Yankees players shocked, worried about Aaron Boone

TAMPA – It was just a fleeting conversation with Aaron Boone at Steinbrenner Field, but it now resonates more with Brett Gardner.

“He told me he was a little tired,” Gardner said after Boone took time off to have a pacemaker inserted on Wednesday to remedy a low heart rate. “Looking back, that’s probably one of the reasons he wasn’t feeling 100% that day. Hope they caught him at the right time and it allows him to do his job to the best of his ability in the future.

The process went “as planned,” the Yankees said in a statement, but Boone, who turns 48 on Tuesday, had already done his best to allay his team’s concerns about his health problem.

“Every time you hear about the heart it’s very, very concerning,” Gardner said. “Obviously he had problems there before. Our thoughts are with him and his well-being, but his first thoughts are with his players and our well-being. It was good to see that he was comfortable. We look forward to bringing him back here shortly, but he will be missed while he is gone.

Giancarlo Stanton said Boone didn’t appear to show any effect until Wednesday.

“How he acted normally and how he’s been able to cope with what he’s going through shows you how strong he is,” Stanton said.

Mike Ford said the news came as a “shock” to him.

“He’s an incredibly tough guy,” said the first baseman. “It puts things in perspective for me. You don’t know what can happen on any given day. We all support it.

Although Gardner was aware of the open heart surgery Boone underwent in 2009 to replace an aortic valve, Ford did not.

“I hope he kicks and fights like he normally does,” said Ford. “He wanted to be the one to tell us.”

Bench coach Carlos Mendoza took part in a Zoom call earlier today and helped brief players on the news before showing Boone’s video from the hospital.

“I’m not going to say I was surprised, because obviously I’ve had previous conversations with him,” Mendoza said of the proceedings. “But after talking to him this morning a few times while he was in the hospital, he made me feel really good. The way he spoke, I felt good.

And the Zoom calls helped.

“Everyone got to see his face and it made me feel a lot better and all of us here,” said Mendoza, who will serve as manager while Boone is away. “It made us feel a lot better.”