28 minutes with … Nasty Nestor

The pitcher has become an unlikely star for the Yankees. He’s just happy to be here.

- By Ross Barkan

On a muggy afternoon at the ragged end of July, Nestor Cortés Jr., the mustachioed, heavily tattooed left-hander for the New York Yankees, was pouncing off the mound to field ground balls and fire them to first base. The night before, the Yankees had won on a walk-off home run from Aaron Judge, their six-foot-seven, 282-pound juggernaut and the front-runner for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Not since Derek Jeter have the Yankees enjoyed such a captivating superstar. But the 27-year-old Cortés, built at the human scale of five-foot-11, has emerged as a star in his own right, quietly capturing the hearts of the Yankee faithful as the team tries to win its first World Series title in 13 years.

For most professional athletes, there’s a time, usually in late childhood or adolescence, when they realize they are superior. The other kids can’t hurl a ball as far or tackle as hard, and high-school competition melts away. Scouts arrive in droves to herald a bright, limitless future. For Cortés, such a moment never came. “I was a 36th-rounder out of high school, throwing 87, 88,” he told me in the Yankee dugout, fresh off his rigorous stretching-and-throwing routine. “I didn’t know how long my career was going to be. I would’ve been happy with a two-, three-, four-year minor-league career.”