Adam Ottavino backtracks on Babe Ruth trash talk

Adam OttavinoNew Yankee Adam Ottavino, who will be the first player in franchise history to wear “0” on his uniform, said in December he would strike out the most famous No. 3 of all time.

On Friday, in his first public comments since signing a three-year, $27 million deal with the Yankees, the right-hander admitted he shouldn’t have brought up his potential dominance of Babe Ruth as a model of how the game had changed.

“Certainly, I probably used a bad example of the point I was trying to make about the evolution of pitching over baseball history,’’ Ottavino said during a conference call. “Babe Ruth is probably a name I shouldn’t have used in this example, but I caught a lot of flak for it.’’

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