Today, I received a Christmas card from Brandon Boyd. Who is Brandon Boyd? Today he is the equipment manager of the Texas Rangers Baseball team. Even if he was my own son, I could not be prouder of him.
I met Brandon when he was 14 years old. He was a kid with a dream and loved baseball almost as much as I love baseball. At a young age he got to be the spring training batboy for the Cleveland Indians. When I went to work for the Indians for a few years I took Brandon with me. He worked in the clubhouse, learned Spanish, and was very helpful with the predominantly Latin team.
He was loved by the star players like Bartolo Colon, Manny Ramirez, and the Alomar brothers, Robby and Sandy. And let’s not forget Omar Vizquel. However he got to see the ugly side at the same time. He saw the jealousy part of the game from his peers.
I guess you can say he saw the good, the bad, and the ugly.
No matter how good he was at helping the players it just wasn’t appreciated by the people that he worked with. I told him to hang in there, in baseball everyone goes through this. Brandon would not let me talk to the manager or general manager because he was mature enough to realize that it could come back and slap him in the face. He was the hardest working person in the clubhouse, would never complain and only made life in the clubhouse better for those players.
At one point it was so tough for Brandon that he realized that it was not in his best interest to work there anymore. I told again to hang tough because I would be going back to the Yankees shortly and I would take him with me. I think this made the blow easier.
After that season, Jon Hart became the G.M. of the Texas Rangers and asked me to go there to work with the psychology department. When I got to spring training fate had it that the equipment manager was a guy I knew from the Yankees named Chris Guth. Naturally, the first thing I asked him was if he needed help in the clubhouse. He was looking for a guy for the A-Ball team and for the next three weeks I literally begged Chris to hire Brandon. When he finally did I think I was happier than Brandon.
To this day, the people at Texas say that my best contribution to the Texas Rangers Organization was my introduction of Brandon to them. In fourteen years, Brandon has grown through the ranks to the point where he is now the top man in the clubhouse. The thing that also makes me proud is that met a beautiful young lady named Giselle and together they have three incredible kids: Austin, Savana, and Holland. Patience paid off for Brandon being a good person. He never felt sorry for himself and two World Series later Brandon Boyd and his family are living the American Dream.
