Yankees speak to Newsday about their wildest slump-busting rituals
Yankees' Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second base during the first inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The legendary story, told various ways through the years, goes this way:
Hall of Fame golfer Sam Snead and baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, longtime friends because of their shared love of fishing and eventual partners in business, once debated whose vocation entailed the more difficult task: hitting a baseball or hitting a golf ball.
Williams pointed out that a golf ball is stationary while a baseball is a moving target, adding: “You don’t have to face a pitcher.”
Snead, in his distinctive drawl representative of his birthplace of Ashwood, Va., supposedly ended the argument by saying: “Ted, you don’t have to go up in the stands and play your foul balls. I do.”
Still, it is generally accepted, even by golfers who have experience playing baseball and who have had the opportunity to stand in a big-league batting cage, that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports.
And something, with the proliferation of pitchers over the last decade capable of throwing 100 mph – and some regularly surpassing it – that has only gotten harder.
Baseball is often characterized, by those covering it and especially by those playing it, as a “game of failure.”
That has never been more true when it comes to hitting.
And for those really failing, slumping to the tune of a 2-for-25 stretch, or far worse, desperate times call for something, anything, to change things up.
Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose 2026 season started horribly, has been in the news of late for a hot stretch at the plate that has corresponded with the 5-11, 184-pound second baseman slipping into – some might describe it as disappearing into – the pants of the 6-5, 245-pound Giancarlo Stanton.
“They’ve got hits in them,” said Chisholm who, since donning Stanton’s pants on May 13 in Baltimore is 10-for-22 (.455) with a homer and a 1.266 OPS in six games (entering Wednesday). “And they’re bigger so they really feel like I’m not wearing anything, so it’s like I’m just chilling. I’m out here in basically compression shorts.”
Baseball players are notoriously superstitious, a change in luck a rabbit’s foot away.
Just not usually an actual rabbit’s foot.
Cody Bellinger on Wednesday remembered, while in a horrendous slump at Double-A Tulsa in 2016 while coming up in the Dodgers’ system, showering in full uniform.
“Actually ended up hitting really well after that, to be completely honest,” Bellinger said. “I ended up having a really good year after that. That’s my biggest thing. I’ve changed up bats, I’ve changed up socks. But that one really comes to mind. I swear, I started raking after that.”
A casual poll of the Yankees clubhouse conducted by Newsday over two days elicited a cross-section of responses to the same question Bellinger answered: What’s the strangest slump-busting technique you’ve employed yourself or observed personally and/or heard of, whether in the majors in the minors?
Paul Goldschmidt, in his 16th major-league season, said: “Maybe I’ll try to eat the same meal or wear the same shoes or something like that, but I’m not doing it for like 10 straight days or anything… Guys will do all different types of stuff just to try and change the mojo. Maybe wearing somebody else’s pants or do something different with equipment. You get to a point where you’re just trying to do something different, give it a little different feel.”
Speaking of a different feel …
“Hitting naked, by far,” Stanton said helpfully after a several-second pause.
Um, what’s that again?
The DH, a former NL MVP who is in his 17th season and who is currently on the injured list with a calf injury, added with a smile that he himself has not done that.
“I’ve seen it in baseball,” Stanton, still smiling, said while bypassing a question of whether he observed it while with the Yankees. “I’ve heard about it, that’s the best way to say it.”
Three-time AL MVP Aaron Judge, cracking a smile, said: “I don’t do anything too crazy. I’m pretty routine-oriented. I got nothing for you on that.”
But the Yankees captain did add a layer to Stanton’s titillating tale.
“I’m not going to say what teammate it was, but they would take naked BP in the [indoor] cage,” Judge said. “I saw it in the big leagues. I wouldn’t say where I saw it, when I saw it, if I saw it. But that’s one of the craziest ones.”
“Oh, Anthony Rizzo,” one clubhouse insider said, momentarily solving the mystery. “[He’s] not the only one.”
Anyway, Rizzo, who played most of his 14-year career with the Cubs (10 seasons) and was a Yankee from 2021-24, recently copped to his BP in the buff sessions, with both clubs, on his podcast.
Judge, shaking his head, said: “I don’t know where or when that became a thing.”
Chisholm, who rarely hears a question he’s not ready to attack like a hanging slider, unsurprisingly dove right in.
“I’ve seen that. We actually did that as a team in 2023 in Miami,” said Chisholm, a Marlin for five seasons before the Yankees acquired him at the 2024 trade deadline. “Some guys were just like in jock straps and some guys in tights. Like me, I went in tights and socks. Some guys went barefooted and with just jockstraps, and the coach was throwing straight jockstrap. Either jockstrap or underwear. But that’s basically naked to me. I think we scored like eight runs [the next game].”
Bellinger, whose father, Clay, played four seasons in the majors, including 1999-2001 with the Yankees, and who is in his 10th year, didn’t flinch at the topic either.
“I have heard of that, hitting nude for sure. I haven’t done that, definitely heard of it,” Bellinger said with a laugh. “But we do some crazy [expletive], man. This game will do it to do you.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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