Yankees: ’96 Champs Thought Their Weird Teammate Was a Serial Killer

The 1996 Yankees thought they had a serial killer in the bullpen.

Yankees fans know it’s difficult to win a championship without that top-level camaraderie!

Of course, even the best teams have to weather the presence of the occasional suspected serial killer, but that’s just a classic of hitting a mid-summer hump.

Sometimes you lose your release point. Sometimes your batters hit a wall. And sometimes you catch a reliever reading manifestoes. Three classic stumbling blocks!

Charlie Hayes, the man who caught the final out of the 1996 World Series, appeared on Jeff Nelson’s Pinstripe Pod this week to talk shop about his experience with the champs. While recounting stories, he outed reliever Brian Boehringer, an outcast on the roster, as a suspected dark force and possible future subject of a true crime podcast.

Hayes brought this up unprompted while discussing the team’s amazing chemistry, claiming, “Everybody. You might see me, Graeme Lloyd, [Andy] Fox, or somebody hanging out in one area, and then there’s four more guys over there. Then we had Boehringer, who never talked, we didn’t know what he was. I thought he was a serial killer or something.”

But the connections went beyond a vibe alone — Hayes said he once faked a bathroom trip to catch Boehringer reading some off-kilter books, all about notorious murderer Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, the kind of thing you keep in your locker room in case of a rain delay.

Boehringer’s behavior out on the field raised red flags, too.

“I always noticed when I take ground balls, he would always be standing in left field,” Hayes said, describing something that sounds decidedly not awesome. “I would bend down and look down through my legs and he’d be standing right behind me. I asked Tim Raines and I would say ‘Rock, what’s up with that Boehringer guy?’ And he was like, ‘He’s a serial killer, bro.’”

And yet, somehow, this team won the World Series, based on sheer mental fortitude.

Perhaps this is a strategy that other teams should be copying? Clearly, it galvanized this bunch. Maybe every team needs 24 Golden State Warriors and one Golden State Killer.