NEW YORK — One afternoon in mid-September, New York Yankees outfielder Harrison Bader stood near the entrance to the Yankees’ cavernous clubhouse and stared up at the television screen. The St. Louis Cardinals, the team that traded him away at the deadline, the only team he had ever known, were playing a day game. After a few minutes, Bader turned away and headed into the batting cages to test the injured leg that had kept him out of action since he joined the Yankees on Aug. 2.
Two months after his arrival, Harrison Bader is having his Yankees moment
His former team, and the player they acquired for him, Jordan Montgomery, were cruising through September. His new team was struggling, in need of the kind of spark Bader could provide if he were healthy. But the Yankees had traded for him knowing they would have to wait for his plantar fasciitis to heal.
“I’ve learned from a lot of players in the past to let your game speak for itself,” Bader said then. “Being in this atmosphere, to not really have a voice — what I can do to help the team win, that is my voice, so the fact that I can’t play has taken my voice away, which has been tough.”
A month later, one game into the Yankees’ postseason, Bader has made himself heard. He hit his first home run as a Yankee and made a stellar defensive play to save a run in their Game 1 ALDS win over the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday night. He seems likely to play again Friday when the teams meet again after Game 2 was postponed Thursday because of rain.
He certainly played Tuesday, when a packed crowd at Yankee Stadium cheered the kid from Bronxville, N.Y., like he was one of their own. The 28-year-old said he usually tries not to show emotion. But he couldn’t help it rounding first base after hitting that homer and reminding the franchise and its fans why he was acquired in the first place. He admitted he had something to prove, particularly after the beloved Montgomery started pitching like Cy Young when he arrived in St. Louis (5-0, 1.45 ERA in his first seven starts with the Cardinals before fading a bit in September).
“I want to show them all why I earned that uniform, there’s no doubt,” said Bader, who played in 14 regular season games for New York. “However, the flip side, the more professional side, the reality of the situation, is that I wasn’t ready to play; and if I was going to force playing, if I was chasing that exact emotion, you know, it would have been — it wouldn’t have been a version of myself that would have been effective for myself and for my teammates. Coping with that reality allowed me to just continue to work. There was a tremendous staff in there who was helping me every day get back to the field.”
An injury to fellow deadline acquisition Andrew Benintendi and poor hitting from Aaron Hicks left the Yankees desperate for outfield depth alongside Aaron Judge — so much so that midseason call-up Oswaldo Cabrera, a career infielder, started in left field for them in Game 1 against the Guardians.
“I thought right away he endeared himself to us. He’s an outgoing guy. Right away I could tell he was really excited to be here,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “I think he was aware and had some levity to the situation. … ‘We traded a popular teammate and I show up in a walking boot’; he kind of made light of that. But we also knew we were getting a really good player.”
Bader was a regular for the Cardinals since 2018, an elite defensive center fielder who won the Gold Glove there last year. He is not known as an offensive force, but he is not irrelevant at the plate, either: Bader owns a .245 career batting average and .723 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. And, at least for one night Tuesday, he looked like the kind of player whose impact grows at the biggest moments. He hit .160 in 10 postseason games for the Cardinals over the years. But being in October with the Yankees, the team he grew up rooting for, a team he saw play in the postseason during their run to the 2009 World Series championship, is different — even though he said he tried to separate his childhood memories from his new day job.
“It’s very easy to get emotional. It pulls you out of what you’re trying to do,” Bader said. “I definitely remember the level of excitement I felt. Fans standing up when the other team had two strikes on them. It was just a constant energy factor, if you will. And you know, since I was a young kid — I’d say maybe 20 years ago I started coming to Yankee Stadium — nothing’s changed.”
Source: WP
