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In 2022, Yankees Left Fielder Joey Gallo was traded from the New York Yankees to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’d had a rough time in New York, and without going into vast amounts of detail, he’d just been plain old bad swinging the bat and hitting the ball to the place you’d want it to. He’d been traded from the Texas Rangers a year ago with the expectations that he’d do well, and, well, he didn’t, in part due to the mounting pressure of a fanbase and city that grew to hate him, making him quite literally afraid to go outside.
If you don’t watch baseball — and no, this article is not about baseball — you should know that sometimes it’s really hard to tell specifically why somebody is failing. In Gallo’s case one could guess, but the predominant theme I could find was how fucking miserable everybody seemed about him. Gallo’s demeanor has looked miserable for a while, and Yankees manager Aaron Boone, while defensive of Gallo in general, has been clear that the New York fanbase had an “adverse reaction” on his play.
Gallo’s trade to the Dodgers has been a remarkable success, in part because the Dodgers coaching staff has seen him as someone to work with rather than fix, “welcomed with open arms” with an actual plan to use his talents, and he’s become arguably the single most valuable hitter traded for since the trade deadline, including the Padres’ acquisition of Juan Soto. Gallo has soared the moment he entered an environment that didn’t feel outright hostile, and where someone said “alright, how do…
