The Yankees exercised their 2025 option on Aaron Boone on Friday, meaning that, for now, he will get a one-year now-or-never referendum about his future on the job. But the truth is, if this is the only step they intend to take with Boone, that would be a bad idea, regardless of which side of the Boone Spectrum you fall on. 

The only way Boone’s tenure as skipper could be any more uncomfortable than it’s been the last few years is to add “lame duck” to the list of adjectives used to describe him by his detractors. But that’s where we are now, and until and unless the Yankees decide to extend him, that’s where we will be. 

We do not live in a gray age, and so there is nothing gray about Aaron Boone — except, perhaps, for the few strands that have crept into his hair over the course of seven years as the Yankees manager. There is very little neutral ground surrounding him. Ask a Yankee fan about Boone, the one guarantee is that you will not get this answer: 

“I haven’t really thought about it.”