Joey Gallo joked that the last time he had played an 11:30 game was in high school, but there he and the rest of his New York Yankees teammates were on Sunday morning up and at it early for a rare morning start.
The Yankees’ 5-4 win over the Detroit Tigers came amid a unique situation for both clubs who are used to afternoon or evening starts time, but because of Major League Baseball’s new broadcast deal with NBC, Sunday’s matchup started at 11:35 in the morning. That meant for a lot of players there was a bit of a change to their gameday routine.
“Set the alarm clock a lot earlier,” Gallo said with a chuckle. “Try to get to bed a lot earlier. I tried to get here as early as I could, hitting the cage on my own. Went on the field a little bit. Ran around, just trying to make it feel like a normal 0ne o’clock, 1:30 game. That’s really (the difference). I just try to forget about what time it is and just show up and do your daily routine.”
Sunday’s game is the only one on the Yankees schedule that is set to have the unique morning start time. New York starter Jordan Montgomery called the earlier start “fine.”
Similar to Gallo, one of the biggest differences was just getting to bed earlier. Montgomery also added that not much else in his normal gameday routine changed.
“I’m a professional enough to move everything up like I need,” he said after going 6.1 innings on Sunday. “I did a little extra today to make sure I was loose.”
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said after the game that he felt the energy was good from his team despite the earlier than normal start time at Yankee Stadium. The Bombers were also aided by the fact that they played an afternoon game on Saturday, which meant the turnaround wasn’t as grueling as it could have been.
New York also has the day off on Monday as they travel to Minnesota to face the Twins.
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“I’m sure it’s not the most ideal, especially we got a handful of veteran guys,” Boone said. “I felt like the energy was really good in the clubhouse, so any reservations they had they masked it well and I thought we were ready to go.”
Sunday’s game on Peacock was the first time the Yankees had been on streaming service and drew plenty of criticism online from upset Yankees fans who could not watch the game. The New York Mets will make their first appearance on the streaming service on June 26.
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