These have always been the two jobs most coveted in all of sporting New York.
All geographies have their athletic favorites. In Texas, kids grow up dreaming of quarterbacking the Cowboys. For generations, farmer’s sons have shot thousands upon thousands of jump shots on makeshift hoops, hoping to one day wear the candy-cane warmups of the Indiana Hoosiers. In Ontario, they take to frozen ponds when they’re barely old enough to slip into skates and start envisioning a day when they’ll be the one to help bring the Stanley Cup to the Maple Leafs for the first time since 1967.
Noble pursuits, all.
Around here, there are two such gigs. There is point guard for the Knicks. And there is center field for the Yankees. Those are things that draw kids to the playground, shovel in hand, in the middle of a snowy February, that drags them to tiny and sweaty church gyms in the middle of January. Those are the things they dream about when a father or an older brother or an uncle shags flies with them in the neighborhood park.
Point guard for the Knicks.
Center field for the Yankees.
And now, we live in a time when not only are both positions filled by worthy candidates, but by athletes who understand just how deep and how rich the generational pull of these jobs are.
Harrison Bader is the Yankees’ answer to their longtime center field problem. Robert Sabo for NY Post
We have Jalen Brunson, who may have played his high school ball in Chicago and his college ball in Philadelphia, but whose earliest exposure to basketball came in New York, at the Garden, when his old man, Rick, played on the Knicks from the time Jalen was 2 until he was nearly 5.
“My memories begin here,” Brunson said back in November, when he was first beginning to reveal to the city that he was the point guard its basketball citizens had been dreaming about, really, since Clyde Frazier was shipped out to Cleveland in 1977. “From the beginning I’ve known how special New York City is, and how unique Madison Square Garden is. It’s something I’ve always known.”
And we have Harrison Bader, born in Bronxville, which is about 10 miles from Yankee Stadium, and who attended Horace Mann High School, which is a straight shot 5 miles north of the Deegan from that sacred patch of grass which has called out to every aspiring ballplayer going back to Joe DiMaggio.
“When this trade happened, obviously being from New York, this truly is the very first time in my life where I have questioned my thought process in thinking maybe there is something that is a higher power that’s making this all happen,” Bader told The Post’s Steve Serby last October, as he was officially introducing himself to Yankees fans with a .333/.429/.833 postseason that included five homers and six RBIs in nine games.
Jalen Brunson helped guide the Knicks back to the playoffs in his first season with the team. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST
“This is what I train for, this is what I dream about as a young kid. I’m at heart a still young kid just playing baseball living out my dream, my passion every single day. This is never work, this is a game. I’ve thought about this for a long time and just kind of feel it coming right on the corner.”
The similarities don’t end there, either. They both share a rare passion for the game that is evident. If you showed up at the Garden and had never seen a basketball game before, you’d notice Brunson right away; same thing with a baseball neophyte strolling into the Stadium, seeing Bader chase down a ball in the alley.
“I don’t take a pitch off,” Bader said last October.
“I was raised to play hard every minute you’re on the floor,” Brunson said in January.
They are here now, and they should be here a long time. Brunson, who will turn 27 on Aug. 31, just completed the first year of a four-year contract, and there is no reason to believe the Knicks won’t want that relationship to last longer. Bader will turn 29 next week, and will be a free agent at the end of the year, but ought to be a high priority for a long-term extension, because when you find a center fielder like this one, you keep him.
(Mavericks fans and Cardinals fans may now talk among themselves about this …)
They are what a million kids have always wanted to be. One runs the show for the Knicks. One is a show in the most famous patch of grass anywhere in baseball. Two kids who know exactly how important their jobs are, and have from the start.
New York sports’ most coveted gigs finally have worthy successors
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