He knows, of course. He understands. As much as anyone who will be inside Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, Aaron Boone is intimately familiar not just with the noise of October, or the pressure, or the color and pageantry and history entwined with The Bronx, but with the powerful potential of redemption.
The special specter of salvation.
“It’s certainly one of the great privileges of this sport to play in games like this,” the manager of the Yankees said Tuesday afternoon, as the first ribbons of bunting were being spread across the various decks at the stadium, as his team and the Oakland Athletics prepared for the splendid task of the one-game, win-or-be-gone wild-card play-in game.