Seconds after Mark Leiter Jr. left the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th inning Tuesday night to keep the game tied and give the Yankees a chance to eventually beat the Phillies in 12 innings, he and catcher Austin Wells converged on the dugout steps.
“Hey, I’m Mark. Nice to meet you,” Leiter told Wells as they shook hands for the first time.
Leiter had thrown 13 pressure-packed pitches to Wells with the game on the line before actually meeting him, capping off a bizarre 10-hour stretch that saw the reliever get traded from the Cubs to the Yankees, jump on a plane from Cincinnati to Philadelphia, arrive at Citizens Bank Park in the second inning, walk out to the bullpen before the top of the fourth and then deliver a clutch outing in the 10th to help his new team win a big game.
“You got a choice right there: Come in and put up a zero and you get to introduce yourself or the game’s over and you got to introduce yourself,” Leiter said the next morning. “So it was a cool experience — something that you experience maybe once, maybe twice in your career. So it was definitely a very cool moment, first time being a Yankee.”
