Stanton finds teammates, past and present, to lean on

This is understandable, considering all those championships, and it is also smart business. When they do it outside the public view, though, it takes on a different meaning, connecting generations of the privileged few who have worn pinstripes.

This season the Yankees have affixed all of their retired numbers above the lockers in the home clubhouse. They honor nearly two dozen players or managers this way, so the numbers ring the room. Giancarlo Stanton dressed for his first Yankees home game Tuesday under No. 10 — for Phil Rizzuto.

For historical resonance, 3 would have been better, for Babe Ruth, the original Bronx slugger. Or maybe 9, for Roger Maris, the player Stanton considers the single-season home run king. Also appropriate would be 44, for Reggie Jackson, another swaggering import with prodigious power.

But, OK, let’s consider Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame Yankees shortstop from the 1940s and ‘50s. He hit 38 home runs in his career. Stanton hit 38 home runs after the Fourth of July last season. Rizzuto played 13 seasons and never struck out more than three times in a game, which he did just once. Stanton struck out in all five of his at-bats Tuesday, and some of the frozen fans even booed him.

“You put up a performance like that, you should get booed,” Stanton said after the Yankees’ 11-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. “It’s not ideal, but we’ve got another one. We’ve got plenty more.”

The Yankees are bound to Stanton for the next decade after acquiring him from Derek Jeter’s downsizing Miami Marlins in a December trade. In his first home game as a Yankee, Stanton learned an important lesson, one that Rizzuto and all the other Yankees champions knew well: Even on your worst day, there’s still a good chance you’ll win.

Stanton turned down deals that would have sent him to the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants last winter, largely because he had a no-trade clause and would not let Jeter dictate his future. But he also wanted to be part of a starry ensemble, not the headline attraction. In eight seasons with the Marlins, Stanton never experienced a winning season. His four preferred destinations — the Yankees, the Houston Astros, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs — all reached the league championship series last season.

The Yankees will count on Stanton, to be sure, but Tuesday showed the wisdom of his decision. His team made his own struggles a footnote.

Stanton had never struck out five times in a game before. His five whiffs tied a single-game Yankees record, and Baseball-Reference.com produced just two other games in which a Yankees position player went 0 for 5 with five strikeouts: Andy Phillips in 2005 and rookie Bernie Williams in 1991.

Stanton looked lost against Chris Archer, against whom he is now 0 for 9. Archer has a wicked slider to right-handers, and Stanton swung over it for strike three in the first inning. Then he stared at a third-strike fastball in the third and went down swinging on a fastball in the fifth. Austin Pruitt (fastball) and Sergio Romo (slider) got him later.

And yet, the other Yankees had so much traffic on the bases that Didi Gregorius drove in eight runs, a single-game record for a Yankees shortstop (Jeter’s high was five). Gregorius hit fourth, right behind Stanton, who brushed off his futility.

“He picked me up, too,” Stanton said of Gregorius. “That’s what a cleanup hitter does. You clean up the garbage in front of you.”

That line got a laugh from a pack of reporters that was surely much bigger than any that confronted Stanton, 28, in the clubhouse at Marlins Park. Navigating the scrutiny of the New York fans and news media could be challenging, but younger players have handled it.

“Everyone’s been booed,” Aaron Judge said. “It’s no big deal. He knows that. You’ve just got to go out there and do your job the next day. If you don’t have it one day, you can’t complain, you can’t mope, which he’s not. He knows how it is.”

Judge learned plenty as the American League Rookie of the Year last season, gritting his way through a summer shoulder injury without complaint. He was healthy enough in October to star in the wild-card game, and he hit three home runs in the ALCS — while going 1 for 20 with 16 strikeouts in the division series with Cleveland in between.

Like Stanton on Tuesday, though, Judge discovered the main benefit of life as a Yankee: exceptional teammates. As helpless as he looked against the Indians, Judge came out a winner anyway. Likewise, Aaron Boone may have opened the bullpen door too soon on Tuesday, but in the end, it barely mattered.

In his home debut as Yankees manager, Boone pulled starter Jordan Montgomery after five innings and 80 pitches. Montgomery had allowed just two hits and a run, although he had walked four and his legs were getting numb in the cold. Montgomery did say he was ready to continue, but Boone had seen enough and went to Jonathan Holder, who faced five batters in the sixth inning and gave up four hits.

The Rays soon tied the score, but the Yankees took over in the next inning and won in a rout. When you win by seven runs, you can spin Stanton’s feeble day into something positive.

“I like when the big boy doesn’t get any and we’re able to score 11,” Boone said, “because there’s going to be a lot of days when we hop on his back.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.