In the summer of 2023, as the Yankee Stadium crowd erupted in applause after Anthony Volpe’s brilliant play at shortstop, a camera caught him looking up at the sky, clutching a small string under his jersey.
The fine wire, Volpe tells it, was not a piece of jewelry, but a place to keep a small piece of silver music – the last gift his grandfather left him before he passed away. But what makes this story truly different is a letter… never sent.
“I wrote it the night before he died. But I didn’t have enough weapons to hand it to him. When he died, I stretched my fighting arm and promised myself… I would carry him with me, for the rest of my life.”
That’s what Volpe shared in a recent private interview with The Athletic.
Love from the Afternoons in the Backyard
Volpe says that, in his early elementary school years, his grandfather would pick him up every afternoon and the two of them would go to the back yard to play football – not to practice their skills, but just to… talk.
“He didn’t teach me how to hit a home run. He taught me how to stand up when I lost, how to say thank you after every failure,” Volpe recalls. “He used to say, ‘A good player is one who knows how to lose well.’”
Volpe never got to show off his Yankees No. 11 jersey to his grandfather. The frail old man died of cancer exactly a month before Volpe was called up to the starting lineup.
But what struck many on the team was how Volpe remained faithful to his grandfather’s presence—even after he was gone.
The Unanswered Promise
The letter—which Volpe kept in a locked locker at Yankee Stadium—was written in pencil, his handwriting crooked from tears. A passage has been revealed:
“Grandpa, if you weren’t here tomorrow, I would still play like you were in the stands… I would run faster, hit harder, and always look up to you, up in the sky.”
Volpe never made the full contents of the letter public. He said:
“It was a private conversation between me and my grandfather. But I think anyone who has ever lost a loved one will understand the feeling – when you just want one more day, just one more day, to say goodbye.”
On the field, as a player. Off the field, as a forever-young nephew
Volpe’s teammate – Aaron Judge – once shared:
“Volpe may be the youngest player on the team, but he plays with an unbelievable maturity. Maybe because he is playing not only for himself but also for someone who is always in his heart.”
Rest assured, in an away match in Boston, when Volpe scored a solo comeback, instead of celebrating with his teammates, he just stood still for a few seconds, put his hand on the rope and whispered something. No one knew, but the cameraman clearly saw his lips move two words: “Thank you, Grandpa.”
In an age where sports sometimes become a stage for fame and fortune, Anthony Volpe reminds us that sometimes the most powerful force comes from love – not loud, not noisy – but quiet as a letter that is never sent, but lives on beyond the time of its writer.
Volpe is still making his mark in MLB, but for him, his greatest triumphs came long ago – in the backyard sunsets where his grandfather taught him how to throw first pitch… and how to be a good person.