Erik Boland: Yankees' Aaron Boone ticked off by Jazz Chisholm's in-game lollipop caper
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, left, on Monday in Detroit, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. shows off a jar of Dubble Bubble lollipops after homering on Tuesday in Detroit against the Tigers. Credit: AP/Paul Sancya
DETROIT – It wasn’t a classic case of the arsonist calling the fire department.
But it was the arsonist innocently asking why the fire department had to be called.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, on his paid weekly appearance with Jomboy Media on Tuesday, got colorful when the topic came up about second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. being seen sucking on a green Blow Pop in the bottom of the fifth inning of Monday night’s loss to the Tigers.
“That [ticked] me off,” Boone told co-hosts Jimmy O’Brien and Jake Storiale, adding later that he had addressed the situation with Chisholm.
Later in the day, Boone oddly switched to more of a what’s-this-hullaballoo-all-about approach in his daily pregame meeting with the media.
“I just don’t think he should have had a lollipop out on the field,” Boone said. “Just wasn’t a good look to me.”
The candy caper, after being spotted during Monday night’s broadcast, quickly became internet fodder, then talk-show fodder on Tuesday. “I was annoyed by it, I addressed it, and let’s move on from it,” Boone said. “At the end of the day, it’s not that big of a deal.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr. is playing second base with a blow pop in his mouth pic.twitter.com/sJo7B2ZAzq
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) June 22, 2026
Naturally, when a coach or manager is quoted as saying he’s (ticked) off by a player’s actions, there will be follow-up questions. Those queries Tuesday annoyed Boone more than Chisholm trying to see how many licks it takes to get to the center of his lollipop.
“It bothered me. It was addressed,” Boone said.
Boone did not disclose much from his conversation, but Chisholm did after Tuesday night’s 4-3 victory, one in which he hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the sixth inning to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead.
“He was just like we’d rather you be safe than hurt yourself,” Chisholm said. “A ball hit at you, you swallow it. That was basically all. Keep having fun. But be safe.”
Everyone was, naturally, all smiles after David Bednar’s four-out save nailed down a win that ended a three-game losing streak.
“He can have all the lollipops he wants now,” Boone said. “As long as he doesn’t take it out to second base.”
Chisholm heard plenty from the stands before the homer.
“They were screaming during the at-bat, like, ‘Where’s the lollipop at?’ ” Chisholm said, smiling.
After returning to the dugout, “egged” on by his teammates, Chisholm said, he held up the team’s large plastic jug of lollipops for the TV camera.
So just how big of a deal was it? Boone, in the end, is right: not an especially big one.
Other than the obviously bad optics of the Blow Pop stick protruding from Chisholm’s mouth, it hardly falls in the oh-but-think-of-the-children category.
As many have correctly pointed out, players have all sorts of things in their mouths during games, everything from bubble gum to sunflower seeds to nicotine pouches.
The idea pushed online and on talk shows that Chisholm’s sour apple lollipop could be a “distraction” in the Yankees’ clubhouse is laughable.
A real distraction looked like the final two months of the Yankees’ 2013 season.
While appealing a season-long suspension for 2014 by MLB because of PED use, Alex Rodriguez and his lawyer verbally sparred with executives Randy Levine and Brian Cashman by day before Rodriguez started at third base by night.
Even with the daily A-Rod media circus, the makeshift 2013 roster went 28-24 after his Aug. 5 return, finishing 85-77 and missing the playoffs.
Because, despite the narratives pushed from the outside, professional athletes are able to block out more than they’re given credit for.
Few major-league clubhouses would view Chisholm’s on-field candy habit as a distraction, especially not the Yankees’, where the 28-year-old remains popular.
No, in the end this was a victimless crime, though one that did cause a number of “what the hell was that” reactions behind the scenes organizationally. And if there was one victim, it was Chisholm.
Because the immensely talented infielder, one who last season became just the third Yankee to record a 30-30 season (30 homers, 30 stolen bases), already had an industrywide reputation for being on the immature side, a player who occasionally can, and does, lose focus.
Incidents like Monday’s only enhance that reputation. That, combined with Chisholm’s underwhelming 2026 to this point, isn’t the way to enter free agency, as the second baseman will after this season.
The Yankees were highly unlikely to bring Chisholm back on the kind of big-money deal he’ll be seeking on the market.
Indeed, it should be Chisholm (ticked) off more than anyone.
At himself.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
