His feet settled in the right-handed batter's box at Fenway on Saturday night, Giancarlo Stanton dropped his chin slightly, as he does before each pitch, to narrow his field of vision. With his head tilted in this way, there is only a sliver of space between the bill of his lowered batting helmet and the curl of protective gear that covers his left cheekbone, and through this, Stanton focuses on the pitcher. Like staring at the moon through a telescope.
In that moment, Boston's Darwinzon Hernandez tried to sneak a fastball past him to escape with Strike 1, but Stanton did not miss. As he recoiled and dropped the bat, the baseball had easily cleared the Green Monster in left-center field, and a fragile Red Sox lead was wrecked. Stanton's grand slam was the pivot point of the Yankees' three-game sweep at Fenway Park over the weekend, and, Aaron Boone said, the preeminent regular-season moment of the manager's tenure in its importance and emotion.
Stanton also homered on Friday and on Sunday, three homers in three games, with 10 RBIs, hoisting the Yankees into the lead of the American League wild-card race. "It's go time," Stanton said right after the sweep. "This is what it's all about, this is the most important time, and I'm glad things are clicking."
In 48 games since Aug. 3, Stanton has 18 homers and 47 RBIs, with a .320 batting average and an OPS of 1.024. He is healthy, a state that has been elusive in a lot of his time with the Yankees, and his physical well-being has seemingly melded with the experience and knowledge and useful emotional scar tissue Stanton has gleaned during his years in New York.
Others in the organization have come to deeply appreciate his resilience, in the face of the negative feedback he has received from home fans throughout his time with the Yankees. He has been a lightning rod of ire for Yankee Stadium fans, a natural role for just about all of the superstars who come to New York from other teams. Reggie Jackson, Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez were all extraordinary players, and they and others like them were booed after moving to the Bronx, almost inevitably, when they had moments when they failed to meet the expectations of the moment. Before Sunday night's game, Rodriguez stood near the batting cage and recalled how stark those moments could be, when writers descended upon you after a lousy game to ask you how you felt about how lousy you played.
But Stanton seems to have processed this all in a productive way. In his first home game with the Yankees, he struck out five times, and the boos that emanated from the stands seemed to grow exponentially with each plate appearance. Jason Zillo, the longtime head of media relations with the Yankees, had spoken to Stanton about how to handle questions from the New York media, giving the same sort of advice he has given for years. Be available, be accountable, don't lie. It's better to not answer a question than to lie.
But Zillo knew from decades of experience that no matter how much counsel you offer, you never truly know how a player will respond to booing and criticism until the player actually goes through it. That first day at Yankee Stadium, Stanton answered the questions, accepted responsibility. In the last day of that very homestand, Stanton had another five-strikeout game. The boos were even more intense. The Yankees were about to depart on a long road trip, and Zillo had seen other players escape postgame media access by showering quickly and getting out of the clubhouse. Not Stanton. Again, he answered questions, and for Zillo, these were the first indications of how Stanton might respond to the pressure.
Stanton could hit two homers in a game on a Monday and if he takes a bad swing in his first at-bat the next day for a strikeout, he'll get booed. He could be great for a month and have a bad day, and he'll get booed. What Boone believes is that through this, Stanton has recognized the booing as essentially a superficial response without lasting meaning. Momentary unhappiness easily overturned.
That understanding has seemingly allowed Stanton to turn his attention to what truly matters: his preparation, his execution. "The more you watch him, the more impressed you are by him," said Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, recounting how Stanton has gone about his work diligently, how he carries himself around teammates -- including that day, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, when Stanton stood up in front of teammates and spoke so thoughtfully and passionately. "Just a quality person, very strong," said Cashman.
Before the Yankees acquired Stanton from the Miami Marlins, he turned down a possible trade to the St. Louis Cardinals and fended off other possibilities through the use of his no-trade clause. He fostered the eventual deal to the Yankees, embraced it, and Cashman believes that part of the reason Stanton has responded so stoically to booing is his personal accountability -- he knows he helped to make the deal to the Yankees happen. He wanted it. "He's always been that way," said Cashman. "He could've stayed in Florida, but he wanted bigger and better. He wanted to run to New York. There's a tax consequence for him to play here, but he's going to take the bad with the good. He's not going to run and hide."
Stanton stopped to yell at Francisco Lindor during a home-run trot on Sept. 12, with the benches emptying, and other Yankees believe the foundational sentiment underneath Stanton's words was a response to Lindor's conduct in his first year in New York. The Mets shortstop signed a 10-year, $341 million contract in spring training and has struggled to meet expectations. Like Stanton, he has been booed regularly in his home ballpark. In one stretch of games, he and a small handful of teammates gave a thumbs-down gesture that was their way of protesting the booing.
Lindor had a great night against the Yankees two Sundays ago, with three homers, but he had screamed at the Yankees players about what he perceived as strategic whistling. To some of the Yankees, Lindor completely overreacted in the midst of his difficult season and took it out on them, and Stanton -- who knows all about booing and New York scar tissue -- delivered a message: Pipe down and handle it better. That Stanton home run against the Mets was the first of eight he has hit in the last 14 games, a burst of offense that has pulled the Yankees from the edge of extinction.
Boone said: "He's a unicorn. Every game, he does something and [hitting coach] Marcus Thames and I look at each like, 'Wow.'"
Like that home run he hit at Yankee Stadium against the Rangers last week, a 118.5 mph line drive that looked like a golf ball clipped cleanly with a 2-iron, the arc never exceeding 50 feet, according to the Statcast data. Nobody else in baseball has that club, Boone said.
Like the time he broke his bat and the barrel whirled with such force that it landed on the netting behind home plate.
Like the home run he smashed against Hernandez, the grand slam that might be remembered as the Yankees' launch pad into the 2021 playoffs.
Before that game, Stanton paused after finishing batting practice and explained why he tilts the bill of his helmet downward. It's not as if he trying to stare down the pitcher, to lock in on some part of the delivery. What he is trying to do is to block out everything around the pitcher. "Like COVID times," said Stanton referring to the time when the ballparks were empty. "Block out the crowd. It's just me and the pitcher."
On Sunday night, the pitcher was Adam Ottavino, a former teammate who had seen Stanton demolish Hernandez's fastball on Saturday. Ottavino spun a slider that drifted into the middle of the plate. Stanton blasted the pitch beyond the Green Monster, on a trajectory similar to his Saturday grand slam.
He stood at home plate for a moment, watching the ball disappear, before turning and flipping his bat toward the Yankees dugout, his weekend of destruction complete.