76, was respected by his teammates for his straightforwardness and dependability throughout his long career as a major league player and manager.

“High character, completely honest,” said Bret, who recalled friends from the game asking him why Aaron Boone, as a player in the winter of 2004, had voluntarily told the Yankees that he had broken his knee playing basketball – – one Breach of contract. “That’s just how he is,” Bret replied.

Bret said that Aaron, like their father, will go to work very early in the day – “He's a grinder, just like dad” – and Bret encourages his brother to hold back. “Sometimes you gotta come out to the yard late,” Bret said, “and throw it against the wall and just let the players play.”

But there's another reason Boone arrives early. He likes being in the park with his colleagues and working on solving problems. Brad Ausmus is at the end of his first year as the Yankees' relief coach, and before that he didn't really know Boone beyond the pleasantries he exchanged as opposing players earlier in their lives.

He shared an apartment with Boone during spring training, and he remembers Boone greeting him over morning coffee with the familiar fan chant: “LET'S GO YANKEES.” When they drove to the ballpark together, the music was always the same. “Eighties,” Ausmus said. “It’s always the 80s.” Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders, Don Henley. Boone has long maintained that if he were left on a desert island and he could only listen to one band, it would be Hall and Oates. At one point, as Boone drives his daughter Bella, she will hopefully ask him, “Can we hear my music now?”

When Ausmus described Boone, his observation was simple: “He's kind of an idiot,” Ausmus said with a laugh.

Boone is friendly and respectful when interacting with reporters, but the part of him that abhors injustice – like the foul calls falsely called by his older brother – occasionally comes to the fore. During the American League Championship Series, the Yankees blew a lead in the ninth inning of Game 3 against Cleveland when it looked like they were on the verge of taking a three-games-to-nil lead. A reporter asked a question that suggested the Yankees' staff may have assumed they would win the game: “Do you feel like the bench might have felt like we had this in the bag, so to speak?” “

Boone snapped impatiently, “Come on. No. 'Do you have that in your pocket?' Stop it.”

Boone has a de facto sounding board. His father stays up to watch the Yankees game, and they talk afterwards while Aaron relaxes. He invited Joe Torre to spring training and the two exchanged texts. He's in talks with Jim Leyland, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame last summer. He will have breakfast with bullpen coach Mike Harkey.

In the meeting with the broadcasters before Game 2, Boone reiterated some of his decisions with that room. He thought about taking Cole out after the sixth inning, he said after talking with Cole, because he sensed the pitcher was almost exhausted. He stuck with Cole, and after Teoscar Hernandez opened the bottom of the seventh with an eight-pitch at-bat that ended with a single, Boone went to the mound without making a move to the bullpen, tending to Cole to remove.

If Cole had pushed back and advocated for staying in, would Boone have let him in?

“Possibly,” Boone said. But Cole didn't, so the manager retired him after 88 pitches — the decision that drew scrutiny from Jeter after the Yankees' loss.

In these moments, he leans on this sounding board, on his family – and most importantly, on his own self-esteem.

“In everything, even in the lowest moments,” Boone said, “I believe I have a healthy perspective,” he said.

He'll need it these days.