Twenty years ago, Aaron Boone was traded to the Yankees. That deal changed lives
Posted by
JD (aka Jason Dean)
Jul 31 '23, 13:15
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By Rustin Dodd
The front entrance to Pro Wheel Repair of Lubbock, Texas, sits just off Buddy Holly Avenue in a quiet industrial park near downtown, a blue and red logo adorning the face of a plain brick building. Brandon Claussen, the company’s 44-year-old owner, usually pulls into the parking lot at 5:30 a.m. He spends his mornings in the shop, welding, sanding and rebuilding around 30 wheels per day. When he finishes each day around 2 p.m., his hands are covered in sweat, powder and what he calls “tire slime.”
The company was born a decade ago, when Claussen left his father-in-law’s tire business and started out on his own. Before that, he was a service-truck driver for Forrest Tire of Hobbes, New Mexico, and before that he was a major league pitcher, a southpaw who happened to find himself in the middle of one of the most significant deadline trades in Yankees history.
On July 31, 2003, the Yankees traded Claussen, then the organization’s top pitching prospect, to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for Aaron Boone, a versatile third baseman from one of baseball’s most accomplished families. The trade drew tepid reviews in the moment, as the Yankees jousted with the Red Sox in the AL East race, but it paid off in the Bronx when Boone crushed a Tim Wakefield knuckleball into the night in the 11th inning of Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, sending New York to the 2003 World Series. It also led, indirectly, to Alex Rodriguez joining the Yankees.
Two decades later, it’s hard to think about the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry without harkening back to that 2003 night at old Yankee Stadium. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Boone managing the Yankees today without his starring cameo in pinstripes. Yet 20 years on, the other side of the deal reveals an enduring truth about the MLB’s annual trade deadline. The flurry of action that takes place before 6 p.m. Tuesday will impact the pennant race, but it will also alter lives. Doors will open. Others will slam shut. Dozens of prospects — players who will likely never become stars — will enter the sliding doors.
“There are more guys that are like me,” Claussen said after work one day this month, and by that he means a former pro pitcher turned trivia answer turned, in his words, “pro wheel-repair technician.”
The story of Claussen and one deadline trade is actually not all that unusual, which makes it all the more interesting.
“All in one day,” he said. “Everything changes.”
The story, for our purposes, begins in a Triple-A clubhouse in Columbus, Ohio, where Claussen showed up early for work on the afternoon of July 31, 2003. The room was empty, the television tuned to ESPN. Claussen looked at the screen and saw something odd: His name.
He was only 24, in his fifth year in the minors. His status as a top baseball prospect was unlikely. He grew up in a tiny town in New Mexico, where his mother was a secretary for a hay broker and his father ran a forklift. When he finished high school, he pitched two seasons for a community college in Big Spring, Texas, where he happened to be discovered by the New York Yankees and drafted in the 34th round of the 1998 draft. He signed for $75,000.
He didn’t throw especially hard, topping out in the low 90s, but he was left-handed with a good fastball command and a back-foot slider that befuddled hitters. Jason LaRue, a future teammate, said he looked like Tom Glavine. When the Yankees organization handed him the ball in the minors, Claussen remembers having one thought: “I didn’t want to give it back.”
He performed well in the low minors and then took off in 2001, leading the minor leagues in strikeouts. When his ulnar collateral ligament tore the next year, he had added motivation to bounce back. Two years earlier, in the months after his second season in the minors, Claussen’s father, Jimmie, had died suddenly. The culprit was a popped blood vessel in his brain. The doctors told the family it was random, that it could have happened at any time. When Claussen made it to the hospital, a family friend’s niece — who Claussen had never met — showed up with cookies. Her name was Kelli. They were engaged three months later.
Claussen returned to the mound in 2003. He debuted in the majors before returning to Columbus. Steeled by tragedy and tested by Tommy John surgery, he felt “untouchable,” the next young player in the Yankee dynasty. “I’m the guy that is cut from that cloth,” he remembers thinking. He was still a little naive. As he stood in the clubhouse in Columbus, he saw his name scrolling along the ticker.
Brian Butterfield, the team’s manager, called him into his office.
“You got traded,” Butterfield told him. “So don’t suit up.”
When joining the family business, said Claussen, “The guy who’s been changing tires for 20 years is Barry Larkin and you’re the rookie.”
The truth about most deadline trades is that they are arbitrary occurrences. MLB front offices spend hours scouting players, making calls, looking for trade partners and weighing the pros and cons of each individual deal. But the forces that dictate trades are unpredictable. A team may lose eight straight games before the deadline. A regular might get hurt. A rival might make a trade, necessitating a response. A losing GM might get fired.
That’s what happened, in part, to Aaron Boone, Brandon Claussen and Charlie Manning, the second pitcher in the deal. The 2003 Yankees led the Red Sox by 3 1/2 games at the deadline. Yankees third baseman Robin Ventura was struggling. The Red Sox had issued a preemptive strike, acquiring reliever Scott Williamson from the Reds. The Yankees, too, had interest in Williamson, but when the Reds asked for Claussen and cash, the negotiations fell apart. The Red Sox got the pitcher.
It was only the previous offseason that Red Sox president Larry Lucchino dubbed the Yankees the “Evil Empire.” The rivalry heated up that summer. The Yankees responded by re-engaging with the Reds, who had just fired GM Jim Bowden (who now writes for The Athletic) and were in the midst of a fire sale. The Yankees used Claussen to acquire Boone, who was in the midst of his only All-Star season. Boone would call the trade “bittersweet”; he’d only played for one organization, and his father had been replaced as Reds manager just days before. The New York Times called it a “hurried decision to appease George Steinbrenner.” Yankees manager Joe Torre disagreed. “The future is right now,” he told reporters.
What happened next was a blur: The Reds told Claussen to rush to Cincinnati; he would pitch in two days. Then he didn’t. The Reds shut him down for the season, wishing to protect their investment. Boone hit his walk-off homer in October. The Yankees lost the World Series to the Marlins. Boone tore his ACL in a pickup basketball game, which opened the door for the Yankees to trade for Alex Rodriguez.
“For a long time, I kind of tried to distance myself from (the homer),” Boone said in 2017. “Because we lost the World Series.”
By the spring of 2004, the Reds were still adrift, a franchise still in transition.
“All I knew was the Yankees, and you may not like what they’re gonna say, but they were clear,” Claussen said. “They let you know where you stood. There was no indecisiveness.”
He struggled as a rookie in 2004, made 29 starts for the Reds in 2005, posting a 4.21 ERA, and by 2006 was already thinking about retirement. Worse than the losing, his arm started to bark. Baseball began to feel secondary. He put the struggles on himself. Sometimes, though, he thought about all the different ways a career can play out.
“It’s my job to go out there and perform, regardless,” he says. “But I do think a person has a little more confidence and there’s more a sense of urgency playing for a team like the Yankees.”
By 2007, he was ready to go home. His wife had given birth to their first daughter. His father-in-law asked if he wanted to join the family tire business. Claussen had a better idea: He wanted to drive a service truck.
“It’s almost like you’re the rookie again,” he said. “What’s a socket? Where do I put the floor jack? Even though coming from where I came from, immersing myself in a situation like that was just very humbling. The guy who’s been changing tires for 20 years is Barry Larkin and you’re the rookie.”
The foray into the tire business took him to Lubbock, where he opened a branch of the family business and eventually started his own wheel repair shop. He began out of a trailer, canvassing car lots to drum up interest. He taught himself to weld. He hired his first employee and ultimately opened his shop. It’s not a “luxurious” profession, as he puts it. But the process of adding and developing skills, he said, is not unlike adding and refining pitches. One day earlier this month, he considered one added benefit.
“At Pro Wheel Repair in Lubbock, Texas,” he said, “I don’t have to worry about reading on the ticker if I have to move to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.”
Twenty years later, the front entrance of Pro Wheel Repair offers only one hint about its owner: The logo. When Claussen moved into the shop, he borrowed the colors of the MLB logo and replaced the silhouette with a wheel. Few people realize its significance. Claussen is a forgotten prospect who didn’t quite pan out. Or maybe, he says, it played out exactly as it was supposed to. If his career was shortened by the randomness of a deadline, it allowed him to return home and be a dad.
“I think there’s so much emphasis on looking at the occupation to make you happy,” he said. “But what I’ve learned is a job is a job. If it’s a baseball, if it’s changing tires, it is what it is. It’s who you do it for and who you do it with.”
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