Watch: Michael Kay rips Yankees' motivation tactics, compares them to Lincoln assassination
The New York Yankees season came to a disappointing end when they were swept out of the ALCS by the Houston Astros over the weekend, and the city is not handling that defeat well.
Yankees management is under fire for its roster construction, Aaron Boone is facing heat for his managing, and even Aaron Judge heard boos after one of the greatest individual seasons in American League history for his postseason struggles.
The wildest criticism, though, came from Yankees play-by-play man and radio host Michael Kay and was directed at Boone for his motivational tactics ahead of Game 4 of the series. With the Yankees trailing the series, 3-0, Boone showed Yankees players highlights of the Boston Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees during the 2004 ALCS.
Showing highlights of your franchise losing 3-0 ALCS lead is one thing, but when that loss was at the hands of your biggest and fiercest rival? That's a bad idea in Kay's mind. So bad, that it even drew a comparison to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
“How in baseball god’s name can you be so tone deaf as an organization as if to do that," screamed Kay. "Talk about bad optics, are you out of your mind? I talked to three players from the 2004 team, they were outraged by the fact that their failure was being used as motivation for the 2022 team. How could you do that? It would be like somebody from Lincoln’s family and you’re trying to teach them about shootings in theaters, so you use their dad as an example of how to avoid it. I mean, are you out of your mind?”
He continued by saying that if former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner were alive today somebody would have been fired over that decision and tactic.
You can watch Kay's rant here.
Making all of this even better is that it happened on the Yankees' official YES Network.
Despite their regular season success and consistent playoff appearances, the Yankees have not been to (or won) a World Series since 2009, while management and ownership have faced criticism for not acting like the New York Yankees are supposed to act in putting the best possible team on the field.
While they have made some blockbuster moves in recent years, (trading for Giancarlo Stanton and signing Gerrit Cole) the Yankees have been more frugal in free agency and have not acted like the "Evil Empire" that would do anything to win a world series.
Now they are facing the prospect of losing their best player (Judge) this offseason because they have not yet been able to work out a new contract with him.
For most teams losing in the ALCS would still be seen as a mostly successful season. The Yankees, clearly, have high expectations than that.
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