Meredith Marakovits

Robby Incmikoski: We’re not gonna go real deep with this here. Hey, so 20, I believe 10, was your first year with the Yankees? Is that right, or was it ’11?

Meredith Marakovits: 2012 was my first year. I covered them for radio a little bit in 2010 when I was with ESPN Radio. So in 2009, I covered the Phillies, so I was here covering the World Series at this ballpark when it opened. ’10, I went to radio. So I did a little bit—my first year was, yes, was 2012.

Robby Incmikoski: Was it 2012? Wow. Okay.

Meredith Marakovits: Yeah.

Robby Incmikoski: So it would be your thirteenth year with the Yankees. Yeah, ’cause I did eleven with the Pirates, plus twelve with the Twins, [I didn’t understand the previous, but that’s what was there. dn] within twenty-three with the Rangers.

Meredith Marakovits: Yes.

Robby Incmikoski: So yeah, okay. Just being the TV reporter for the New York Yankees, an international brand, what is that experience like? How do you put it into words?

Meredith Marakovits: It’s wild. As you know, I came from Philadelphia, and I felt kind of like—although considered a major city, it was a very small town when you talked about the downtown and how people knew each other and the neighborhood-y feel. And I don’t think I fully grasped the reach of the Yankees when I took this job. I mean, I understood. I knew about it, I knew how big the New York Yankees are—everybody knows the New York Yankees—but I don’t think I understood the breadth of it to the point where, as you know, I travel a lot in the offseason. Every time I travel to a different country, somebody comes up to me that’s a Yankees fan. To me, that’s wild—whether it be Australia, New Zealand (which is as far away pretty much as you can get), Italy, Spain, France—everywhere I’ve been, for the most part, somebody has come up to me: “Are you the girl that does the Yankees?” And half these people don’t even fully understand baseball, but they’ll watch it, they know the brand, they know a couple of the players. It’s really remarkable. So to sum it up, it is eye-opening. It is wild, and it’s pretty darn awesome.

Robby Incmikoski: Have any of them been to Yankee Stadium, do you know? Do they they talk about what it was like?

Meredith Marakovits: So this is kind of a wild story. In 2019, a friend of mine—we usually do a big trip every year—we decided to go to New Zealand. And while we’re in New Zealand, somebody slides into my DMs on Instagram, which usually I ignore, but this guy was like, “Hey, I see you’re in New Zealand. I’m the biggest Yankees fan in New Zealand. If you need any tips, let me know.” And I looked the guy up, and he happens to be the equivalent of what we would have over here—Secret Service—for their then prime minister, Jacinda. And his wife is a political correspondent in New Zealand. So I’m like, “Okay, they seem like cool people.” I happen to be passing through their town, and they said, “We would love to grab a drink or take you out to dinner. It’s not every day we have somebody from the Yankees here.” So I did. They were lovely; we’ve kind of kept in touch a little bit. He was supposed to come. The pandemic hit, so the family wasn’t gonna come here.

So this past year, I get a random message from him, and he said, “I’m finally coming to New York. I’m coming to Yankee Stadium—any chance I can like say hello or can bring you some manuka honey and some nice wine from Mudbrick, any of the above?” I’m like, “Absolutely!” So he came here for the first time, and he’s like, “It looks so different than it does on TV. To be here in person is remarkable.” I brought him in the TV booth. He’s like, “I can’t believe this is what we watch.” For them, it’s essentially morning baseball because of the time difference. “I can’t believe this is what I watch on a daily basis, and now I’m here, and now I’m experiencing it.” He got to meet Michael. He got to meet Paul O’Neill, who he was a huge, huge fan of, and he also caught a couple of home run balls out in the outfield. So for him, he’s like, “I couldn’t have written this script any better for me, seeing this place for the first time.”

Robby Incmikoski: And this is who again, just so Kyle, we have it for clarity. This is who?

Meredith Marakovits: So his name is Ian McKay, and he’s a fan from New Zealand who came to the stadium for the first time.

Robby Incmikoski: And he works for the Secret Service, the equivalent?

Meredith Marakovits: He was doing essentially private security for the government officials in New Zealand. Isn’t that wild?

Robby Incmikoski: That’s amazing—what a story. Yeah.

Meredith Marakovits: So it’s like, how do you explain the reach? I don’t know—how the hell do you explain that? It’s wild.

Robby Incmikoski: What is it like walking the concourses during the game? I know you don’t do it much, but I know you have in thirteen years. What is the experience walking through Yankee fans at that ballpark?

Meredith Marakovits: There’s so much passion, as there is at a lot of ballparks, but I know in the Northeast it’s just a little bit different. In New York, it’s just a little bit different, and they’re dialed in all the time. So it is interesting for me because this is my day-to-day—this is my job. I very much enjoy my job, but you forget that they’re letting you and the team into their living room essentially for however many months out of the year. You’re there every day. So when you’re walking through, it’s an interesting experience, to say the least. But you can feel the passion. You can feel the excitement, especially as we approach here the postseason. It’s just a different level. There’s a different noise factor, an edge they get here when it comes to postseason baseball.

Robby Incmikoski: How do you describe the vibe at the ballpark on a win versus a loss? Does it vary much? Does it vary by how big a win or how big a loss?

Meredith Marakovits: I mean, obviously, walk-off wins are going to be more exciting. There’s gonna be more interest late in the game from a crowd. But I think—it’s not like this everywhere. It certainly is like this in some places—but they understand the game, right? So if you have a pitcher that’s pitching a no-hitter, they’re living and dying with every pitch. If you have a hitter that’s about to hit for the cycle or something of that ilk, they know what’s going on. They’re not just necessarily casually watching the game for entertainment. They get all of the things surrounding the game coming into it—the storylines. They’re dialed in. So yeah, I think there’s an elevated level if something special is going on within the game, but it is, at the end of the day, entertainment, so people come here to have an enjoyable time. So when the Yankees are playing well, it’s loud, it’s exciting. When they’re not playing well, it gets a little quiet, it gets a little chippy, you know.

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah.

Meredith Marakovits: But I think it’s dependent on what’s happening on the field. And also, I’ve noticed over the years, it’s dependent on how the fan base thinks the team is going to be for the duration. Like, this year, they added Juan Soto, and that was such a lift. There was an excitement down in Tampa that there hasn’t been in quite some time, and that’s carried in throughout the regular season. I feel like the crowds have been better. The crowds have been more energetic; they’ve been in it since first pitch. It’s just they feel that this team has a legitimate chance to go the distance, and I kind of have felt that in the way that, essentially how loud they’ve been and how supportive they’ve been throughout the course of the season.

Robby Incmikoski: When you look at two teams in baseball that always have stars—the Dodgers and the Yankees—it’s always like that every year. What is it like? Do you almost get immune to “superstar, superstar, superstar, superstar ” every single day, seeing them at the clubhouse?

Meredith Marakovits: Yeah, I mean, I started covering this team—it was Derek, it was Mo, it was Andy Pettitte, those guys were—in ’10, Posada was still there. So that’s what you walk into—that’s the expectation. And while there have been some down years and there hasn’t been a World Series since 2009, the expectation remains the same: that they’re gonna put a quality product out there on the field. And one thing that major market teams understand, for the most part, stars sell. People want to see stars, people want to see elevated performances. So I think that’s been the norm here. I think here, you know, you look at a small-market team, and they might have one star, one star if they’re lucky. You look at the Kansas City Royals—Bobby Witt Jr., exciting, exhilarating player, right? Salvy Perez too, there’s others.

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah.

Meredith Marakovits: But you look at the Yankees, it’s not like, “Who’s their star?” It’s like, “How many do they have this year?” It’s a different kind of mentality. So yeah, I think you’re used to that, and you look at it and you’re like, “Why can’t they get this guy? Why can’t they add that guy?” Where maybe another team would be like, “Zero chance,” but with this team, you never truly know. There’s always that possibility of adding more and making that lineup more ridiculous or that rotation more ridiculous, where not every team has that luxury.

Robby Incmikoski: The Yankees are real big after twenty-seven world championships, they’re real big on honoring their history and honoring their past. What is that like, you know, when you have Monument Park and all the retired numbers? I mean, there are so few numbers left, relatively speaking, for the Yankees.

Meredith Marakovits: Yes.

Robby Incmikoski: What is that like, being part of a ballpark that honors history like the Yankees do?

Meredith Marakovits: Honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of covering this organization. You never know who you’re gonna see on a daily basis—whether it’s CC Sebathia, [? dn] who’s gonna be a Hall of Famer walking through the halls because he wanted to come to a game for the day, or Andy Pettitte, who’s now part of the coaching staff, who kind of comes and goes when it works with his schedule, working with the pitchers. You know, I sit in the Yankees’ clubhouse like right before the entrance to the dugout there, if they’re ahead and I’m going to do a postgame interview in that ninth inning.

Robby Incmikoski: Right.

Meredith Marakovits: I’ll walk down sometimes, and Andy’s just sitting there, and I’m like, “Andy, what’d you think today?” That’s pretty awesome.

And I think they extend that a bit further with Old-Timers’ Day, which is hands down one of my favorite days of the year. I think it connects people and connects generations, because you have grandparents that could bring their grandsons, and they can announce a name, and they can tell you why that person was special to them, what they accomplished. Not every organization has that thread that kind of weaves it all together, which to me is super, super cool. And even in spring training, taking it a little bit further, you have Ron Guidry down there all the time, you have Willie Randolph down there all the time, just around. These are guys that know a little something about winning.

Robby Incmikoski: Of course.

Meredith Marakovits: Just to talk to some of these current players. Look, times have changed. Baseball has changed a bit in a way, but at the end of the day, it’s still the same sport. So to have these sounding boards that have been here at the highest level in varying decades, it’s kind of cool for not only me to be able to interact with them, for fans to see them fairly consistently, and then for players to be able to use them as resources if they want to.

Robby Incmikoski: If a fan wants to go to Yankee Stadium and hasn’t been there yet, they say, “Meredith, what’s the experience like?” How would you answer that?

Meredith Marakovits: I think the experience, not only here but any ballpark, is truly what you make of it. If I were somebody coming to Yankee Stadium for the first time, one of the first things I would do is probably take the subway to get here and see kind of, the little stores around. There’s a couple of bars around that are popular—they’re always packed when there’s a game. There’s murals on some of the outside buildings that are kind of cool to take in. Then I walk to the corner—where Gate 4 is here—and you just have the stadium, the sign. To me, I walk in there every day—it is my home office technically—and I’m like, “Damn, pinch yourself. This is where you go to work every day. Not all that bad.”

Once you get in here, the things that you’ve already mentioned—there’s Monument Park, which is certainly worth checking out. If you like history at all or you like baseball at all, I think that’s one of the coolest things. Then a lot of people don’t know there’s actually a museum here. So the museum is on the second floor here of Yankee Stadium. The curator, Brian Richards, does a fantastic job, and you can see Thurman Munson’s locker and his gear that they took over from the old stadium and made a spot here to honor him in the new stadium, a statue of Yogi Berra behind the plate. There are jerseys from Mantle, to Ruth, to DiMaggio, to Gehrig, and a story to go along with every single piece of memorabilia. So if you’re a history buff, you’re a Yankees fan, you’re a baseball fan—walking through that (albeit not very big), but just walking through that and seeing the history is pretty remarkable. And I actually was able, you know, job perks, I was able to hold the bat the Babe Ruth hit his first Yankee home run with.

Robby Incmikoski: Wow.

Meredith Marakovits: That’s at the stadium, which is pretty gnarly. So there’s some cool stuff like that.

Robby Incmikoski: I held the Babe Ruth bat for his 199th homer when I was in Cooperstown, which is pretty cool.

Meredith Marakovits: Nice. I believe it was the first—I’d have to double check on that, but I’m almost positive.

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah. I’m sorry. What’s the guys name. Bryan what, you said?

Meredith Marakovits: His name is Brian Richards, and . . .

Robby Incmikoski: Can we [?] you think for the book? I would love to talk to him.

Meredith Marakovits: Yeah, let me see right now, before I forget.

Robby Incmikoski: I haven’t been there. Kyle, I don’t have pictures. I don’t think I’ve seen that. So I don’t think I have pictures. Kyle, do you have anything else for Meredith? I want to let her go in minimal time here. I kind of got what I needed, got some cool stories. That New Zealand story is gonna go in—that’s a great story.

Meredith Marakovits: Yeah, I mean sure, if you want to talk to him, I’m sure he would. I’ll give you his Instagram if you want.

Robby Incmikoski: Wow, that would be kind of neat. Okay, so Brian Richards. Okay, I’m curious. I don’t—look, we have time, but I’ve got to be pretty deliberate about doing these interviews. So I try to get five to seven a week and stay on schedule when I book them. So Edwin Jackson’s after you in thirty-nine minutes, so we get a lot of players, coaches, everybody . . .

Meredith Marakovits: Nice. When’s it gonna come out?

Robby Incmikoski: You do have anything, Kyle? Are you good?

Kyle Fager: Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

Robby Incmikoski: Okay, you can stop recording. I have . . .