Just one day after a groin injury forced him out of the game against the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. returned to the field with a confession: he has never worn a protective cup in his professional career. And he never will.

“I’m not going to change,” Chisholm said before the Reds Series.

“I've never worn a cup. I've never got hit in the b****. That was just an unlucky instance right there. I’ve never had a reason to wear one. Now I have a reason to wear one — but that doesn’t mean I’m going to wear one,” he added.

The incident happened at the bottom of the fourth inning of the Yankees' eventual 5-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Thursday. With the score tied 1-1, Chisholm chopped a pitch straight down near home plate for a foul. The ball ricocheted off the ground and struck Chisholm's groin.

He dropped to the dirt in pain and stayed down for several minutes before Yankees manager Aaron Boone and trainer Tim Lentych came out to check on him.

When asked about the pain, Chisholm said: "A million. If you ever got hit in the t********, you’d know."

Despite that, he added, though cups are technically mandatory in the minor leagues, he never used them during his development years.

Hall of Fame third baseman Adrián Beltré also refused to wear a cup throughout his 21-year career. But in 2009, he was hit in the groin by a bad hop, causing internal bleeding. Beltré briefly wore a cup during recovery and never used one again in his entire career.

When Chisholm heard that, he said, “See, he trusts his hands. If you don’t trust your hands, I recommend you wear a cup. I feel like it’s more defensively that you would wear a cup than hitting. At the same time, I’ve just never thought about wearing a cup.”

Manager Aaron Boone's reaction to Chisholm's decision

Aaron Boone, who played 13 years in the majors as an infielder, felt it's a stark generational shift in player habits. He said that playing without a cup was unthinkable during his playing days.

"That’s the difference between this generation and my generation. I did nothing without a cup, baseball-related. The first time I heard Adrian Beltré didn't wear a cup at third, it blew my mind. But now, I know a lot of these guys don't wear cups," Boone said.

In his playing days, he said, every infielder wore a cup all the time, even for soft toss. He joked that they even prefer wearing one for team photo shoots.

"Literally, if we were going out for team pictures, and I was getting dressed, I’d be like, 'Hold on, I gotta put my cup on,'" he added. "So it's just that it's different now. They’re playing on some pretty nice fields."

So, Boone joked that he is not going around the clubhouse doing cup checks.

"Not my department,” he added, funnily.

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Written by

Md Saife Fida

Edited by

Yash Kotak