When the Houston Astros got booed at home while getting swept out of last week's wild-card round by the Chicago White Sox, some players expressed frustration about the boos they heard from the home crowd at Daikin Park.
That feeling spread to the New York Yankees clubhouse on Wednesday night, shortly after the Yankees were swept by the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Division Series.
Yankees fans, who didn't help their cause with a costly fan interference ruling against them in Game 3, focused most of their boos on infielder Jazz Chisholm, who went 0-for-8 in the series with a costly error in Game 2 after hitting .231 with 19 home runs during the regular season.
Shortly after the conclusion of the Yankees' season, Chisholm, who is entering free agency after 2 ½ seasons in New York, was asked if he was wounded by the treatment from the home crowd.
"It doesn't hurt, it's just confusing because it's the playoffs and we're trying to win games," Chisholm told reporters in the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. "So, you're booing a guy that's playing currently trying to help the team win. You're hearing boos instead of trying to hype guys up, you know what I mean? But, at the end of the day, it doesn't hurt me because I've seen Aaron Judge get booed here before, too. Who am I? That's a three-time MVP."
Judge, the reigning two-time American League MVP who also won it in 2022, has frequently been booed during slumps in his career. He was even booed in the 2022 postseason, the same year he set the American League single-season home run record with 62, when he went 1-for-16 in the 2022 American League Championship Series sweep at the hands of the Astros. When the Astros went on to the World Series, closer Ryan Pressly said he and his teammates were shocked a home crowd would boo someone like Judge.
Four years later, Astros fans gave their team the same treatment when they lost Game 1 of the wild-card series to the Chicago White Sox. After that defeat, reliever Bennett Sousa, who got jeered for allowing a couple runs on two wild pitches, told The Athletic that Houston fans are spoiled by the team's success over the past decade and that he "was pretty pissed off" about the fans' reaction. The next day, Sousa apologized through The Athletic, while manager Joe Espada tried to calm the waters.
"The way I see it, I understand both sides," Espada said hours before Game 2. "There's frustration. Our players and the fans have the right to also show their emotions, and I get it. But one thing I do know is that our players love our fans. We respect our fans. We need our fans. We need the energy from our fans. We feed off that.
"We're going to move on, but I do want our fans to know that we love them and we need them. They're part of what we are trying to accomplish here. They're part of our family."
SubscribeThere’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at Like Astros earlier in playoffs, Yankees' Jazz Chisholm questions getting booed by home fans.