David Cone left it up to your imagination and Paul O’Neill apparently knew the cheeky response that his colleague and ex-teammate withheld.
Monday’s YES Network’s broadcast took a slight detour when Cone noticed Blue Jays outfielder’s Yohendrick Pinango neck tattoo of a pair of red lips and said how he wished he has the same ink.
“I wouldn’t put it on my neck,” he said, which elicited quite the chuckle from O’Neill as one can think of all the places the former pitcher may prefer to have a set of lips.
The laughter even had Cone realizing where O’Neill had taken it.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
While the world will not know where exactly Cone would like that tattoo, it created a bizarre moment during the seventh inning of the Yankees’ eventual 7-6 come-from-behind win over the rival Blue Jays.
Pinango batted with a man on first and no outs when Cone noticed the tattoo on the left side of the outfielder’s neck.
“Has he got lips on his neck? Is that what it is?” Cone asked.
O’Neill followed: “I was gonna say, either mom gave him a big kiss or he’s got a tattoo.”
“That’s pretty good, I like that,” Cone responded. “I want one. I want to get one of those.”
That led to Cone remarking how he’d place it elsewhere and O’Nell’s reaction, and play-by-play man Michael Kay then noticed the awkwardness of the back-and-forth.
“Sometimes silence is my best option…” Kay said.
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Cone retorted: “The booth goes silent on you, you know it…”
O’Neill proceeded to get in a one more jab Cone, who he played alongside for five years from 1996-2000 before they became broadcast colleagues.
“I hit the mute point, Conie, don’t worry, I don’t even know what you said,” he said. “It went right by me.”
The notable tattoo has a backstory, although it’s not as scandalous as perhaps one may envision.
“When you’re young, you do things,” Pinango told Sportsnet. “I liked it, so I did it.”
