Last night I saw this post on TSN.ca and thought I should tear it apart, but I was just on line because I was having an insomnia moment and didn't want to get into anything too deep. Good news is I had a plan for the morning. Morning comes, I take a look at Ghostrunner and he has written my post. Except, you know, better than I would have.
I would like to make note of one of Drew's comments. The TSN post mentioned Young had a 'reputation for being a solid clubhouse presence', Drew said this:
Young's reputation as a solid clubhouse presence is COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED. The man is - as you go on to state yourself! - a very poor defender. So poor that his current team moved him from his position twice because of the damage he does there. AND HE PICKED UP HIS BALL AND HE WENT HOME. This valued clubhouse presence has now grumbled to the press about his job and barked about wanting out. Just because he's old doesn't mean he provides one iota of leadership.
I'm wondering if maybe we could take a moratorium on guessing which guys are good in the clubhouse and which guys aren't. We aren't in the clubhouse. We get sold on the idea that player X is good in the clubhouse because commentators have to say something about the player and they can't say 'he drowns kittens in his free time'. As Drew shows, we just use clubhouse presence as something to say when we like a player or dislike a player.
We got told, over and over, how great Kevin Millar was in the clubhouse. Why? Because the TV commentators are paid by the team and they have to come up with some reason why the guy is on the team. After he leaves the team, we find out he spent all his time telling everyone how much better it was with the Red Sox. Roy Halladay get traded and folks have to tell us he wasn't a good teammate. Not the players, of course, the commentators.
Reggie Jackson was, very clearly, not a good guy to have in the clubhouse, but his teams won. Manny Ramirez, we are told, is lousy in the clubhouse, but his teams win.
It is one of those things that, since we aren't insiders, we really don't any first hand knowledge and since we are a little ways back we can judge the players on what they do between the lines, instead of what they do where we can't see them. I guess there are obvious extremes. A guy beats his wife, you can tell me all you want how great he is, I won't believe.
Anyway, thanks Drew for ruining my morning post.