TAMPA – It was just a passing conversation with Aaron Boone at Steinbrenner Field, but now it resonates more with Brett Gardner.
“He mentioned to me that he’s a little tired,” Gardner said after Boone took time off to introduce a pacemaker Wednesday to address a low heart rate. “Looking back, it’s probably one of the reasons he didn’t feel 100% that day. I hope they caught him at the right time and allow him to do his job as much as possible in the future. ”
The procedure was “as expected,” the Yankees said in a statement, but Boone, who turns 48 on Tuesday, has already done his best to ease his team’s concerns about his health problem.
“Every time you hear about the heart, it’s very, very worrying,” Gardner said. “It simply came to our notice then. Our thoughts are with him and his well-being, but his first thoughts are with his players and our well-being. It was good to see that he was at ease. We look forward to bringing him back here soon enough, but we’ll miss him when he leaves. ”
Giancarlo Stanton said Boone did not appear to have any effect until Wednesday.
“How he acted normally and how well he managed to cope with what is happening shows you how strong a person is,” Stanton said.
Mike Ford said the news came as a “shock” to him.
“He’s an incredibly tough guy,” said the first baseman. “It simply came to our notice then. You don’t know what can happen one day. We all support him. ”
Although Gardner knew about the open heart operation that Boone underwent in 2009 to replace an aortic valve, Ford did not.
“I hope he kicks and fights as usual,” Ford said. “He wanted to be the one to tell us.”
Bank coach Carlos Mendoza was part of a Zoom call earlier in the day and helped tell players the news before showing Boone’s video from the hospital.
“I’m not going to say I was surprised, because obviously I had previous conversations with him,” Mendoza said of the procedure. “But after talking to him a few times this morning when he was in the hospital, it made me feel really good. The way he spoke, I felt good about it. ”
And Zoom calls helped.
“Everyone was able to see their face and that made me feel a lot better here,” said Mendoza, who will take over as manager while Boone is gone. “It made us feel so much better.”