HOUSTON -- One of the people Aaron Boone leaned on heavily when trying to become a big league manager, something he eventually did when the Yankees hired him this past offseason, was Astros manager AJ Hinch.
Hinch (Stanford) and Boone (USC) were on rival teams in college, and they were teammates on a Team USA junior squad. Boone's father, longtime big league catcher and manager Bob Boone, was instrumental in introducing catching to Hinch when he was a teenager. Bob Boone went to Stanford.
"Had I known he was going to be good at this job I probably would have sabotaged," Hinch joked.