Sayville's Logan O'Hoppe at home on LI, at Yankee Stadium and with Angels
Logan O'Hoppe of the Los Angeles Angels grounds out during the second inning against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Monday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Making it in the big leagues presents a slew of challenges, but those who do will often talk about the ability to “simplify things.”
That can manifest itself in a variety of ways.
One of those for Sayville’s Logan O’Hoppe, the Angels catcher who went to St. John the Baptist High School, is how he handles returning home.
The 25-year-old had a small Long Island village’s population in attendance at the Stadium the first time he donned a major-league uniform in it in 2023 and a similar throng when he returned in 2024 (he approximated then the number was in excess of 350).
This four-game series?
O’Hoppe, who started at catcher Tuesday night and batted sixth (1-for-4 with a double and run scored), secured tickets for just his parents, Michael and Angela, his uncle Frank, and his girlfriend, Casey Bare.
“It’s a cool place to come back to, obviously, it’s always so surreal,” said O’Hoppe, who grew up a Yankees fan and estimated he attended “a lot” of games at this iteration of Yankee Stadium, which opened in 2009. “I feel like this year it’s been much more of a normal road trip than it has been in the past. I feel like the games here in the past have been its own event or production, so it feels good to make it a little more normal. I say that humbly, but it is nice to focus on baseball.”
The unfailingly polite O’Hoppe referred to his first time in 2023 at the Stadium as a “mess,” with the trip slightly more “organized” in 2024.
It’s not a complaint. Just an acknowledgment of the obvious distraction involved with so many people wanting a piece of him.
“You had to do the dance and leave the tickets and see people after games,” O’Hoppe said. “It was more than just the game itself. Happy that’s subsided since the start of my career . . . I don’t mean a mess in a bad way, but it was a lot to navigate.”
The Angels finished their series in Baltimore on Sunday afternoon and O’Hoppe drove back to his childhood home in Sayville and spent that night and Monday night there before deciding to stay at the team hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It took like two hours to get in,” O’Hoppe said with a smile. “I love being home but not enough to drive two hours back and forth.”
O’Hoppe, whom Yankees manager Aaron Boone said was “turning into one of the premier offensive catchers in the game” when his team was in Anaheim three weeks ago, said playing at the Stadium is becoming just another stop in the 162-game regular-season journey.
“The first time I came here, I remember picturing what I looked like in every seat I sat in when I was here [as a fan], and that was a cool perspective,” O’Hoppe said. “This year is really different, to be honest with you. It feels more like a normal game.”
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.
