Yankees give Aaron Boone championship belt after ‘savage’ display

Though at times, some may be critical of the way Yankees manager Aaron Boone maneuvers his pitching staff, there’s no doubt he’s got the back of the entire 25-man roster.

Aaron Boone has been called a lot of things during his season and a half as manager of the Yankees. Both positive and negative, the one thing no one can disagree with is the fact that Boone is a players manager — and that’s because well, he was a big leaguer for 12 years.

No, he may have never had a minute of prior coaching experience before general manager Brian Cashman handpicked him to succeed Joe Girardi (save your Cashman puppet jokes), but the 2003 ALCS hero has pushed his team to an MLB-best 62-33 record thus far (.653 win percentage) in 2019.

Throw in the 100 games he won in his rookie managerial season, and it’s about time we put some respect on his name! If you don’t get that reference, please Google it.

For anyone that questioned how the men that don the iconic pinstripes feel about their skipper, the conversation was put to rest following his now infamous savage-filled tirade during Game 1 of Thursday’s doubleheader versus the Rays.

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Old-time baseball rules state that you can’t argue balls and strikes — it’s an immediate ejection. And although some umpires will give players and managers a little more leeway than others (Angel Hernandez, Joe West do not), Aaron Boone took one for the team.

What began with a highly-questionable second-inning punch out on Brett Gardner, then an even worse strike call on DJ LeMahieu soon escalated to Boone giving rookie umpire Brennan Miller the business. Moments later, Boone was soon tossed from the contest, but you knew darn well he was going to get his money’s worth — little did we realize it would be so epic.

As much as “savages” will now become a rallying cry for this group of Yankees — and is already being plastered on merchandise sold worldwide, I actually preferred the part when Boone clapped his hands emphatically in the face of the ump, telling him “tighten it up.”

Obviously, Boone inspired the troops, as the Yankees went on to sweep the doubleheader and extend their lead in the AL East to eight games (10 in the loss column) over the Rays.

Following the pair of emphatic wins, several Bombers backed their skipper to the till. As told to Brendan Kuty of NJ.com:

"Voit added, “He’s been calling us savages all year. We’ve had that mentality since spring training. It’s pretty cool. Not a lot of coaches would back it up and use that type of work, but I think we appreciate it and we are a bunch of savages. We’ve got to keep going.”Said Judge, “He’s living and dying with every single pitch and he has our back. There were a couple questionable calls and he had our back.”"

Then on Friday morning, C.C. Sabathia appeared on ESPN’s ‘Get Up!’ — saying that the team gave Boone their honorary postgame “championship belt” for the person that had the most significant impact on the outcome of the day. Now that’s impressive.

"“That was legendary,” Sabathia said on ESPN’s Get Up!. “That was a 10 out of 10.”"