Yankees manager Aaron Boone recaps wild night before MLB finally postponed Game 5 after lengthy rain delay

Aaron Boone looked out his office door around 8:15 p.m. and saw the unusual site of players out of the clubhouse and waiting outside his door. He said they looked like lions stalking, anxious to get going. The Yankees manager was on one of the many zoom calls with MLB and weather officials trying to figure out when they could play Game 5 of the American League Division Series.

“It was weird,” the Yankees manager said of Monday night’s disastrous weather issues. “We had what turned into every 20-minute Zoom calls. ... we had settled on a 9:30 start time when the weather guys said ‘Something just popped up.’”

The Yankees, the Guardians and MLB were trying to get the decisive game of this best-of-five series played Monday night. The Astros were back in Houston holding a workout and waiting for the winner on Tuesday while Boone and Guardians manager Terry Francona were juggling their pitching staff for the biggest game of their season.

Boone decided to go with Nestor Cortes on three days’ rest and Guardians manager Terry Francona stayed with Aaron Civale. The only good thing that came out of Monday night is that the deciding game of this series would not be played on a sloppy field in the rain and that both the Guardians and Yankees pitching staffs would be rested.

The rest of the night was kind of a disaster.

Monday night, with the first weather issue predicted well in advance, the Yankees made an announcement at 6:35 p.m. that the scheduled start at 7:07 p.m. would be delayed. There was no word for media — or fans — again until after 9:30 p.m. that the game was postponed by what Yankees GM Brian Cashman said was a second weather front that “popped up” later in the evening. Fans leaving spent at least an hour trying to get out of the local parking garages and with construction on the highways around the Stadium, many were still stuck an hour and a half after the announcement.

During the delay, fans huddled under the overhangs and on the concourses to try and stay dry from the cold rain. Inside the Guardians’ clubhouse, they had to try and find hotel rooms. With the game being the final one of the series, they planned to be heading to Houston for the AL Championship Series or back to Cleveland after Monday night’s game. They had to split up with team management staying in Manhattan and the players sleeping in Yonkers.

“We had to make some adjustments just because our hotel was full,” Francona said. “But JJ [Jared Jones] does our travel. He’s outstanding ... We’re fine. We split up and they got it all mapped out and it was no big deal.”

Players were trying to kill time and still get ready in time for several rumored start times. The biggest concern was when to warm up the starting pitchers. For the Yankees that was Jameson Taillon.

“Obviously, we have everything you need to be ready. By the end there, because we had J-Mo after the 8:20 call, we said, we think we’re going at 9:30. We just have to get the news for sure that it’s clear so that we are not warming up in rain,” Boone said. “He was ready to go out there at the nine o’clock call, I had players ready to go, had eye black on, like what’s going on, at my door, basically. And it just kept getting pushed back a little bit, and then obviously got too [late]. We’re like, all right, tomorrow at 4. Let’s go.”

In the Guardians clubhouse things were a little more chill. They had the most rain issues of any team this season

“I think most of them were playing cards or a couple guys playing chess,” Francona said. “Every time we had a little zoom update, we would update our players and they just kept hanging out.”