Friday, February 4, 2011

Quick Blast of Perspective on a Friday



It is exciting to learn1 Anthony Gose is coming to spring training with the big club, just as it is exciting that Darin Mastroianni is on the 40 man roster. News that the Jays minor league system is on the rise is super duper exciting.

The man in the video above attests to baseball's steadfast refusal to abide your hopes and dreams. Five tool studs stall in their ascent; they break down and get wacky diseases. A shame? Of course. But it happens. When it does, one can only hope everyone involved maintains the same level of class and well-adjusted humility Rocco himself displayed to the St Pete Times.
"But I don't live angrily; I live kind of happy. Why would I look at the negative aspects of everything that I've been through and live the rest of my life talking about those things that aren't the important things to me? The important things to me were all the wonderful things I got to do."
Tough to argue. For some reason I thought of Vernon Wells when I read this quote. The humility and genuine sadness Wells conveyed in press conferences & media calls contrasts starkly with the general view of his exit from Toronto.

We increasingly view players as assets, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It does get sticky from time to time when the lines cross and real life sticks its nose into our make believe General Managing.

Like Anthopoulos' quotes on guaranteeing John Buck playing time, it is hard to grasp for those of us so fixated on the ultimate goal. Sometimes we all need to check ourselves and remember it is far from a straight line to reach that destination.

1 - late pass.

4 comments:

  1. A lot of equivocation in all the above words - we are all victims (or heroes) due to circumstance, and are all less than (or more than) we could have been.
    Good for John Buck - he is what AA and everyone else made him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm probably in the minority, but I the AA quote about Buck actually inspired confidence for me, not frustration. For AA to be saying this now - months after Buck is already gone - it almost seems like he's just trying to get word out there to other potential free agents that the Blue Jays are good guys who won't fuck around. Which, given that he's always thinking 'five or six moves ahead', would seem to imply that he's already trying to set the foundations to lure some free agents to town.

    Pujols talks are reportedly going poorly. Just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's hard enough to get guys to come and play in Toronto. The Jays having to guarantee playing time to the likes of Buck is the cost of doing business these days. I'm with Ty; it didn't rankle me as much it did others.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There's a temptation to say that we increasingly value players only as slash lines in agate type because of our obsession with numbers and graphs and such.

    And yet, I think there's a pretty long-standing inability for fans, writers and such to see those guys in the jerseys as something smaller and less poetic. Something human.

    Maybe you start to slip into romantic notions of intangibles if you go down this road, but there's still some importance in treating a person as you'd like to be treated.

    Which doesn't always square up with what we braying ninnies on our blog would want.

    ReplyDelete

Send forth the witticisms from on high