I got George Steinbrenner to override trade to Red Sox

Jim Leyritz claims he pulled off a coup to avoid a trade for the Red Sox near the end of his career.

Leyritz, a postseason folk hero of the legendary 1990s Yankees dynasty, appeared on OutKick’s “Hot Mic” with Jonathan Hutton and Chad Withrow on Tuesday to talk about his own experiences with the MLB trade deadline.

He revealed that one time he called the late, tempestuous Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to step in and stop an impending trade to Boston.

“Well, you know, I was that guy after ‘95 and ’96 with the Yankees,” Leyritz, now 60, said of being a trade target, as he was swapped four consecutive seasons from 1997-2000.

“All of a sudden, I played for a couple of teams that weren’t going to make the playoffs. They always traded me to a team going to the playoffs. There was quite a bit of my last three or four years of being pretty much packed up on July 12, and I just wondered where we were going to wind up because we were going to end up somewhere. It’s not easy.”

Then came his story about how he had played for the Red Sox during part of the 1998 season — and did not want to go back when he was on the Padres around the 1999 trade deadline.

“I played for San Diego. It was a situation where I got a phone call. I was on a rehab assignment, 1999, in Las Vegas, coming back from a broken hand. I got a phone call, and all of a sudden it was like, ‘Hey, you’re being traded to the Boston Red Sox,’” Leyritz said.

“And I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, please.’ I don’t want to go back to the Red Sox. And they said, ‘Well, we need to make a trade for you in the next day or two. I’ll give you 24 hours to figure out something else.’

“I put in a phone call to George Steinbrenner’s secretary, Debbie Nicolosi. I said, ‘Debbie, tell George I’m being traded back to Boston.’ She goes, ‘Nope, you’re not going to Boston. You’re coming here.’ Within 24 hours, I was traded back to the New York Yankees. That would be considered tampering, I’m sure. But we got away with it back then.” 

At the time of the trade, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman credited then-manager Joe Torre’s endorsement for making the deal happen.