TAMPA, Fla. — No stranger to throwing deep at his day job, free-agent NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield stopped by Yankees camp to try his hand at going deep.
In front of an audience that included Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, Mayfield jumped into the batting cage for a round before Thursday’s Grapefruit League game against the Tigers, launching a few solid drives that landed in the George M. Steinbrenner Field outfield.
“Good-looking swing, for sure,” said Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe, who attended a Tampa Bay Lightning game with Mayfield in January. “A lot of contact.”
Tristan Wirfs, an offensive lineman and teammate of Mayfield with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, also took a round of BP with the team. Mayfield and Wirfs both left the stadium with personalized bats signed by Judge, a souvenir of their big league moment.
“I’m a little rusty, as you could tell,” Mayfield told the YES Network. “It’s awesome getting to meet some of these guys. I’m a big baseball fan, so meeting some of these guys in person and watching them up close in batting practice, it’s special.”
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Mayfield, 28, said baseball was actually his favorite sport while growing up in Austin, Texas.
“I’ll say this: it’s always fun to talk about the opposite sports, and the dreams we had of playing the other sports,” Mayfield said. “Their hand-eye coordination is truly elite. I couldn’t track some of these balls coming in that fast.”
Drafted by the Cleveland Browns first overall in the 2018 NFL Draft out of Oklahoma, Mayfield signed a one-year contract with the Bucs this past March. He guided Tampa Bay to a 9-8 record and a first-round playoff upset of the Philadelphia Eagles and received his first Pro Bowl selection.
“It was an unbelievable year,” Mayfield said. “Truly, the group we had is what made it really special. It started out decent and we had a really bad lull there in midyear, but the group we had stuck together, so that’s what made it really special. Obviously, winning cures a lot of things.”
