Yankees manager Aaron Boone is no stranger to being ejected. He was tossed early in Monday afternoon’s game against the A’s in Yankee Stadium, marking his 35th career ejection. This one was, however, a first for him.
It sure seems like Boone was ejected for something that was yelled by a fan. This was only five pitches into the game and home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt told Boone in no uncertain terms that one more word and he was gone. Then it seems that a fan seated immediately behind the dugout yelled something and Wendelstedt tossed Boone.
The reactions are priceless, including Boone pointing up into the crowd. Let’s watch.
In another video, which includes NSFW language, you can hear Boone pleading with stuff like “I DID NOT SAY ANYTHING, HUNTER!”
Also, here’s the smoking gun. The fan in a blue shirt in the front row can clearly been seen yelling something here and that’s what caused Wendelstedt to run Boone.
“I don’t care who said it,” Wendelstedt shouted back, as picked up by the YES broadcast. “You’re gone.”
After the game, Boone said it was “hard to” wrap his head around the ejection.
“I really didn’t even go after Hunter, I was more upset on the appeal,” he said (via YES Network. “I said ‘Hunter you can call it, too’ and he came back at me pretty hard, to which I didn’t respond. I just said, ‘OK,’ went down and it’s embarrassing. It really is a bad — it’s embarrassing.”
Boone also said he’s going to reach out to Major League Baseball about this ejection.
“Aaron Boone is the manager of the New York Yankees and is responsible for everything that happens in that dugout,” Wendelstedt said after the game (via MLB.com). “… I don’t want to eject a ballplayer. We need to keep them in the game. That’s what the fans pay to see. Aaron Boone runs the Yankees. He got ejected. Apparently what he said was there was a fan right above the dugout. This isn’t my first ejection. In the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said. I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying. I heard something come from the far end of the dugout, had nothing to do with his area but he’s the manager of the Yankees. So he’s the one that had to go.”
Wendelstedt also conceded that Boone “probably” didn’t make the deadly comment.
“Aaron took the hit and he probably you know is not the one who made the comment but once again, he’s the manager of the Yankees and he’s responsible for the team,” he told a pool reporter (via MLB.com).
Look, if there was already excessive chirping, threatening to eject a manager after “one more word” is generally the correct response from the umpire. And then he thought he heard another word from Boone. He made a mistake, but it probably didn’t feel like he could have taken back the ejection once he realized Boone didn’t say anything, which means Wendelstedt felt like he was stuck and had to just go with it.
The biggest takeaway, really, is that it was incredibly entertaining. Embarrassing, too, like Boone said, but mostly funny.
Also, Boone is now tied for 48th all-time in ejections and he’s only had the Yankees job since the start of the 2018 season. That’s efficient work, even if this one wasn’t 100% his fault.
