i love everyone tonight!
petitio: OMFODJ:LKJ DILLY THAT WAS SO K J:DLIULKJ OH MY GOD.
ghostrunner: Yes, Olerud is a little better than what you're used to. :D
Look, I suspect my recent fuzziness about Bret Boone may have been due to these sudden fantasies that I have of the Yankees getting their mitts on him. Sure, I love Miggy. Sure, I think it'd be ridiculous for the Yankees to basically field the All-Ex-Mariner-and-DJ infield. Sure, signing Boone would mean that the Yankees would have to start putting a Geritol cooler next to the Gatorade ones in the dugout.
But damn, man, that was a hotass play that John Olerud snagged from Rodriguez today in the Toronto - Yankees game -- it was early in the game, a hit up the third base line, and A-Rod played it on a tough hop and threw a bit high. Any other Yankee first baseman, even Tony Clark, would have either been pulled off the bag and put the tag in late or would have chased the ball into the stands.
Instead, Olerud does this nifty little hop straight in the air to snag the ball. He sort of leaps up and grabs the ball. This, in and of itself, would have been worth comment from the YES announcers -- he didn't boot it! he didn't boot it! the runner isn't on third and heading home! -- but then, when Olerud comes down, instead of just standing on the bag and getting plowed by the oncoming runner or whatever, he comes down on the side of the bag, reaches out with his right foot, taps the bag for the force, and then, just to make sure that he gets the out in case the ump didn't see the dainty little move, he reaches in and tags the Toronto runner, nice and gentle and polite as you can. It was one of the coolest plays I have ever seen, and I can't, at this point, really think of a defensive play by a Yankee that I've seen as it happened and was more excited about. (Jeter's dive in the stands was, for me, something different. That was a show of what a gutty player he was. This was a show of intelligent, thoughtful, and practiced fielding.)
Maybe those of you who don't have the Big G or Tony "Tower" Clark at 1B aren't so excited about something like this, but you have to look at this from the perspective of someone for whom having a first baseman who's even mobile is incredibly exciting.
So, yes, I've been turned on to the joys of hot, l33t fielding for the Yankee. And Bret Boone's $8.5 million option for 2005 vests at 450 PA (he's at something like 430 as I type this) is awfully expensive for a team that's 18.5 games out of first in its division, and man, I've had a lot of conversations with ghostrunner where we're watching some given baseball games, and I start screaming about the awesome fielding that so-and-so at 2B just did, and she says ". . . uh, that's a routine play, sweetie." Consequently, you can imagine the sort of exchange we have when we watch Mariners games together and I see Bret Boone ranging effortlessly to his left, to regions regular Yankee 2Bs and CFs never venture and are tended only by the groundscrew between innings.
Defensive pipe dreams, man, but sweet they are. I am one of those people who obviously has no problems with the Onion article about George Steinbrenner the full rosters of all 725 other MLB. All your players belong to the Interlocking NY (tm), and mostly, I admit, this post is a place to enthuse about John Olerud. No doubt our honeymoon will end as soon as Olerud takes a few steps (OK, half-marathon) back towards the putrid-at-any-position-but-at-FIRST-BASE??? .254/.360/.370 season line that is actually improved over what he'd been sporting in Seattle, but really, you condemn my enthusiasm, consider!
Defense like that, and in the past three games, he's been hitting something like .455/.538/.545 in pinstripes. He had two RBIs his very first AB as a Yankee!
So, yes, please forgive my enthusiasm for him: I had been fond of him before this because he just seemed so out of place and thin and awkward on an MLB field, but now, I fear it is blooming into a full-blown baseball crush.