diversion for baseball fans who need a diversion

(looking at you, NYY fans)
I am pretty sure that the starting line-up for the New York Yankees on Friday night against the Angels of etc, etc California included 4 guys batting between .100 and .199, and a guy without a hit this year (.000). With the Bargain Basement Boys (Overbey, Wells, Hafner, Youkilis) seemingly having hit the wall, regressing to their (recent) mean, Tiexiera going down again with his wrist, Cano having dropped 30+ points in his average in a few weeks, and the pitching looking oh so mortal (rather than the extraordinary we had hoped to get used to), it seems that this team will go only as far as Brett Gardner and Jayson Nix will take it. Hint: not far.

So it was heartening (for me, at least) to read two book-end feel-good stories from Sports Illustrated last week about major league players seeking redemption of sorts. And finding it (so far). Lest you think “redemption” is too strong a word, or seek to revoke my poetic license, I offer for your consideration The redemption of Jason Giambi, the Indians’ leader extraordinaire, and Domonic Brown (finally) having a breakout season for Phillies.

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Giambi was, of course, a hugely productive hitter in his prime, a prime reached and extended no doubt by cheating with steroids. He gets a lot of credit, in this article and elsewhere, for having apologized publicly for that, but I recall his weird press conference as being notable for definitely being an apology, though not explicit about exactly for what.

Even fans who watched as many game as I did, and who read as much as I did, never get to know players; we get intimately familiar with their public avatars. In Giambi’s case, a happy go lucky lug who hit baseballs very hard, very far, often enough, with a tinge of surfer dude. Ben Reiter makes the point that fans seem to have forgiven Giambi and Andy Pettitte their admitted PED involvement not just because they admitted and apologized but (watch this move closely; my italics might halp):
 

It is that Giambi, like Pettitte, is the type of person who would do such a thing, stand up in public and admit that he had erred. He is a good man who could not resist the temptation to do something wrong, yet he remained a good man — as he always was, beneath the hair, and the tattoos and the menacing mien. Lesser men wouldn’t admit what they’d done, and they did not, and still do not.

I’d like to believe this. Heck, I do believe this (though provisionally, of course). Giambi and Pettitte were my guys and the press seemed to like them. But I am leery of thinking much more than that they got better tactical advice, or for some other unknown reason made a different choice, than the Idiot Rocket, the Obstinate McGwire, the Silent Palmiero, or the Linguistically Challenged Sosa.

Reiter is on Team Better Man, for sure. Nice piece, with apparently true stories about the regard in which the very part-time, very old Giambi is held by his teammates and manager. Feel good story, indeed, about a guy who is hanging on, doing things The Right Way and (perhaps) atoning.

Albert Chen’s story on Domonic Brown (type that carefully) is about a guy with All The Promise In The World who seemed to have been lied to. But (spoiler alert!) he has recently become
 

the best story in all of baseball and the hottest hitter on the planet, with one of the strangest, most astonishing and most spectacular home run binges in recent memory.

Lord knows Phillies fan need some diversion at least as much as we of the Evil Empire do, but they probably already know every twist and turn in this saga. The rest of you might learn something here.

You’d like to think this young man’s hard work will pay off (but thousands of ball players work hard, only a few have the talent to make the hard work pay off), and you‘d like to see his good attitude rewarded. At least, I would. Go Dom! And much success Jason; maybe you will make a wonderful manager some day.

Yankee Summer of Discontent resumes at 3:35, the struggling Sabathia against the wonderful Weaver. Yanks are in the bottom third in the league in scoring, ahead of the Kansas City Friggin’ Royals by 2, and the Houston (AAAA) Astros by 4. That just ain’t right, but seems destined to continue.

© Sandy Mattingly 2013