MLB

How Aaron Boone’s mother manages three generations of baseball stars

Sue Boone never discouraged her baseball-loving son, Aaron, from chasing his field of dreams — even if it was in the living room.

As an 8-year-old, Aaron loved to rearrange the couches to look like dugouts while the family watched dad, All-Star catcher Bob Boone, play for the Philadelphia Phillies on TV.

“Aaron would play the entire game for both sides,” Sue told The Post. “One couch was the visiting team’s dugout and the other couch was the Phillies dugout . . . He would make believe he was pitching, hitting and run around. He’d do the announcing . . . We’d sit around the couch.

“If you didn’t want to play, you couldn’t sit on the couch.”

The new Yankee manager now sits in a real dugout in The Bronx, and Sue Boone is still cheering him on — digitally.

“Every night after the game, I’ll text him a comment and a Bitmoji like ‘Yay!’ or ‘Oh Happy Day’ or ‘You had it all the way.’ ” she said.“If they lose, I’ll send, ‘Bummer’ or ‘Go get ’em tomorrow!’ ”

When the Yankees edged out the Red Sox 3-2 at the Stadium Tuesday night, Sue fired off a “Yass.” Wednesday’s 9-6 comeback win over Boston merited three fireballs. In each case, her Bitmoji image is decked out in Yankee garb and, oddly, an eyepatch. (An inside joke because she’s had a series of eye operations, she says.)

As the calendar turns to Mother’s Day, the Yankee skipper gushed about his mom:

“She’s been everything. She’s been our biggest cheerleader. She watched all our games on satellite TV, following my little brother in the minor leagues online. She’s just been the ultimate baseball mom. She’s seen it all.

“One day last week . . . mind you, this is the wife of a longtime player, manager, mother of players, she said, ‘I’ve never hung on every pitch like I have in your games right now.’ I think it’s been pretty neat for her to follow it so intensely. The fact that we’re winning I’m sure makes it fun for her right now. She’s been super-mom to us.”

The 69-year-old Southern California matron has been to thousands of games in the last half century, and it all started when she met her future husband, Bob, as a San Diego schoolgirl.

“We started dating and I started watching all his sporting events — he played football, basketball and baseball — and that took up our high-school years,” recalled Sue, a Fargo, ND, native.

When they were 19, Bob and the former Susan Roel married. Bob was going to Stanford and Sue was working as a flight attendant for Pacific Southwest Airlines, a job she lost soon after the nuptials.

“They didn’t want married girls at the time,” she said.

With the birth of her three sons, the family business expanded.

“There was one year when Bret was at USC, Aaron was in high school, Matthew was in junior-high school and they were all playing ball along with Bob, and sometimes there would be 18 games in a week,” Sue recalled. “If I missed any game at all, it was Bob’s, because I could listen on the radio.”

She has no regrets that baseball became her life.

“I never dreamed my life would be filled with boys, teams, locker rooms, tunnels and — too many to count — baseball fields,” she said. “I love it all and wouldn’t change a thing. I have been blessed, to say the least.”

Courtesy of Sue Boone

With three generations in the majors, the Boones became baseball royalty.

Bob played in the majors for 19 years and was a four-time All-Star. He also managed the Kansas City Royals from 1995-1997 and the Cincinnati Reds from 2001-2003.

Sue’s late father-in-law, Ray, was a two-time All-Star during 13 major-league seasons.

Oldest son Bret, 49, was a three-time All-Star in 14 major-league seasons. Her youngest, Matthew, 38, was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and played in the minor leagues for seven seasons.

Aaron, 45, played 12 seasons in the majors with six teams, but forever won the hearts of Bronx Bomber fans with his epic Oct. 16, 2003, pennant-winning home run against the hated Red Sox.

Sue was glued to her TV set in Villa Park, Calif., that night.

“I was stunned. I was so excited for him because I knew he had been struggling and he hadn’t started the game,” she recalled. “When they announced he was going to pinch-hit, I started doing a lot of praying.”

That Aaron joined ESPN when he hung up his cleats in 2010 did not surprise mom.

“He talked about broadcasting before playing baseball,” she said. “He loved [Phillies announcers] Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn.”

She said in addition to mimicking announcers and ballplayers, Aaron loved to act out “Saturday Night Live” skits — “He used to imitate Chris Farley: ‘I live in a van down by the river!’ ”

When her husband told her that Aaron was interviewing for the Yankee manager job in mid- ­November, Sue asked Bob, “What do you think?”

“I think Aaron would be outstanding,” Bob answered.

Sue believes her son will succeed because the Yankees “have a fantastic team” and Aaron’s “very confident in his abilities,” “very comfortable in his own skin” and “he finds the good in anybody.”

Even when the Yankees struggled, she noted, “you never saw his demeanor change.”

Sue now watches several little Boones on the baseball diamond. Of her nine grandkids, ages 5 to 22, five play baseball. Jake, Bret’s son, is a freshman infielder at Princeton. If he makes the majors, the Boones would be MLB’s first fourth-generation family.

Sue will not even take a break from baseball on Mother’s Day.

First she’ll attend church and then head to brunch in San Marcos with her sons Bret and Matthew, and their significant others. Then it’s back to watching ball on TV with Bob, now a Washington Nationals executive.

“We will watch the Yankees game and the Washington Nationals game — we go back and forth between the two,” she said.

She is happy her kids were able to achieve their goals, no matter what those goals were.

“Any parent wants to see their children grow up and do something that they love. Baseball, law, medicine, construction . . . whatever they want to go into,” Sue said.

“All you want to do as a parent is to see your children happy.”

Additional reporting by Dan Martin