“Well, I didn’t have a ton of success in Colorado,” he conceded. “If anybody has a chance to rewind and get a do-over and see what was going to happen, would we make those decisions? I felt I made my decision based on the right things for my family at the time.”

Winning, Hampton added, is what he missed most after leaving New York.

“If I could do it all over again, shoot, I’d have probably picked the Cardinals,” he said. “They won a couple World Series. I had so many teams I could have gone to that won the World Series, and that was what it was all about. There’d have been a lot of different choices. I had 15 teams that were making offers. If I could rewind and pick my teams, I’d pick the ones that won the most World Series.”

Lessons From Gibson

Drew Storen reached the major leagues in 2010, less than a year after the Washington Nationals chose him 10th over all in the draft. In the culture of baseball, though, Storen’s potential counted less than another player’s service time. A four-year veteran, Doug Slaten, was wearing the number Storen wanted. He knew he would have to wait his turn.

After an off-season trade to the Toronto Blue Jays, who host the Yankees for three games this week, Storen can finally wear his favorite number: 45, in honor of Bob Gibson, the Hall of Fame starter for the St. Louis Cardinals. Storen is a reliever, but the lessons he learned from Gibson have never left.

“When I was 9, my dad emceed a charity event and Bob Gibson was the speaker,” said Storen, the son of Mark Patrick, a longtime sportscaster. “Afterward, we got to sit down and have dinner with him, and just talking about pitching and how much he hated hitters and wanted to embarrass them, make them look bad — it clicked. I was like, wow, that’s awesome, that’s exactly how I feel playing in the front yard.”

Storen has applied that mentality to his pitching ever since, from dipping and darting foam baseballs that confounded his neighbors to the fastballs, sliders and changeups that have made him a mainstay in the majors.