It’s more than just a homecoming for Logan O’Hoppe as Angels open series at Yankee Stadium
NEW YORK — Logan O’Hoppe will have a number of friends and family at Yankee Stadium watching him play the next few games against the Yankees. The O’Hoppe family contingent has one seat they purchased but intentionally left vacant for Tuesday’s game.
It’s for Logan’s Aunt Dana, who was not a blood relative but a close friend of the O’Hoppes, who died in 2015 from lung cancer. An important person in Logan’s life, Aunt Dana was also one of his biggest supporters and cheerleaders of his pursuit of a career as a baseball player.
“Coming here, it’s different,” O’Hoppe said before the Angels’ 5-2 victory over the Yankees on Tuesday. “You play for Aunt Dana … you play for everybody that you’ve loved and that’s touched you and the people that are still here with us. You play for them too. It’ll be a special time.”
Playing at Yankee Stadium represents a homecoming of sorts for O’Hoppe. The rookie catcher from Sayville, which is on Long Island, grew up a Yankees fan. Thinking about Aunt Dana before Tuesday’s game, he got choked up.
“I don’t even know where to start. She was around my whole childhood and she’d be proud,” O’Hoppe said. “[She’d tell me] to get it done and to do it knowing that she was right by my side the whole time.
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“The way she lived her life, I’m kind of on the spot and lost for words, but [her life] is the perfect [example] for how anyone should go about life: Do it their own way, do it the right way and not really care who says anything otherwise.”
Dana was the best friend of Logan’s mom, Angela O’Hoppe. Last year, when Logan got his first call-up, Angela told the Los Angeles Times one of the last messages Aunt Dana gave Logan:
“She told Logan from the hospital bed, and he was only 15, she said, ‘My superstar nephew. You have all the tools to make it. And I will be watching from heaven. My nephew, starting catcher.”
Aunt Dana’s memory was part of that moment of O’Hoppe’s career as well. Angela carried her prayer card in her pocket that game back in September 2022.
Logan’s baseball career had been a metaphorical emotional buoy for the O’Hoppe family, which had dealt with recent loss and personal hardship leading up to his debut.
“Baseball is great, but this is so much more than baseball,” Angela added last year, reflecting on the more than a dozen people who flew out on short notice to see Logan’s debut in Anaheim. “Life is tough. And this baseball buoy I like to call it — my husband went through cancer last year and my dad passed away, and this was the baseball buoy that got us through.
“It’s just more than baseball. It’s a tool that Logan has been given to connect with people and build relationships to just leave this place a little bit better than how he found it.”
O’Hoppe’s career has continued to include so much more success since that first call-up: getting the starting catching job out of spring training, leading the Angels in home runs this season (four) and having the second-most RBIs (11) on the team, among his notables for this year.
On Tuesday, O’Hoppe went one for three with a walk during the Angels’ win over the Yankees. Shohei Ohtani knocked a two-run home run — his fourth of the season — into the Yankees bullpen in the first inning, scoring another run in the fifth inning on Anthony Rendon’s sac fly.
Walking into Yankee Stadium was a surreal feeling for O’Hoppe.
A long rain delay shortened Shohei Ohtani’s start and Hunter Renfroe hit a three-run homer in the Angels’ 5-4 win over the Boston Red Sox on Monday.
“It was a pretty cool moment, I took some time to take it all in,” O’Hoppe said. “We had early work, so I was at the plate by myself and I took a couple of seconds.”
A clip of the young player as a fan in the Yankee Stadium stands that went viral a few years ago resurfaced while the team was in Boston last week. In the clip from 2018, O’Hoppe catches a home run hit by former Baltimore Orioles’ Manny Machado, then throws the ball back onto the field.
“I was 17,” O’Hoppe recalled. “I remember not being able to watch the rest of the game because it was the first time my phone was blowing up for anything.”
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