No, Joey Gallo, you have not been forgotten.
The Yankees’ former hitless wonder is now with the Twins and having a nice spring — he’s batting .316! But he had a rough day Monday when the Bombers took the bus down to Fort Myers. Because every visiting Yankees fan apparently decided Gallo needed to be savagely booed whenever he got to the plate.
With little to cheer about in a 1-0 Twins win that was over in 2 hours, 12 minutes, Yankees fans resorted to heckling.
Joey Gallo, now with the Twins, received the same treatment that he had at Yankee Stadium the last two seasons, nothing but loud boos before his three plate appearances, which ended with a wind-blown bloop single, flyout to right and strikeout.
(…)
Gallo is a two-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner, but his parts of two seasons with the Yankees from July 2021 to August 2022 went horribly. His final numbers for the Yankees were brutal: .159 average with 25 homers, 46 RBI, 194 strikeouts in 421 at-bats, 77 walks and a .660 OPS.
Look, Gallo is always going to get booed whenever he plays the Yankees moving forward. And there will be an edge to those boos for two reasons — one, because he was so horrid in pinstripes and two, because of the stupid things he said after his mercy trade to the Dodgers. But it would be unbecoming if the tri-state area becomes as obsessed with him as, say, Philadelphia is with Ben Simmons. So let’s keep things in check.
Also: Never forget the time the Yankees tried to preemptively justify potentially losing Aaron Judge in free agency on fans giving hell to Gallo and Aaron Hicks. The old “external toxicity” excuse. Which Judge has since said was not a real thing.
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James Kratch can be reached at james.kratch@xlmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @jameskratch.
