KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Blown-up baseball cards depicting former players hang above lockers in the visiting clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium. When the Yankees arrived Tuesday to begin a three-game series with the Kansas City Royals, reliever Dellin Betances was assigned the stall beneath an image of the former Detroit Tigers pitching great Jack Morris.
Someone with a wry sense of humor might have swapped Morris for a photo of John Glenn.
Three months after the Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, used an aerospace analogy to criticize Betances, a setup man, for requesting a closer’s salary in arbitration, Betances began this six-game trip as the club’s newly anointed closer, replacing Aroldis Chapman, who is out because of inflammation in his left rotator cuff.