At times like these, with his team looking like it has forgotten how to win a game, Aaron Boone explained he listens only to music on his rides to and from the ballpark and watches just “Seinfeld” repeats.
His routine has been inspired particularly by a post-elimination speech that he said Giancarlo Stanton gave at Fenway Park in October 2021, when the slugger cautioned his teammates not to get lost in the world of social media and bathe in that negativity. Over the years since — particularly in the postseason — Stanton has refined his thoughts to note that if you want to go looking for it, you will find places that elevate your greatness or worsen your poorest moments and that neither has any real value and can only be detrimental.
Boone has admired the sentiment so much and how Stanton cordons off outside distractions that he has made part of his spring training presentation to counsel players to know themselves well, and that if they can’t take the fury at the worst times, then to specifically stay off social media.
I was talking to Boone about this because often in the last few weeks of bad play, the Yankee manager has talked about the need to “block out the noise.” So I asked him what he meant by “the noise,” and he reflected upon how wall-to-wall, non-stop, notably in New York, the criticism can come in bad times and how detrimental to the psyche it can be. Which is why he was in his music/”Seinfeld” phase to avoid the relentless “Yadda, yadda, yadda” of reproval.
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