New York Yankees: 5 times Brett Gardner showed us Heart and Hustle

Gardner robs Smoak with leaping catch at the wall to seal Yanks’ 7-6 victory

On Sept. 6, 2016, Gardner robbed Justin Smoak of a walk-off in the ninth inning with the bases loaded to hold a one-run lead.

"“I knew it was going to be close to the wall. Thank goodness it wasn’t much higher. I’m not too tall and I wasn’t going to be able to jump a whole lot higher.”"

Yankee fans are sure glad it wasn’t because a back-and-forth game that ended in the Yankee’s favor seemingly had playoff implications and, sure enough, New York wound up in a wild-card game with a group of youngsters who had turned the season around.

Sound familiar?

This year the Yankees overachieved (many around MLB pegged next year to be the year for the Baby Bombers to compete for a World Series title) and Brett was at the epicenter.

He’ll be valuable next year as well if only to be that calming familiarity in a year the Yanks make a move at manager, dumping Joe Girardi who had been in the position since 2008.

However, he’s never experienced something like this before either.

"“I’ve never played for any manager other than Joe Girardi. I’m going to miss him. I’ve had a lot of good times with him and we won a World Series together in 2009. I haven’t talked with any teammates about it yet. I don’t really know what direction they’re headed with it, but I just trust that [GM Brian] Cashman obviously is going to take his time, and you trust the process that they’re going to make the right move. No matter who they go with, I feel good about our team that we have going into next year. I’m excited about our team.”"

Anyway, let’s move on.