Do Be and Don't Be

Sports work best at the individual level.  You root for a team for whatever reasons, and you look for particular players on the team to for.  Heaven help any 11-year-old Astros’ fans who made the mistake of making pitcher Gerrit Cole their favorite player.

As reported in the Houston Chronicle, Cole didn’t want to address the media following his team’s game-seven loss in the World Series, or perhaps I should say, his ex-team.  Cole was reported telling the team’s media-relations’ head, “I mean, I’m not employed [by the Astros]. I’m not employed [by them].”  Cole relented, provided he could speak “as an affiliate of myself.”  And, he should’ve added, his agent Scott Boras.  Why?  Because Cole addressed the media wearing a baseball cap that bore the logo of Boras’s agency. 

This isn’t where I start complaining about how modern-day players are such jerks.  Oh, I think too many of them are, but there was probably a lot of that going around fifty and a hundred years ago, for that matter.  And when haven’t teams acted the same way?  The Astros are a textbook example this postseason, given their handling of the Brandon Taubman incident.  The thing is, baseball doesn’t have a surplus of good will with its fans to screw up so much.

Too bad Cole and players like him couldn’t be more like Yolmer, as in Sanchez of the White Sox; this is a guy who gets it and who loves the game of baseball.  As of Sunday, Sanchez is also a Gold Glove winner at second base; he joins Nellie Fox as the only Sox players to win a Gold Glove at second base.  Now, there’s some history for you.

Sanchez exhibits childlike enthusiasm, which is not to say he is in all ways an overgrown kid.  In the story I read, he alluded to his uncertain future with the Sox and placed his trust in his agents.  If the Sox keep him, it could cost in the neighborhood of $6.2 million.  Me, I think it’s a bargain, both from a business and a fan’s standpoint.  Sanchez has the makings of a supersub, and one more advanced at the same age than Ben Zobrist, whose career is pretty much the gold standard for that role.  And Zobrist has never poured Gatorade over himself after a teammate’s walk-off hit.  

Don’t screw this up with Yolmer, guys.  Leave that to the Astros, past and present.