Orioles slumper KO’s Yankees after my encounter with his mom: ‘I really needed to hear that’

BALTIMORE — Before a seven-block walk up Pratt Street toward Oriole Park, I found the perfect lunch right next to my downtown Baltimore hotel: a Chick-fil-A No. 1 combo with fries, no pickles. A free refill on the lemonade couldn’t go to waste, so I headed back to my hotel, up to the 12th floor, and dropped it into the mini-fridge for a late-night treat.

While heading back to the elevator, I heard the elevator doors beeping as they opened, so I hustled there and just made it in after sticking a hand between the closing doors.

Three women were inside. They were together and in town for the Yankees-Orioles series, as I would soon find out.

The woman in the middle spoke up with a surprising question:

“You a cop?”

A cop?

She pointed to my chest. My BBWAA card was dangling from a lanyard that circled my neck.

“No, I’m a baseball writer. I’m a Yankees writer in town for games this week against the Orioles.”

She nodded and softly added, “Please go easy on my son. He’s really struggling. I’m Coby Mayo’s mom.”

I didn’t tell Mother Mayo that her son’s name had come up three hours earlier.

While Uber driver Kenneth was driving me from Baltimore Penn Station to my hotel and dropping F-bombs about his last-place Orioles, Mayo was his biggest target.

Who knew, hours after my chance encounter with Mayo’s mother, that her late-night ride up the hotel elevator would be filled with pride and joy?

Through six innings Monday night, the Yankees were leading 2-0 with pitcher Ryan Weathers working on a no-hitter. In the seventh, after Weathers was replaced following a single hit, a groundout and a walk, Mayo hit a three-run homer off lefty reliever Brent Headrick to put the Orioles ahead, and they went on to win 3-2.

A managerial decision by Aaron Boone made the Mayo homer possible. By opting to replace Weathers with right-hander Jake Bird instead of Headrick, the Yankees got the matchup they wanted.

“I know if go Bird there, they’re going to flip to the lefty (pinch-hitter), Boone said. ”You’ve got a guy that’s been struggling on that (right) side and I just liked that matchup. (Headrick) hung a slider and Mayo put a good swing on it."

Orioles fans have been hoping Mayo would turn into their version of Aaron Judge. He’s a 6-foot-5 slugger who batted .290 with 29 homers in 140 Double-A and Triple-A games in 2023, then he hit 25 more homers over 93 Triple-A games while batting .293 the next season.

As a big leaguer, however, Mayo has mostly been a disappointment. He went into this week’s Yankees series hitting .158 with three homers in 101 at-bats. Also, the Orioles lost on a walk-off error last Thursday in Miami after he made a throwing error with two outs in the ninth inning.

These woes followed Mayo’s underwhelming cup of coffee with the O’s in 2024 — .098 with no homers in 46 plate appearances — and then a .217 average with 11 homers and 84 strikeouts over 263 at-bats in 2025, his rookie season.

“That Coby Mayo was supposed to be great and all he does is strike out and make errors,” Kenneth, the Uber driver, vented. “He just cost us a game. He’s no good!”

I wonder if the Uber driver would have been more compassionate if he had known what Mayo had lived through.

The Parkland, Florida, native was a sophomore at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the mass shooting on Feb. 14, 2018. He was inside the school when 17 students and staff members were killed and 17 others were injured after a 19-year-old former student opened fire with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle.

“It’s something that’s happened, and you try to move on a little bit,” Mayo told the Virginian Pilot in 2023. “But there’s always going to be a piece of you that’s still with that.”

By the way, no, I didn’t tell Mother Mayo what the Uber driver said about her son.

Instead, I gave her a little pep talk during the short elevator ride to the lobby.

Echoing comments that I hear all the time from Yankees manager Aaron Boone, I told her, “Baseball is a long season. It’s 162 games. Every player has a few weeks like your son, even the superstars. Just have faith that he’s in the big leagues for a reason and he’ll hit his way out of it.”

Hearing that message from a Yankees writer made Mayo’s mom smile.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “I really needed to hear that today.”

After his game-winning homer, Coby credited his family, his girlfriend and especially his dog, a Golden Retriever named Fin, for helping him cope with his recent on-field struggles.

“The dog doesn’t know I made an error,” he said. “He doesn’t know I struck out four straight at-bats or whatever it was. This game does a lot to the mentals and can have a lot on our minds going to sleep at night, putting our heads on the pillow.

“As much as guys want to flush it, sometimes it’s tough to when you leave the field. So I think sometimes you need people in your corner. My dog loves me, so it doesn’t matter what happens. He’s always going to be there for me.”

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RANDY MILLER

His mom is there, too.

For a few seconds, I saw it and heard it.

By the time I returned to the same elevator where we met on Monday afternoon, I felt bad for Weathers, who received a no-decision for a tremendous pitching effort. I also felt some happiness for Coby Mayo, whose name was in my head all day and night.

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