A 12-year-old baseball fan visiting New York from Indiana tried to get slugger Aaron Judge to sign a baseball – but he got his wish thanks to a chance encounter at a local pizzeria.
Samir Myers and his dad Andy were grabbing a slice at Nick’s Pizza on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx after a Yankees game in July when they ran into one of the Empire State’s most powerful elected officials who had just had a tie with the Bronx Bombers.
Samir, of Carmel, Indiana, had just seen his first Yankees game on July 31 — a loss to the Kansas City Royals — when he and his father met a mystery man who turned out to be the Assembly Speaker. of the state, Carl Heastie (D-East Bronx).
“What would you do if I got you an autograph from Aaron Judge?” Heastie said. Samir had just unsuccessfully tried to get Judge’s autograph during the match.
“I didn’t expect someone to really love, do something so nice…I thought he was tugging on my channel,” Samir told the Post of the unexpected twist during his visit. in the five boroughs to celebrate his graduation from primary school.
The Bronx broker followed up the next day by calling Samir and Andy to say the Yankees were already on the case as they continued the 11 a.m. drive home to Carmel.
“It’s like, ‘Wow, yeah, he could do it,'” Samir said.
While declining to name who specifically helped with the request, Heastie told the Post that Samir’s help came after years of working with the Yankees on a range of local issues, including building a new stadium which opened in 2009.
“I haven’t spoken to Aaron Judge, but I have spoken to some of the executives [and] all the teams here in New York are pretty good when you ask them to do things at the community level,” said Heastie, who first detailed his efforts on behalf of Samir in a post on the Twitter feed on Saturday.
Responding to the request took months, but the Bronx pol added that the contacts he had developed during his political career finally paid off, with an express mail package with baseball arriving at the Myers’ doorstep last Monday. .
“It’s just about being nice to someone,” Heastie explained of the effort that began after he stopped at Nick’s, one of his favorite pizza places in the neighborhood he’s represented since 2001.
Heastie wasn’t the only aggressive and friendly New Yorker who left an impression on the Myers during their time away from the Midwest, with the father-son duo also meeting an Airbnb host who practically begged to drive them to lower Manhattan. to see the sights all away from the Bronx.
A baseball autographed by Aaron Judge is a hot item after a season where the now free agent broke an American League record by hitting 62 home runs this season, with prize money ranging from hundreds to millions of dollars – depending on the related story.
But Andy Myers, Butler’s college budget director, says he and his son got something truly priceless after that chance meeting at Nick’s Pizza with a political bigwig who wanted to spread some happiness in his neighborhood and beyond helping a boy get a baseball. inked by his 6’7 hero.
“There’s always this kind of gruff, rushed reputation of people living in New York,” he said. “That was not the experience we had. It opened my eyes. »
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