Yankees GM Brian Cashman participates in Covenant House Sleepout NYC charity event for 15th year in row
It is something, Brian Cashman said, “I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”
The Yankees general manager spoke Thursday a couple of hours before doing something he’d done each of the previous 14 years at this time of year: spend the night sleeping on the street — or trying to — with a few layers of clothing, a ski cap and a sleeping bag between him and the typically icy winds of November.
And the concrete. Always the concrete.
“Even though you’re in a sleeping bag, you’re on the sidewalk. Cold concrete. And you feel it through the bag,” Cashman said.
This marked Cashman’s 15th straight year participating in the Covenant House Sleepout New York City. Covenant House is an NYC-headquartered charity that benefits homeless youth in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.
“It’s tough. I can’t imagine. This is one night, and I get to eventually get off that cinderblock and head home and shower and get a Starbucks and start my day and get some rest,” the 58-year-old Cashman said before testing out the concrete outside the Jacob Javits Center, site of this year’s Sleepout. “These kids on a day-in-and-day-out basis, week in and week out, month in and month out, they don’t know where they’re laying their head . . . I can’t imagine.”
Cashman, who has been the Yankees' GM since 1998, remembered well his first year participating in the event, a particularly frigid overnight Thursday in which the wind chill factor provided a real-feel temperature of about 30 degrees.
“That was freezing. That was the coldest night, that first night. I didn’t get a wink of sleep,” Cashman said of Nov. 17, 2011 — that night spent close to the Port Authority. “The wind, the cold weather . . . and that’s when I learned when they’re doing construction and stuff, they do it 24/7. They were building something nonstop all night. Not that I was going to sleep anyway, but it was loud and noisy. From that experience, I learned to cheat. The next year I came back and got a sleeping pill, which I have one tonight, too. That might get me two or three hours. Maybe. If I do get down [to sleep].”
Cashman became intimately involved in the charity about 1 1/2 decades ago because of Kevin Ryan, a close friend from the pair’s days at Catholic University (they lived on the same dorm floor). Ryan served as the president and CEO of Covenant House from 2009-23.
“These programs need a lot of money, and I think the world is getting tougher and tougher,” Cashman said. “So it’s so much more important than ever that Covenant House is strong and stays strong, so they can try and impact as many kids as they possibly can.”
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.
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