Gerrit Cole wanted to honor his childhood dream. He did just that. Im here. Ive always been

June 28, 2024

NEW YORK — Gerrit Cole strode to the dais at Yankee Stadium a $324 million man living out his childhood dream. He buttoned the pinstriped jersey and reflected on the long path to get to New York and the legacy he’d like to set for the children he and his wife Amy intend to have and raise in the New York area.

“I can remember as a little boy dreaming about being a Major League Baseball player, specifically a Yankee,” Cole said. “I’m just tremendously excited, and I hope there’s a lot of young boys out there that chase their dreams just like I did.”

Cole can draw a straight line from the childhood love of Yankees baseball he inherited from his father to this triumphant day when he stood at a podium with his wife by his side, unveiling the poster he famously held at a World Series Game in 2001.

“YANKEE FAN TODAY TOMORROW FOREVER,” reads the sign that has faded into an appropriately gilded patina after 18 years in the closet of Cole’s childhood home. His parents delivered the poster to him after he agreed to terms with the Yankees last week, and he and Amy realized they should bring it with them to New York City.

It was a move Cole had to have known would hook Yankees fans instantly. Despite the decision to go to UCLA when the Yankees drafted him in 2008 and the seven years he spent with the Pirates and the Astros, Cole and his family had held onto the relic from a World Series their favorite team lost. On Wednesday, Cole held the sign with the same excitement as he did as an 11-year-old boy at a miserable game in Arizona.

At his introductory news conference in the Bronx, Cole demonstrated that his ability to perform under pressure is not just limited to his masterful work on a major-league mound. Authentic and clearly giddy with the realization that he’s finally a New York Yankee, he talked at length about his childhood appreciation of the team his father grew up rooting for and how it influenced the decision he and his wife would make when he was 29 years old.

“I was a Yankee fan, man,” he said. “Every year you’d have that expectation that they’re going to be competing for it, and so it’s what I dreamed of. Who wouldn’t want to compete for a championship?”

Less than two months removed from watching his first chance at a championship evaporate while sitting in the Houston Astros bullpen, Cole represents the Yankees’ biggest addition in their pursuit of their next World Series victories. Championship(s), plural, managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said Wednesday, are the expectation for his club.

But the Yankees’ introduction of Cole was more about emotion than it was just baseball, about a mutual dream realized that left general manager Brian Cashman smirking on the dais and manager Aaron Boone beaming as he helped put the No. 45 jersey around his newest starting pitcher.

Contract terms were certainly a huge factor in the Cole family’s decision, the pitcher said, and once the Yankees made their offer nine years instead of eight, they held the advantage over the Dodgers and the Angels — two major-league teams he grew up nearby but without the same sentimental rooting interest. In a remarkable move, he credited Marvin Miller and Curt Flood for their work in establishing the free agency rights for players that allowed him and his wife to control their own destinies and end up in New York after all.

Cole is a highly active member of the MLB Players Association — many Boras Corporation clients are — and his commitment to reaching the open market allowed him to set a new benchmark for player contracts. It also allowed the Yankees to take their third shot at finally bringing him to the Bronx.

In their efforts to finally reel him in, the Yankees did not embark on a recruitment campaign, Cashman has said. Instead, the club prefers to frame their approach as offering a presentation to give the Coles some clarity about who the club is once you’re part of the inner circle so they could make an informed decision about who they’d prefer to sign with. They were the club that went over the top to appeal to him, though, bringing with them a tablet in a gold-colored home plate-shaped box that would allow Gerrit and Amy to read up on Yankees 101 on their own time.

Boone brought with him a bottle of Massato merlot that Cole had mentioned to visiting clubhouse manager Lou Cucuzza as being his favorite type of wine. It was a gesture that boggled Cole’s mind until he shot up in bed late at night and realized who must have told them about his preferred bottle of vino.

“I was telling Amy, ‘How the fuck did they get that bottle? There are not very many people in the world who know that was my favorite wine,’” Cole recounted. “And now there are!”

But for the Cole family it was not just about the wine or the visit from Andy Pettitte that helped them decide to come to New York. It was Cole wanting to honor the dreams he held as a child, the hat he envisioned himself in, and the franchise that had helped establish the deeply held love of baseball.

His father, Mark, was not present at his son’s event in the Bronx on Wednesday, but he was clearly there with his son in spirit and in recollection as Cole explained the many different thought processes that helped him and his wife decide to move across the country and start all over, away from both of their families and the home they’ve built for themselves in Southern California.

“My father told me to follow my dreams, and I’m sure everyone else’s mom and dad did the same here,” he explained to a group of writers. “I don’t know if y’all wanted to grow up writing, but I grew up wanting to play baseball. So whatever that message is, whether it’s writing, baseball, PR, or I dunno what it is, you wanna chase your dreams, right? So I thought what better way to set an example for my future kids and for my family than to really follow through on that expectation, and set an example on a personal level.”

It is clear that in choosing the Yankees and their enormous contract offerings, Cole wanted to do right by his fellow players, but especially, he wanted to do right by himself. He wanted to honor the younger version of himself who only fantasized about being baseball’s most coveted free agent. He wanted to show that while baseball is a business, one can still carve out a place for sentimentality.

“I’m here,” he said in his new pinstriped jersey. “I’ve always been here.”

The Coles experienced Yankee Stadium as they never had before on Wednesday afternoon. Accustomed to the comforts of the visitor’s clubhouse and the visiting family section, they still had a lot to learn about the ballpark they’ll call home for the next nine seasons. This time, they were not representing the enemy. They were representing the dream.

It was a whirlwind day of introductions for Cole, for handshakes and pats on the back for him, his agent, and the Yankees executives who got the job done. His signing symbolizes a new era of expectation for the New York Yankees, but when given the chance to speak, Cole mostly reflected on the past.

It was clear through his words, made more explicit by the emotion with which he conveyed them, that he meant what he said when he held up that homemade sign 18 years ago in Phoenix. He is a Yankee fan today. He will be a Yankee fan tomorrow. He has been a Yankee fan forever.

(Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran / USA Today)

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