Best friends, Giants-A’s rivals Mike Yastrzemski and Tony Kemp start a new tradition

The field at the Oakland Coliseum had all but cleared. The Giants had beaten the A’s in the penultimate Bay Bridge series game. But two players from opposite dugouts stayed.

Mike Yastrzemski and Tony Kemp, still in full uniform, met at the first base line holding their baby girls, dressed in onesies to match their dads. They held them up in the air and posed for a photograph. They’ll hope to recreate this photo for years to come.

Life always seems to bring these two longtime friends together, from the dorms at Vanderbilt to the minor league grind to Bay Area baseball to parenthood. So this new tradition felt natural.

“We’ve known each other for 10 years now and we live down the street from each other,” said Yastrzemski, who turned 32 on Tuesday. “We’re super close. Being able to play against someone like that in the big leagues is so rare. To be able to share that experience and share the field with our families that are growing is so cool. We had to take advantage of it.”

“It’s a lifelong relationship and friendship,” the 30-year-old Kemp said. “It’s gotten stronger over the years.”

The group photo celebrates the latest stop they’ve taken together: Parenthood, almost simultaneously. Yastrzemski and his wife, Paige, had daughter Quinle on Dec. 3, 2021. Just three weeks later, Dec. 27, Kemp and his wife, Michelle, became parents to daughter McKenna.

Both families spend the offseason in Nashville, where they each live just blocks away from each other and spend nearly every day together training by day and sitting by a bonfire or playing Settlers of Catan by night. One night last year, Mike and a newly pregnant Paige went to the Kemp house for dinner with a tricky plan to reveal the pregnancy news.

“My wife didn’t want me to do it,” Yastrzemski said.

When Kemp offered Paige an alcoholic drink, Mike laid into his old friend — as planned.

“Bro, that’s messed up,” Yastrzemski said to Kemp.

“What’s messed up?”

“Why are you trying to give a drink to a pregnant lady?”

Both couples erupted, but the trick had a twist.

“We’re pregnant, too!” The Kemps said back as Michelle pulled out an ultrasound photo from her pocket.

That the longtime friends would experience parenthood together came as a shock to them, but it should have been no surprise. Kemp and Yastrzemski always seem to be walking parallel paths.

They became nearly inseparable as roommates at Vanderbilt University, where the two played for the Commodores. But their bond began when Kemp visited Vandy for a recruiting trip. He “talked a big game,” Yastrzemski said, with a kind of outward confidence that drew in his new friend.

“I remember in an article he said he de-committed from where his brother went to college because he wanted to write the Tony Kemp story,” Yastrzemski said. “He referred to himself in the third person and we wore him out about that. He was just so energetic, and that was something I wasn’t used to yet. Then we became best friends. It’s a contagious attitude and he makes life a lot more fun.”

Yastrzemski’s reserved state was a contrast from Kemp’s extroversion, but Kemp was drawn to his teammate’s warmth.

“He can come off a little bit more straight edge, but that’s to the outside world,” Kemp said. “He’s a teddy bear. He cares about everyone.”

Together, they bonded over competition. They’d go head-to-head in the batting cages for hours, each trying to hit a ball through holes in the surrounding nets.

“If he got a hit, I wanted to get a hit. But we were all rooting for each other,” Kemp said.

Back home, they’d battle on the Nintendo 64 playing Super Smash Bros., NFL Blitz and the NHL franchise.

“We always leveled up on each other and always competed with each other,” Kemp said. To this day they remember who bested the other at their favorite games.

“I was better at Blitz,” Kemp said. “He had me in NHL.”

Yastrzemski remembers it a little differently.

“I’m definitely better at NHL,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s the best at Blitz. That might be a stretch. He probably won a few more games.”

On the field, both Kemp and Yastrzemski shined within a stacked Vanderbilt roster that in 2013 featured plenty of future big leaguers such as Dansby Swanson and Walker Beuhler. The inseparable roommates would be pulled to two different parts of the country in the MLB draft: Yastrzemski to the Baltimore Orioles in the 14th round and, a year later, Kemp to the Houston Astros in the fifth round.

Kemp’s path to MLB was a little more straightforward than Yastrzemski’s. He made his debut with the Astros in 2016 at age 24 and had a championship ring by 26. Yastrzemski battled injuries and toiled in the Orioles’ minor league system. But the two kept a close eye on each other, texting about their troubles and cheering for each other’s success from afar. They wondered if they’d ever cross paths again on the field.

“I felt like the Orioles organization didn’t really value him quite as he should have been,” Kemp said. “It’s how baseball works sometimes.”

Fate brought them together again in 2019, when the Giants traded pitcher Tyler Herb for Yastrzemski in a move that hardly shook ground. But Yastrzemski’s 1.090 OPS and 12 home runs in 40 games made a quick impression with the Sacramento River Cats.

“I remember calling him like, ‘You gotta be close,’” Kemp said.

Days after the Giants called up a 28-year-old Yastrzemski, he hit his first MLB home run against the Orioles at Camden Yards on May 31. Kismet, Kemp thought.

Almost a year later, the Oakland A’s traded for Kemp. The two best friends were back together again, a Bay Bridge separating them. The Bay Bridge series brought them back together again.

“Last year during the Bay Bridge series we had a moment before the game in center field like, ‘Man, look around. We did it,’” Kemp said. “We made the big leagues. Obviously, you don’t want to stop there.”