Aaron Boones unshakable Yankees positivity is finally being rewarded

The manager had heard the noise, because it was impossible not to hear the noise.The starting third baseman was knee-deep in a flummoxing funk.

He’d scratched out only two hits and a walk in 17 plate appearances.He looked hopeless and helpless at the plate.Even as he was offering public encouragement — “He’s a good hitter.

You don’t stop being a good hitter because of a bad week” — the manager couldn’t tolerate another full day of empty at-bats.He’d benched his struggling third baseman for the most important game of the year.But late in that game, with Yankee Stadium on tenterhooks, with the clock having raced past midnight as they prepared to play the bottom of the 11th inning of a winner-take-all game, all the money on the table, that struggling player was about to walk to the plate, having entered as a pinch runner a few innings earlier.

And while the fans may have been seized by nerves, there were a few who remembered and took care to boo the struggling player as he was introduced.Before he could leave the dugout, the manager offered a final bit of wisdom, since the manager, a former player himself, knew well the vagaries of hitting and the mysteries of a slump:“Just hit a single.It doesn’t mean you won’t hit a home run.”If you have even a passing knowledge of Yankees lore, you already know the identities of the principals of what sounds like a fable but is absolutely true.

The hitter was Aaron Boone.The manager was Joe Torre.

The date was Oct.16, 2004 — although, as it was 12:16 a.m.

when this all happened, it was technically Oct.17 — and a few seconds after nodding at Torre, Boone took a mighty whack at a Tim Wakefield knuckleball, depositing it over the left field wall at the old Stadium, and delivering the Yankees to the World Series.A little later, still dazed, mobbed by his teammates, his ears still ringing from the grateful cheers of 56,279 fans, Boone said: “What I want to know is, what are all these people doing in...