Aaron Boone
AP Photo

Getting ejected is the best motivational tool a Major League Baseball manager has. New York Yankees skipper Aaron Boone needs to embrace the tirade.

Kelly's Comments

Lou Pinella, Ron Gardenhire, and that minor league skipper who tossed the rosin bag like a grenade. These are the legends of managerial ejections. True masters in the art of the exorbitant tirade.

Wizards in the art of team motivation.

The ejection of a manager is an event that rallies a losing team as much as a 450 grand slam followed by a bat-flip into the 27th row. When a manager rips into an umpire, screaming obscenities until his face turns red and veins pop out of his neck; it gets the blood in the dugout flowing. It gets every single player on the top step, supporting their skipper while he lets the umpires know that they’re blowing the game.

New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone would be wise to take after some of these legends of irrational outrage.

The most important thing about an umpire aimed tirade is that it lets your players know that you have their back. They don’t need to risk getting tossed after an atrocious blown call like this one:

To Boone’s credit, he let the umpire know that he messed this call up big time. The blind man behind the dish is lucky Aaron Judge is such a nice guy or he’d be staring up at an angry behemoth with a weapon in his hands.

But this is exactly where Boone needs to throw a tantrum. His team was 2-4 and the offense was stagnant. The second an umpire takes the bat out of your best hitter’s hands, you need to go berserk. There’s no better way to jumpstart a team than getting tossed for protecting your guy after a bad call.

We already know he’s capable of it …

That ejection was one of the most exciting moments of the 2018 season and I want to see way more of it.

Boone clearly has the potential to become one of the managerial ejection greats. He’s got the talent; he just needs to focus on honing in his craft.

Besides, if the analytics department really does make all the decisions, what difference does it make if Aaron Boone is in the dugout or hyping up his squad from the clubhouse?


Lifetime ballplayer and Yankee fan. Strongly believe that the eye-test and advanced stats can be used together instead of against each other.