At age 15, Luis Castillo lived the dream, Castillo was a batboy for the New York Yankees from 1998 until 2005 .Castillo ran errands for A-Rod, caught warm-up pitches with Andy Pettitte and David Cone, and partied with Ruben Sierra. In those days batboys did not have to sign confidentiality agreement. Which leads us to his new memoir, "Clubhouse Confidential." were Castillo divulges Yankee player secrets.
Opening Day 1998 was his first day on the job , Castillo says he didn't know what to expect. he quickly learned that the tradition is that every bat boy gets a nickname from Derek Jeter himself . Castillo says that Jeter was easygoing ,joked a lot ,and teased everyone as a way to bond with his fellow team mates.
Castillo claims that Jeter and some of the players were terrific tippers. Roger Clemens would tip $3,000 at the end of the year. Posada gave him $7,000. A-Rod kicked in $1,400. A sizable amount, but when A-Rod found out that other players were tipping more, he bumped his tips up. Making sure he was the best tipper in the league. Castillo says A-Rod tipped $100 a week to make sure there was a creatine shake waiting for him after each home game.
One day, President Clinton walked into the clubhouse with four Secret Service agents. Players were being polite as hell with him until Jeter in full uniform, on the way out to the field paused just long enough to say: "Hey, Mr. President, you staying out of trouble?"
Castillo says that stadium operations, used a "Red Alert." system when owner George Steinbrenner arrived.Manager of Stadium Operations would punch in a special code into the walkie -talkie system and the word would spread like wild fire. Casitillo describes the lave hate relationship the team had with Steinbrenner and players like David Cone would often rib the over protective owner.
Despite Steinbrenners penchant to micro manage the team Joe Torre never let it interfere with his game .Torre would say , "This is what the Boss wants, but this is what we're going to do." Torre was usually focused no matter what the situation and kept his nose to the grindstone. The only one thing that ever distracted him from work, was the pony's and Torre would often have the OTB channel on his TV in his office.
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