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 I was a little tired,” Gardner said after Boone went overboard to have a pacemaker inserted Wednesday to fix his low heart rate. “Looking back, it’s probably one of the reasons I didn’t feel 100% that day. I hope that they have captured him at the right time and that he will be able to do his job to the best of his ability in the future ”.
The procedure was “as expected” the Yankees said in a statement, but Boone, who will turn 48 on Tuesday, had already done his best to alleviate his team’s concern about his health problem.
“Whenever you hear about the heart, it’s very, very worrying,” Gardner said. “It simply came to our notice then. Our thoughts go to him and his well-being, but his first thoughts go to his players and our well-being. It was good to see that he was at ease. We hope to return him here soon, but we will miss him until he leaves ”.
Giancarlo Stanton said Boone did not appear to show any effect until Wednesday.
“How he’s been acting normally and how he’s been able to cope with what’s going on shows how strong a person he is,” Stanton said.
Mike Ford said the news was a “shock.”
“He’s an incredibly tough guy,” the first baseman said. “It puts things in perspective for me. You don’t know what can happen on a given day. We all support him. “
Although Gardner knew of open heart surgery that he underwent Boone in 2009 to replace an aortic valve, Ford did not.
“I hope he’s kicking and fighting like he normally does,” 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 inform players of the players before showing Boone’s video from the hospital.
“I don’t mean to surprise him, because obviously I’ve had previous conversations with him,” Mendoza said of the procedure. “But after talking to him this morning a couple of times when I was in the hospital, it made me feel really good. As I spoke, I felt good about it.
And the Zoom calls helped.
“Everyone was able to see his face and that made me feel so much better and everyone around us,” said Mendoza, who will serve as manager while Boone is not there. “It made us feel so much better.”