Brett Gardner was born in Holly Hill, South Carolina on August 24, 1983, which makes today his 43rd birthday. It also makes this a good day to remember that he had to talk his way onto a college team before any of the rest of it happened.
Gardner walked on at the College of Charleston and did not impress anybody. He has said since that if he had been the coach watching that tryout, he would have figured this kid was not going to cut it. Rather than wait around for a call that probably wasn’t coming, he showed up the next day and kept playing until they gave him a roster spot.
He hit better than .400 over his final two seasons there and tied for the national lead with 122 hits as a senior while batting .447. He left as the school’s all-time leader in runs scored and stolen bases, and those records still stand. The Yankees took him in the third round in 2005, 109th overall.
The Bat Was Always The Question
He debuted on June 30, 2008, and got handled. Neither his on-base percentage nor his slugging percentage cleared .300 that year. What kept him around was everything else. He posted 1.3 defensive WAR in 42 games, and speed and glove work do not go out of fashion in a lineup that needs someone to run.
By the summer of 2009 the argument had shifted. FanGraphs wrote that if the arm was as good as it looked, there was no case for keeping Gardner on the bench, because the baserunning and the range were already among the best in the league.
He still split that season with Melky Cabrera and appeared in 108 games, swiping 26 bases and lifting his wRC+ from 54 to 91. That is not a breakout. It was enough to stay.
The Ring Came Early
The Yankees beat the Phillies in six that October, and Gardner had his championship in his second season. He would play 12 more years in the Bronx and never get another one.
The rest of the résumé filled in slowly. He led the American League in stolen bases in 2011 and in triples in 2013, made the All-Star team in 2015 and won a Gold Glove in 2016. He finished with 274 steals, third in franchise history behind Derek Jeter and Rickey Henderson, and Baseball-Reference grades him as the best defensive outfielder the Yankees have ever had.
Fourteen seasons, all of them in pinstripes, for a guy who had to force his way onto a Southern Conference roster.
