Luke Weaver has always been this way.
Just ask Michael DeGirolmo, who filled a big brother-type role when the Yankees’ highly important, extremely quotable and downright silly reliever attended DeLand High School near Daytona Beach, Fla. The vice principal at the time, DeGirolmo frequently golf-carted Weaver around the school’s campus.
Weaver has never been able to live down one particular ride on a windy day, which exposed an unfamiliar pattern on DeGirolmo’s ankle.
“Luke reaches down and grabs my leg and pulls my pant leg up,” DeGirolmo recalled. “So I just stopped the golf cart. I go, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”
The way DeGirolmo tells it, Weaver had never seen argyle socks like the ones he wore that day.
“I said, ‘Luke, don’t ever touch a grown man’s leg like that,’” DeGirolmo continued. “’There’s no good reason for you to touch my damn leg like that ever again.’”
Weaver’s recollection is slightly different.
“I noticed he had some funny graphic socks with clowns or dogs or umbrellas, I don’t know,” the righty said. “I just literally reached down and barely brushed the bottom of his pants, just to try and see what it was. And he overreacted and made it a big deal.
“Now it’s this ongoing joke about trying to pull on his pants or whatever. It’s literally nothing, but this guy just thinks it’s hilarious.”
Weaver knows what he’s talking about when it comes to comedy.
Always colorful and sometimes scatterbrained in front of recorders and cameras, Weaver’s wacky words and dry sense of humor have made him a must-listen for fans, reporters and teammates alike. He has attributed an uptick in velocity to drinking “local orange juice” with “a little bit of pulp.” He’s likened getting out of a big jam to “when you see the ice cream truck and your parents say ‘yes,’ and then you just kind of black out, and the next thing you know, there’s none left in your cup or your cone.”
Asked for a scouting report on himself, he once replied, “I’m not as tough as I look,” though he also labeled himself a “silent assassin.” He’s channeled Michael Scott, stating, “I’m not superstitious, I’m just a little stitious,” has repeatedly described himself as “wiry,” and admitted that he’s not quite sure what “inkling” means. Weaver has also blamed his kids for fewer hours spent bird watching, described a kip up as “a ninja move,” and said his non-baseball goal for 2025 is “to have more swag.” He also exits the bullpen to the tune of “The Imperial March” from Star Wars and Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver.”
“He’s a little quirky,” said former Yankee Tommy Kahnle, an expert on eccentric behavior.
Video courtesy: YES Network
While teammates regularly tune into Weaver’s postgame interviews, one “Weaverism” stands out among past and present peers.
“I think everybody heard about the jungle cat one,” said ex-Yankees closer Clay Holmes.
Holmes meant Weaver’s interview with the YES Network’s Meredith Marakovits as the Yankees celebrated their advancement to the ALCS last October. During it, Weaver said a “ferocious jungle cat just comes out in me” when on the mound.
Asked to explain that quote, Weaver said, “It was high intensity in the room. It was hard to hear. I was really amped up, and the word ‘ferocious’ came to mind. And when that came to mind, I was like, ‘jungle.’ What works after that? ‘Cat.’ It all just came in a millisecond. I look back, I’m like, ‘Oh wow, this really took off.’ But I was really just regurgitating words.”
As Weaver alluded to, the quote went viral. Some, however, playfully pushed back against his description.
“Maybe [he’s] closer to a lynx,” bullpen coach Mike Harkey said. “But he does have the heart of a lion.”
Told of Harkey’s assessment, Weaver said he’s “on the fence.”
“I feel like a lynx is still a good, strong animal,” he said. “Kahnle told me that he thought I’m more of a cheetah, which I could get more on board with. I’m a big fan of the cheetah in general. The lynx, I gotta do a little bit more research on.
“Maybe we just play at the zoo a little bit.”
With so many laughers in such a short time with the Yankees — the 2025 season is set to be Weaver’s second full season with the team — it’s fair to wonder if the 31-year-old journeyman is trying to be funny.
He insists he’s not. As was the case with his “jungle cat” quote, Weaver contended that most of what he says is spontaneous, though teammates have heard him repeat things on camera that were originally said in the bullpen or clubhouse.
“I truthfully don’t try to be funny in an interview,” said Weaver, who claimed he wasn’t a class clown growing up. “I mean, sometimes you’re feeling a little good and you might feel like there’s an opportunity to be yourself. For me, personally, it’s always off the cuff when someone asks a question. My brain kind of works in a way where it goes to a creative side.
“I guess the best way to put it is if I’m acting in a movie, I would be better improvising than I would be reading the script. If it’s premeditated, it’s a lot harder for me to read lines and try to crush that. If I just kind of go on the spot and let it eat, then we just hope that it comes out right, and then we just improvise from there.”
Believe it or not, Weaver limited his imaginative instincts when he first joined the Yankees at the end of the 2023 season. Kahnle even described him as “quiet” at first.
In retrospect, Holmes said Weaver probably didn’t want to “come on too strong, too fast.”
“It’s always a slippery slope,” said Weaver, an unsuccessful starter and journeyman before joining the Yankees. “You’re always gonna be yourself, but it’s kind of like opening the jar and really letting the aroma stink up the room. Sometimes you just gotta stay in your lane, feel things out.”
Clarke Schmidt never got the impression that Weaver held back, though.
He remembers several Yankees chilling in Aaron Judge’s Pittsburgh hotel room in 2023 shortly after Weaver joined the team. Judge and Weaver were teammates in the Cape Cod League, and so the latter joined the hangout.
“I just remember leaving that like, ‘Oh, wow. This guy’s out there,’ but in a good way!” Schmidt said. “It was all good things. He’s awkward, but he embraces it, so it’s good.”
While Schmidt found himself taken aback that night, Weaver said that 2024 spring training served as his true “coming out party,” personality-wise and on the mound.
Freshly signed to a new deal and assured a spot on the major league roster, he no longer felt restricted when it came to dad jokes, terrible puns and generally being a goofball.
During spring training last year, Weaver remembers former Yankee Nick Ramirez telling him, “If I knew you were this funny early on, I would have liked you more.’”
With Weaver fully out of his shell — and in the midst of the best season of his career — the Yankees’ social media accounts began posting plenty of content featuring the reliever in 2024. This spring, the club produced a video titled “Weav’s World,” a six-minute segment hosted by Weaver himself.
The clip featured Weaver interviewing teammates, posing for kooky photos, rapping and lots of weirdness.
Welcome to Weav’s World. pic.twitter.com/wnwkFp9uTP
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) February 19, 2025
The Yankees’ video was actually a callback to a similarly-awkward video Weaver filmed at Florida State over a decade ago. Even back then, the former first-round pick had an affinity for big cats, sharing that he would be a leopard if he could be any animal.
“He doesn’t try to be somebody else,” said Mike Bell, Weaver’s pitching coach at Florida State. “He’s very free spirited. He is loosey-goosey, but when he has to lock things in, he has the ability to flip that switch. He’s no different right now than what he was back in college.”
DeGirolmo, now DeLand’s principal, agreed wholeheartedly.
He and Weaver text all the time, and DeGirolmo’s son, Leonard, grew close with the pitcher and even wore his number at DeLand.
DeGirolmo still busts Weaver’s chops about the golf cart incident, telling the story any chance he gets. He promised to get Weaver his own pair of argyle socks that day, though he never did.
That just adds to the running joke.
“I’ve made fun of him a lot through the years,” DeGirolmo said. “He hasn’t changed a bit.”
