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Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts on WFAN
Waldman: “Did you hear the Clint Frazier story? Clint Frazier actually asked the Yankees if they ever un-retire numbers.”
Benigno and Roberts [laughing]: “Did he really ask? What number did he want, I want to know. Three?”
Waldman: “No, he wanted No. 7”
Benigno and Roberts [still laughing]: “Are you kidding me? Oh my god. Did he even know who Mickey Mantle was?”
Waldman: “I have no idea.”
UPDATE:
Andrew Marchand, ESPN — Yankees GM Brian Cashman said via text the alleged story that prospect Clint Frazier asked for Mickey Mantle’s No. 7 is “totally untrue.” He said he checked with the Yankees clubhouse manager and the personnel from the team’s minor leagues. Cashman said it “never happened.”
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE:
You know what I absolutely would not have cared about if it was in any way true? Clint Frazier jokingly asking for a retired number.
How would this matter? How would this affect Clint Frazier’s future as a baseball player.
Oh, he doesn’t “get it”? He doesn’t understand the history and legacy of the Yankees? He doesn’t know what Mickey Mantle means to the Yankees?
You know who else doesn’t get any of those things? Like every single player coming into the majors. You and your dad and your grandpa care about those things. Me and my dad and my grandpa care about those things. The players do not care. They just don’t. Not everyone is Joe New York growing up going to games with their dad or listening to WFAN in the car or watching Yankeeography when there’s a snow day.
There’s kids growing up everywhere from the Dominican Republic to Cuba to Loganville, Georgia who couldn’t tell you the first thing about “what it means to be a Yankee.”
They come to the Yankees without the slightest understanding of that. And none of them have succeeded or failed because of their “understanding of the Yankee Way”. The only difference is that they don’t have Suzyn GEORGE STEINBRENNER’S BOX Waldman going on the midday show spouting off lies that she knows damn well are gonna get every holier-than-thou fan and media member down this kid’s throat.
So he doesn’t understand what Mickey Mantle meant to the Yankees? Mantle retired before Clint Frazier’s parents were born. Mickey died a month before Clint Frazier’s first birthday. The night the Yankees dynasty died in Arizona (goddammit)? Clint was a seven year old who had probably been asleep for hours. I could not care less about whether or not Clint Frazier, a 22-year-old from Georgia, has a grasp on the history of this franchise.
I can tell you a lot about the history of the Yankees. I know people who can talk circles around me about the history of the Yankees. We hear “he asked for Mickey Mantles number” and understand “yeah it doesn’t work like that”. You know what else we have in common? We can’t take a fastball 99 on the black and put it in the left field porch.
His grasp of the “Yankee Way” does not matter right now. It. Does. Not. Matter. Will it matter down the line? Sure. And he’ll learn. But let’s stop treating the act of a kid asking to un-retire a number — probably in a tongue-in-cheek way, if at all — like he just took a shit in front of Mickey Mantle’s plaque and called him overrated. Everyone just shut up and chill out. This wild overreaction by everyone is entirely more embarrassing than if Clint had even asked this in the first place.
Goddammit Suzyn.
OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS! OF ALL THE DRAMATIC THINGS I’VE EVER SEEN!
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