Aaron Boone, Dave Roberts share long rivalry

LOS ANGELES — During Media Day on Thursday, before Game 1 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, Yankees manager Aaron Boone sat at the podium and heaped nothing but respect and praise on Dave Roberts’ team.

Well … one of Roberts’ teams.

The Dodgers? A worthy adversary in the Fall Classic. The UCLA Bruins?

“I’m a [USC] Trojan,” Boone said with a smirk. “So as we all know in here, you’re a Trojan for life, you’re a Bruin for four years. That’s probably the case with Doc.”

Roberts took that same podium a few hours later and was told of Boone’s dig.

“Ouch,” Roberts quipped. “Ouch, that hurts. … Absolutely disagree, 100 percent.”

Indeed, long before Roberts and Boone were rival managers at the World Series, they were college baseball rivals in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Boone played third base at USC from 1992-94. Roberts played outfield for UCLA those same years.

“Yeah, I can see Doc and that little slap swing he had where he hit the ball the other way,” Boone recalled. “He was a good player, somebody that I got to know a little bit at that point, just playing against him because he’s such a great guy. But I remember him well, leadoff hitter, left fielder for the Bruins. Fun times, fun days.”

Roberts’ recollection was full of nostalgia — but slightly more sour.

“We weren’t friends,” Roberts said. “I think, at that point in time, I didn’t care too much about him, and I don’t think he cared too much for me. I do recall they got the best of us back in the day, so it probably enhanced my distaste for him and the Trojans. But he was always a heck of a ballplayer.”

In so many ways, Roberts and Boone took parallel trajectories to this point — from college ball in Los Angeles to indelible October moments a decade later.

Boone’s walk-off home run in Game 7 famously won the 2003 American League Championship Series for the Yankees over the Red Sox. A year later, Roberts’ stolen base sparked Boston’s fabled comeback from a 3-0 ALCS deficit en route to its first World Series title since 1918. (Notably, neither Boone nor Roberts were on the wrong end of those defeats. Roberts didn’t join the Sox until 2004 — a season Boone missed due to injury before signing with Cleveland.)

Now, their rivalry spans into a fourth decade. It has evolved to take on a much friendlier nature. When the Yankees’ plane touched down in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Boone wanted to let Roberts know they’d arrived.

“I sent him a Yankee emoji when we landed,” Boone said.

“You know what, there was another emoji I thought about sending him with one finger,” Roberts quipped. “But I didn’t. I just gave a laughing emoji back.”

By the numbers, Roberts was probably the better college player. He batted .326, including a .353 mark with a .913 OPS and 45 steals during his final season. Boone hit .302, though he also turned in a fantastic ’94 season. It was Boone — with a big league pedigree and a more projectible frame — who was selected by the Reds in the third round of the 1994 Draft. The 5-foot-10 Roberts, meanwhile, fell to the 28th round, where he was selected by Detroit.

Both spent the late ’90s looking for their big league breakthrough, then posted similar playing careers — more than a decade in the big leagues, largely defined by a singular October moment.

Now, Boone is in his seventh season as the Yankees’ manager, entering his first World Series. Roberts, who has managed the Dodgers for nine seasons, will be at the helm of his fourth Fall Classic.

“I do think it’s very cool that we played against each other in college as college rivals and now you can just see this rivalry with the Dodgers and the Yankees,” Roberts said. “It’s pretty special. It goes way back and now we’re doing it again opposing each other, it’s a pretty good story.”

Despite the obvious connections, Boone and Roberts hadn’t spent too much time together off the field — until a golf outing a few winters ago, set up by some mutual friends.

After the round, they sat together and chatted. Bruin to Trojan, Dodger to Yankee, the similarities shone through more than anything else.

“Kind of got to sit around afterwards for a while and just talk shop,” Boone recalled. “He’s just someone I have a lot of respect for, and certainly somebody that you know can certainly probably relate to what you go through in this job. In a lot of ways, our jobs and our markets are similar. So I think we have that appreciation and respect for one another.”

Four decades and counting.