Aaron Judge And Other Unvaccinated Yankees & Mets Get Huge Update From NYC

Just two days after New York City Mayor Eric Adams told the city's sports teams to be patient with the vaccine mandates, that he could not give them special treatment, he.... apparently is giving them special treatment. Adams announced today that he is exempting athletes and performers only from the private-sector mandate, and now unvaccinated New York Yankees (i.e. Aaron Judge and a handful of others), and several New York Mets will now be allowed to "work in their place of business" — i.e. to play home games.

The back page: SAFE AT HOME https://t.co/dRt441bfpA pic.twitter.com/WlQ8jRRqHa
— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) March 24, 2022

Adams signed an executive emergency order that expands exemptions from the private sector vaccine mandate specifically for performers and athletes that will allow the city's unvaccinated players to participate in their home games, just two weeks before baseball's Opening Day. It also, of course, affects Kyrie Irving of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, who has been infamously staunch in his anti-vax stance and has missed all but 19 of the Nets' 70 games this season.

It appears that the pressure the Yankees and the Mets organizations, along with baseball in general, put on the Mayor's Office over the last week were too much to bear, and Adams relented.

So what did we learn today boys & girls? It's easier to enforce rules when they don't affect the Yankees. Kyrie Irving gets his wish but the timing of New York changing its private sector vaccine mandate aligns less with science & more Aaron Judge smacking dingers out of the park
— Michael Lee (@MrMichaelLee) March 23, 2022

The Yankees, however, still do face playing without their unvaxxed players for games in Toronto (as do the Boston Red Sox, and every other team), where a quarantine cross-border law still is in place for unvaccinated people entering the country of Canada. All teams across the league face the prospect of being short a few players for those games against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

Photo Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports