Sonny Gray was so excited to join the Boston Red Sox that once he got traded from the St. Louis Cardinals, he went out shopping.
Craig Breslow said a few days ago that waiving a no-trade clause is a very good measure of a player’s desire to join a team. The new Red Sox pitcher went even further — he bought hats and T-shirts for himself and his family and introduced himself to the Red Sox media wearing a 2007 World Series hat.
«That’s kind of where I am at,» said Gray in a press conference on Tuesday. «I definitely haven’t accomplished everything in the game that I want to. Making a deep run in the postseason and winning the World Series are two of those things that I haven’t been able to accomplish.»
Gray received a call from Cardinals’ president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom on Sunday, before Thanksgiving, to give him the news that he was in the final stages of trading him to the Red Sox and that they needed his authorization.
He immediately accepted.
«I couldn’t be more excited to have the opportunity to compete for the Red Sox,» Gray added. «I’m looking forward to the year. I wanted to go to a market that is super competitive and wanted to win. I know I can thrive in that situation.»
But there is one more thing that Sonny Gray wants to do seven years after his stint with the New York Yankees.
«New York wasn’t a good situation for me,» he added. «It feels good to me to go to a place where it is easy to hate the Yankees and have that rivalry. I like the challenge.»
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«I never wanted to go there in the first place,» said Sonny Gray about playing for the New York Yankees in the past. «But I do appreciate my time there because I feel that the past seven years of my life I have been a better husband, everything, for having that experience and going through that.»
Photo: Zoom Call screenshot
