unfrotunatily:  Aaron Boone. final win the championship and agree to sign two star player because of…..

 Aaron Boone. final win the championship and agree to sign two star player because of…..

ON THE DAY Aaron Boone received the phone call that would change his life, he was preparing to accept a new job. Boone already had lived a gratifying professional life: third-generation ballplayer, author of a famous home run, beloved teammate, prominent TV analyst. This job — an all-purpose front-office role with the Minnesota Twins — was a logical next step.

Then his phone rang. It was New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. Just days earlier, Cashman had fired Joe Girardi, the team’s manager for a decade. The Yankees had a job opening.

“You interested in interviewing for this?” Cashman asked.

Boone had awakened that morning with nothing more on his agenda than to watch his son Sergot’s football game. Now he was fielding a question he hadn’t even considered. His answer came easily:

“Hell yeah.”

Before his interview, Boone reached out to Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell, all of whom share the qualities that he embodies: personability, open-mindedness, charm, principle, conviction. He talked with Pete Carroll, the Super Bowl-winning Seattle Seahawks coach. Boone didn’t want to know whether he could do the job — serve as the public face of the most storied organization in American sports, placate the 25 idiosyncratic alpha males that populate a clubhouse, translate the analytical data that dominates front-office philosophies into player-friendly, game-usable product. He knew he could.

Boone needed to understand what managing would do to him.

“One of the things about baseball, even going back as a player, that I’ve tried was to enjoy the crappy part of it too,” Boone says. “If you’re going to be in this life, I think it helps that you enjoy it all to some degree.

“So when there’s difficult days, maybe it’s a tough loss or a tough decision to make or a tough conversation to have, I try to — I don’t know if enjoy is the right word, but embracing those things too.”

His first two years in management have given him plenty to embrace. Boone won 100 games in his first season and followed with a bravura performance this year, weathering a record 39 injured-list stints to fashion a 103-win follow-up — the first manager in baseball history to win 100-plus games in his first two seasons.

There have been sacrifices along the way. For years, Boone took pains not to curse. A return to the dugout ended that (and a hot mic illuminated it in glorious, profane fashion for the world to hear). His days of falling asleep unaided have vanished. Every night he relies on an iPad, AirPods and the catalog of “Friends,” streaming on Netflix. This is what it takes to weather the tumult.

And now, on the eve of New York hosting Game 1 of the American League Division Series against the Twins, Boone faces the start of the only true test for any Yankees manager: guiding the team toward its next championship, what would be the 28th in franchise history. Daunting as it is, Boone shrugs. If he has learned anything in the past two years, it’s that he was made for this moment.