Alex Rodriguez's powerful Yankees quote at Fanatics Fest should wake 2025 team up

Alex Rodriguez and his brothers on the 2009 Yankees roster have had plenty of chances to reunite recently. The summer of 2024 represented the 15th anniversary of that iconic clan's World Series victory season, which the Yankees marked with an Old-Timers' Day spectacular (and a reminder that the most recent pinstriped champs are, yes, old timers).

Rodriguez got another chance to reunite with some familiar faces under more unfortunate circumstances, when both he and Derek Jeter were regular panelists during the fall of the 2024 Yankees' World Series quest.

Rodriguez had some pointed words live on FOX following the Yankees' Game 5 collapse, which will sting for eons and will be imprinted upon the franchise until some future group reverses course (and A-Rod knows that type of dark cloud well, carrying it with him until '09 and through '04).

But at Fanatics Fest on Friday, June 20, Rodriguez — along with fellow 2009 World Series champions Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and CC Sabathia — made it very clear that he didn't need that public reminder to know just how tough to swallow the franchise's current title drought has been. The former players — the champions — feel it, too.

Speaking on a panel at the event, Rodriguez jokingly noted that, when asked to pick his "favorite" World Series, he didn't have five children to choose from like his fellow panelists. Still, he emphasized just how special the 2009 title was, and mentioned it has only grown more revered in his mind knowing that 15 years have disappeared since without another one.

"Winning the World Series in New York — I'm getting goosebumps — there's nothing like it," Rodriguez stated. "Players win games, but families win championships."

Yankees 2009 World Series champion Alex Rodriguez reminds fans that families win rings at Fanatics Fest in NYC

Surprisingly, Core Four ace Andy Pettitte also picked the '09 ring as his favorite, cited that most seemed to believe the aging core no longer had the ability to compete seriously for championships. Sabathia's infusion (and Mark Teixeira's, and AJ Burnett's, and Nick Swisher's) helped change that. Hilariously, Pettitte also raised his hand emphatically when Jeter asked the audience if they had a favorite child while trying to weigh his own five rings.

"I was older when we won that. My kids were older," Pettitte recalled. "It had been so long since we won one, the hunger for me was so great."

The hunger in these current Yankees should be, too, and by all accounts, Aaron Judge is as special a patriarch as any family can have. All that's left is for them to take the final step that's eluded them, hopefully making 2024 a soul-hardening footnote in the same way that 2004 was for the men on stage Friday, rather than a career-defining flub.