Yankees Host Team Ping Pong Tournament as Team Building Exercise

Every Spring Training each Major Leaguer returns to playing competitive baseball. These players always either join new teams, or are surrounded by new players. As the players start to get back into regular season form, they also reunite or get used to their teammates. Besides training and playing baseball, there might not be a better way to become closer as a team than ping pong. Not only is a friendly tournament a good way for players to stay active, but ping pong also does not strain the players physically all that much. Many teams across baseball are having similar team building exercises; various Major Leaguers compete against each other in video games such as Fortnite in their own free time, but overall, many clubs elect to have ping pong tournaments as an entire group.

64 Yankee Spring Training invitees, coaches, players, and front office personnel participated in the ping pong tournament last Friday. Some interesting matches include Aroldis Chapman versus Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge versus Chris Iannetta, and Giancarlo Stanton versus Tommy Kahnle. It is especially fun to imagine how hard Chapman’s spike must be, considering that he holds the record for the hardest fastball recorded in MLB history (105.1 MPH). Kyle Holder, the Yankees first-round pick in 2015, ended up winning the championship game against former Indians reliever and non-roster invitee, Dan Otero.

Credit: New York Yankees. All rights reserved.