College football has already made its way into Yankee Stadium, with postseason games played in the MLB ballpark the past few years and more on tap in the future. Now, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner is getting set to square off against the team that calls the Bronx stadium home.
Tuesday afternoon, Jameis Winston and his Florida State baseball teammates will face the New York Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. In his football “down time,” the Seminoles quarterback serves as a designated hitter as well as closer for the undefeated and second-ranked FSU stick-and-ball team.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, manager Mike Martin stated that every player on his squad will take the field against the Yankees in the exhibition game, including Winston.
“It will be exciting, the fact that it will be Derek Jeter‘s first game in the year that he retires,” Martin told the Sentinel‘s Brendan Sonnone. “It will be a memory. It will be something that our guys will have a different kind of emotion. The emotion this time will be for the fact that they’re playing one of the most storied baseball franchises in all of baseball history.
“You’ll look over there and see the pinstripes and think of your youth. They may not be thinking about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, like I will, but they’ll be thinking about Derek Jeter … guys that they saw growing up.”
Unfortunately for those Seminoles who grew up idolizing the soon-to-be-retired Jeter, the shortstop will not play in today’s game.
The game against the Yankees will be Seminoles’ 13th against a MLB team, with the paper writing that “FSU is 1-11 all-time against professional team, most recently meeting the Philadelphia Phillies once a year from 2010-12. The Seminoles and Yankees have played before, in 1979 and 1985.”
And, as it turns out, Winston won’t be the only member of Florida State’s BCS-winning football team who’ll have a role in this afternoon’s baseball game.
Coach FIsher will be throwing out the first pitch today when the #Noles face the @Yankees in #Tampa.
— FSU Baseball (@FSUBaseball) February 25, 2014