NEW YORK – Aaron Boone still remembers the punch, delivered loud and clear to the side of his skull. So does his brother.
Long before their faces appeared on baseball trading cards, Aaron and older brother Bret occasionally used a different sport to fill afternoons in their suburban New Jersey home: boxing. Aaron would cautiously strap on headgear, but with a four-year age difference between them, Bret pridefully refused.
Even at age 6, Aaron swung big. One day, he landed a shot to his brother’s jaw — too good.
The intensity flared in Bret’s eyes, decades later, as he recounted the scene: “I didn’t want to hurt him, so I’d mess with him. He’s your little brother — you think, ‘Oh, he can’t get me.’ But one day he hit me good, and I just smoked him. I didn’t mean to.”
Young Aaron sniffled. Bret panicked, his aggression turning quickly to a whispered plea: “You can’t tell Mom.”
The welt turned black and blue, and punishment came soon after: “I got in so much trouble,” Bret recalls with a chuckle.
Now the boys are scrapping again, and this time, it’s with Mom and Dad’s full approval. There is a Boone in each dugout at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees and Rangers, a sibling rivalry flipped.
Bret is the newcomer, a rookie hitting coach in his second week of delivering big league wisdom. Aaron is the grizzled veteran, navigating the New York pressure cooker for an eighth year – lineups, pitching changes, press conferences, all of it.
“It was always ‘Bret’s little brother,’ and then all of a sudden he got the Yankees job and people are saying, ‘You’re Aaron’s brother.’ I’m like, ‘Wait a minute,’” Bret said.
Adds Aaron: “My athletic development, I give him a lot of the credit. When I was 8 years old, I was playing and had to keep up with 12-year-olds. It was either keep up, or get stomped.”
The Yankees were on their way home from the club’s recent Welcome Home Dinner at the New York Hilton Midtown when Bret’s hiring broke. Aaron knew a day or two earlier that it was a possibility, advising Bret: “You’ve got to go for it.”
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said he senses Bret is the right man to help his club at this juncture, and Bret’s credentials back it up; 1,775 hits over 14 big league seasons (1992-2005), three All-Star appearances and two Silver Sluggers. Aaron believes his brother can connect with modern-day hitters.
“One spring, I actually adopted something he did, but it didn’t work for me,” said Aaron, who recalls scrapping the changes by Opening Day. “But he’s in such a good place in his life. I think he’ll be a real steady force for those guys. He has a lot to offer them.”
Despite different styles, there are unmistakable similarities between the big league bros. Bret’s presence in the Texas cage has prompted curious double-takes from catcher Kyle Higashioka, who caught for Aaron’s Yankees from 2017-23.
“He says a lot of things in the same way Aaron Boone says them,” Higashioka said. “They’re so similar, I feel like I’ve known him for a long time, just the way they talk about baseball. I call him ‘Boonie,’ so I haven’t missed a beat.”
Maybe boxing wasn’t their true sport, but the name “Boone” carries weight in baseball. Their grandfather, Ray, played in the big leagues. Their father, Bob, did too – then managed. Aaron and Bret have carved new lines into the family tree: each hired by a Major League club with no previous coaching experience, fresh from the broadcast world.
Aaron was with ESPN when the Yankees came calling after the 2017 season. Bret was talking shop on a popular podcast when Texas reached out.
No surprise that microphones should be part of their stories: Bret happened to be in the FOX broadcast booth when Aaron hit the biggest homer of his life – the pennant-winning walk-off against Tim Wakefield in the 2003 American League Championship Series. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver called the action, then turned to Bret for reaction.
From the truck parked outside 161st Street, a producer shouted into Bret’s earpiece: “Say something!” Bret couldn’t; not if he wanted to keep 30-million-plus viewers from hearing a grown man weep. He stayed silent. The moment spoke for itself. The producer later called Bret a genius.
Seated in the visiting dugout wearing a blue Rangers pullover that still looks foreign on his frame, Bret’s admiration for his younger brother was unmistakable. He has seen Aaron as a manager, a husband, a father and, at least for a few days in the Bronx, a rival once more.
“He’s always been a man of really high integrity,” Bret said. “I’ve always been proud of my little brother, but I’m really proud of the job he’s done. He’s under a microscope here in New York. And I told him, ‘Where else would you want to be?’”
