Rah Rah Raul
Posted: July 16th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Cleveland | 66 Comments »
Funny thing about sports and sportswriting … the stories after a while do begin to blend together. They begin to fall into categories the way those giant Plinko chips fall into slots on The Price Is Right. Here’s the story of the player who came out of a rough childhood. Here’s the story of the angry coach with the heart of gold. Here’s the story of the player who was driven to stardom by his cold-as-steel father. Here’s the story of the charismatic coach with the heart of lead. Here’s the scrapper who had overcome a lack of talent. Here’s the prodigy who had to learn the value of hard work. Here’s the could-have-been who wonders what might have happened.
And so on. I don’t mean to sound cynical here … I don’t feel cynical. I love these stories when they’re done well. I believe it’s those stories and others that drive our games, make them mean more than a few blips of light on a scoreboard and a few rows of numbers in the morning paper.*
*Or, to make this a reference that doesn’t sound as dated as fedoras: “more than a few pixels on the High-Def video board or a few rows of numbers on Baseball Reference.”
The story I probably love most is the one about the athlete who, for reasons that he or she might never know how to explain, kept on going and dreaming when there was no logical reason left to go or dream. Most of us — and by “most” I do mean something like 99.9999999% of us — hit a point in our lives when we realize that the dream we had at age 8 probably isn’t going to come true. Some of us make that realization at, you know, age 9, when we realize that the 5-foot-2 kid on the Little League mound scares us to death. Others go on longer. I’ve written about my friend Michael, an old college football left tackle, who once had the honor of playing against Washington when the Huskies were ridiculously dominant and had Steve Emtman — you might remember Emtman at the time was being called by some the greatest defensive lineman in the history of college football. Guy finished fourth in the Heisman balloting. He was the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft.
Michael vividly remembers this time that Emtman came around on a stunt … Michael backpedaled, set his feet, dropped his weight, did whatever it is offensive linemen are supposed to do in those situations. And Emtman picked him up, threw him out of the way and crushed the quarterback.
When Michael stumbled to the sideline, he remembered a coach yelling at him about technique about setting himself and not standing tall and … all Michael could think was “Um, coach, he PICKED ME UP and he THREW ME OUT OF THE WAY. OK? There’s not really a good technique for preventing guys from picking you up and throwing you like you’re a trash bag going into the back of the truck.” And Michael — who has gone on to a very happy and wonderful life as a teacher and father and husband and all that — might have realized right then that his dreams as they had been constructed might not happen.
But there are those who keep going, even after they have run into the wall, even after they have been picked up and thrown, even after all their friends have moved on to reality, even after their friends have sort of hinted that, hey, you know, you might want to think about something a bit more practical. It fascinates me. What kept Kurt Warner going when he was shelving groceries at Hy-Vee? What kept Priest Holmes going after he went undrafted and he showed up with the Ravens, made the club, played and then blew out his ACL for the SECOND TIME? What has kept Brian Shouse going — Shouse is a left-handed reliever from Effingham, Ill.,* who went to Bradley, was taken in the 13th round, managed to get up to Pittsburgh for six games when he was 24, went back to the minors for five years, went to pitch in Japan briefly, made it to Boston for seven games, went BACK to the minor leagues for four years, made it up to Kansas City when he was 33, punched up a 6.14 ERA, went BACK to the minor leagues, made it up to Texas, then Milwaukee, then played a whole season for Milwaukee when he was 38. And now he’s 40 pitching for Tampa Bay … what the heck kept that guy going?
*Effingham could be a wonderful Effing place/I can see it from the highway and I’m wondering …
The story gets told again and again … but the story remains endlessly new to me. There are a few people in this world who simply will not get discouraged, will not get deterred, will not lose faith in themselves.
I thought about this quite a bit during the All-Star Game in St. Louis because there I saw an old friend … Raul Ibanez. I should say that Raul has this ability — and you know people like this — he is everybody’s friend. I would never say that anyone is IMPOSSIBLE to dislike because, let’s face it, some people don’t need any reason at all to dislike. But I would put it this way … anyone who dislikes Raul Ibanez would have a hard time defending it in a court of law. He’s smart and thoughtful and humble, three pretty great things to be. You probably know that Raul was the oldest first-time All-Star position player ever, and so reporters were gathered around him, firing all the questions that get asked at such things — from the absurd (“So, what kind of wine did Ichiro send you as congratulations?”) to the more absurd (“When did you realize you were here?”) — and he answered every question in his usual attentive way (in both accent-free English and accent-free Spanish), and you could see every person (no matter their country of origin) leaving the table with the same “Raul is my friend” expression on their faces.
I was lucky enough to get to know Raul right when his career was about to take off. He had played ball at Miami-Dade College, and he was a 36th round draft pick, an afterthought, but he had that remarkable self-belief. Isn’t it interesting that some of the most confident people in the world are also some of the most humble? At age 23 he had a sensational year in High Class A — he hit .332 with 20 homers and 108 RBIs — and for the first time he was viewed as a semi-prospect. He rapped .368 in three weeks in Double-A, got moved up, had a solid year in Triple-A Tacoma … and then he began the Quad A Square Dance. Swing your bat, side to side …
Raul was called up for six plate appearances in 1996. He went 0-for-5. He did get hit by a pitch.
He played most of 1997 in Tacoma too. He made it up for 26 at-bats. He only managed four hits, though one was a home run off of Mike Oquist.
In 1998, he was hurt and dreadful in Tacoma, but he actually made it up for 37 games — got 98 at-bats — and hit .255, which wasn’t good enough to get anyone too interested.
In 1999, he got 209 at-bats and hit .258.
In 2000, he got 140 at-bats and hit .229.
That’s about when Seattle gave up on him. Well, it had to happen — five years of up and down and nothing had been accomplished. Everyone liked Raul, of course, but he was 29 years old, and over five seasons he had posted an unmistakeable 73 OPS+ in more than 500 plate appearances. Raul tried hard, but he was not fast, and he was not smooth defensively, and he was not much of a power hitter, and he just didn’t seem to have the ability to handle big league pitching. There wasn’t much left to say, really … Raul Ibanez was just not quite good enough.
Only, Ibanez never saw it that way. “I was born with talent,” he says, the closest he will ever come to self-praise … it’s probably also the closest he will ever come to explaining what it is that bubbled inside him. Ibanez is a smart guy. He reads a lot. He studies the game. He is a great listener — even now he will listen sometimes to conversations between minor league hitters just to see if there’s a tip he might be able to pick up. But he simply refused to believe that he was anything less than a big leaguer.
And in 2001, he happened to run into precisely the right guy at the right time. There are a lot of things that people can — and have — said about former Kansas City Royals general manager (and current Boston executive) Allard Baird. But here’s one thing: He does believe in what he believes. That is to say, when Johnny Damon had a dreadful senior year in high school and lots of other teams were jumping off, Baird never wavered. He said: “This guy can play.” And he signed Damon. Other times, Allard’s deep-felt beliefs didn’t work out nearly as well. As they say, Allard has been right, and Allard has been wrong, but he has never been uncertain.
And Baird signed Ibanez and believed, with all of his belief, that Ibanez could be a good hitter in the big leagues. I can remember having these long conversations about it with Allard that first year. On June 1, Ibanez was hitting .132 in 21 games. Allard said, “If we could just get him regular playing time, he’d hit.” On June 24, Ibanez was hitting .196. “He has all the attributes of a quality big-league hitter,” Allard said. “I am sure he’s going to hit.” I can’t tell you I believed any of that.
Ibanez hit .362/.473/.638 the next month and a half … and he’s been a big-league regular ever since.
People would continue to doubt Raul because … well, that’s juss hit lot in life, I guess. He drove in 102 RBIs in 2002 — he and Carlos Beltran that year are the last two Royals to drive in more than 100 runs in a season (and I may not mean “last up to now” — I may mean that they will be the last to ever do it). His power numbers fell off considerably in 2003, though he still hit .294 (second straight year) and was a big part of the Royals one surprisingly good season of the last decade and a half. The next year, the Royals let Ibanez go back to Seattle. The Royals did want to sign him back, but the Mariners (who did, after all, love Ibanez) offered a three-year, $13 million package, and that was just higher than the Royals were willing to go for a 32-year-old outfielder without great speed, without great power, without defensive brilliance. Truth is, even they didn’t think he was quite worth it. Allard signed Juan Gonzalez instead. It didn’t work out so well.
The next five years in Seattle, Ibanez just kept on keeping on. His OPS+ numbers tell the story — 116, 115, 125, 121, 124. Solid as they come. I’ll tell you what kind of player he was … using a way-too-drawn-out analogy from those days when I collected baseball cards. When I was younger, you would go to baseball card shows and the cards were often divided into three boxes:
1. Stars
2. Minor stars
3. Commons
The stars were, of course, the stars: Gwynn, Schmidt, Brett, Reggie, Palmer, Seaver, Ripken and so on.
The minor stars were just a step below. Alan Trammell might be a minor star when it came to baseball cards. Mark Grace. Bruce Sutter. Jack Morris. Tony Armas. Buddy Bell. Maybe Keith Hernandez. Andre Thornton might or might not be one.
And then there were the commons … everyone else.
Thing is, there was a lot of crossover between the three groups. Some sloppy card sellers would leave minor stars in the commons or put major stars with the minor stars. Some greedy card sellers would put minor stars in the major stars box (Do they REALLY think I’m going to pay a quarter for this Carney Lansford?) and put commons with the minor stars (come on — they can’t really think that Chet Lemon is a minor star!).
Raul Ibanez would be the guy that you weren’t quite sure if he was a common or a minor star.
And, of course, one of the great charms of Raul is that he would put HIMSELF in the commons box. “Let’s be honest, I’m not going to the Hall of Fame,” he said with this sly grin on his face this week at the All-Star Game. “So this is kind of a big thing for me.”
When Raul signed this year with Philadelphia at age 37 — and for pretty big money, three years, $31.5 million in a down economy — many people wrote and said that it was a lousy signing. It was just a variation of the theme. When he got off to the hot start, he had to deal with the absurdity of steroid talk. It was just another variation of the theme. When he got hurt, people seemed to believe that this would end his charmed season … and when he returned he would go back to being plain ol’ Raul Ibanez, the nice guy with the OK numbers who belonged in the commons box.
I can’t say he doesn’t care … because I don’t know that. He might care a little bit. Raul is a proud man. When the steroid thing hit, he was angry to think that anyone would doubt his sincerity and honesty — over all these years the one thing no one EVER said about Raul Ibanez was that he in any way cheated the game of baseball. He did not expect for people to view him as a star, but he had worked SO hard on playing baseball right; nobody was supposed to take THAT away from him. “You know what matters?” he has told me countless time (and again this week). “That you win the respect of your teammates and fans. That’s what matters. I don’t think anyone is ever going to say that I was a great player. But I hope that everyone says that I played the game the right way. That’s what matters to me.”
He smiled: “I watched George Brett play. He was my hero. I don’t know if anyone watches me but if there’s one kid out there who has me for a favorite player … I want that kid to be proud of me. I want that kid to be able to say, ‘THAT is how you are supposed play baseball.’”
Yes, this is the story I never grow tried of … the story that never ages for me. I always say that the single most enduring memory of my childhood is that of my father going to the factory every single day, waking up so early the television stations were still static … then dressing in the dark, packing a salami sandwich in a brown paper bag, wandering out in the arctic chill of 5:30 a.m., driving through the darkness, over the potholes, to the factory, where the air was stale and the lights flickered and the work could break you. I always say that the single most enduring memory of my childhood was of my father coming home in that blue, rusted-out Chevy Nova, getting out of the car, his pants and hands black from oil and muck and whatever else, and how he would have this smile on his face, and I would beg him, and he would grab a Nerf football or grab his glove and wander out to the backyard with me and play catch.
That long memory is special for me because he is my father, of course. But that memory is also special for me because (I realize) it is the model against which I judge everyone and everything, the model against which I judge myself. Do you bring it every day? Do you endure through the monotony? Do you hold on to what’s important to you even when it isn’t easy? Are you a hero to someone — not because of talent or artistry or what is largely viewed as success, but instead because of who you are at your core?
Seven years ago — almost eight years ago now — Raul Ibanez and his wife Tery, had their first-born, a son, R.J. One day later, Margo and I had our first-born, a daughter, Elizabeth. And when our children were a year old, we shared a gift, just because it seemed the thing to do. We kind of lost track after Raul left Kansas City — we would talk now and again. This week at the All-Star Game, we caught up, laughed a little about old times. There wasn’t a lot of time. Then he took his son out to the watch the home run derby, and I went back to the St. Louis hotel to talk to my daughter over the phone about her fishing trip at Grandpa’s house. After that, I told a friend about the conversation I had with Raul and while it isn’t necessarily a sportswriter emotion, I found that I was really proud of him. The friend nodded and said, “You know he’s going to have a brutal second half. You know that right?”
I shrugged and said, “Yeah, lots of people like to pick against Raul Ibanez.”
Thursday night, in the first game of the second half, Ibanez hit two home runs and drove in three and raised his slugging percentage to .669 for the season.
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I love stories like this.
You are just awesome, Joe. We’re lucky to have you.
.369 is his OBP, Joe. His average is .312.
F*ck Yeah!
I look forward to the day when more people state someone’s OBP as “their average.” Its simply a better way of measurement.
“.369 is his OBP, Joe. His average is .312.”
What the fuck are you talking about? The batting average is not the issue here, Pete. I’m talking about drawing a line in the sand, Pete. Across this line, you DO NOT… Also, Dude, OBP is not the preferred nomenclature. On-Base Average, please.
And that’s why I must get Raul back into my fantasy team ASAP!!
Seriously, Joe… this story plus my morning coffee… Wow. What a great way to start my Friday.
Great story Joe and I’d like to mention that Chris Coste another player who never gave in and fits what you were describing above.
Joe:
Long-time reader, first time comment. You are the best, hands down.
i always thought chet lemon was a minor star.
I wish Boston had writers of your caliber, Joe.
It’s too bad in this McCarthyistic era of baseball, so many people have their doubts about Ibanez’ legitimacy.
This is why I enjoy reading you, Joe…I never know when I’m going to click on over and see the name “Mike Oquist”.
Damon, that may be the single greatest comment made on this site. A perfect combination of Sopchak and James.
Joe, brilliant as always. If there is anyone who would know smart and thoughtful and humble, you see him in the mirror each morning.
When life gives you Chet Lemon, you make Dave Lemanczyk.
An amazing story Joe. Your reporting reaches into the humanity of a person and lifts the reader to a new level of understanding. It is a remarkable gift, which you hone every day, and you will always by in my “Stars” pile. By the way, I’m an inveterate Phillies fan, I love the play and attitude of Raul, and now I have the knowledge to admire this player/man even more. Thank you so much.
Joe, you know that kid who’s watching Raul in left field and thinking “Wow, that’s how you’re supposed to play baseball. He’s my favorite player!”
That’s how I (and thousands of others) feel when we’re sitting at our desks reading your work. Some kids wish the could play ball like Raul- I wish I could write like you.
Joe, as always, great story.
Nightfly, that might be the best comment ever on this blog.
At least Chet had the good sense to capitalize, as he now manages a World Wood Bat Association U-18 team out of Florida – Chet Lemon’s Juice.
RamboDiaz’ comment is spot-on.
Reading this with my morning coffee is a great way to start my Friday.
Thanks Joe. I hope you never stop writing.
Bravo
Also, Chet Lemon = Star. No question.
Among his top five comps on BR are Bobby Murcer and Amos Otis.
But more importantly, say the name Chet Lemon to any baseball fan in their thirties and you’re guaranteed to get a smile.
Great writing as usual Joe. I have to ask about this statement: “he had to deal with the absurdity of steroid talk.” The word absurd means utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue. Is it really absurd to think a player in today’s game could have used steroids? With everything we’ve found out about what baseball players would do to get an edge in the past 15 years, let’s not go exonerating ANY baseball player of using PED’s. Just a thought.
Wow … a 29-year old guy in the Mariners system with a 73 OPS+? Sounds quite a bit like Yuniesky Betancourt.
It just goes to show you that scouting/signing/trading/hoping/praying/sabremetricizing are all inexact sciences and many times accomplish nothing in the end. Had someone made a trade for THAT Raul Ibanez today, they’d get skewered in blogs across the Internet for not paying attention to the precious, infallible numbers.
Kudos to Raul for never giving up – he would have been blogged out of baseball if this happened today.
Joe
I’m slacking-off in my cubicle and you go and write “Do you bring it every day? Do you endure through the monotony?”. Thanks for your words. I’m logging off and going back to work.
Ah, the fun comment by BillP. Yes, statistical analysis is not always right. It would have missed on Ibanez. It’s a good thing talented GMs like that Baird guy can show us a better way to build a team.
Curse you evil bloggers!
When I was a kid, I had the total opposite reaction to my dad coming home from work all dirty and tired each day.
I used to wonder, ‘If you’re so smart (and my dad was really a bright man), then why do you get up and do that shitty job every day? Why don’t you go be a pirate or a bandit or do nothing in an office every day, like Grandpa?’
And although he’d rarely play catch with me, he built me a leather and steel framed catching basket the size of the strike zone, and bought me a bunch of balls, so I could practice pitching on my own.
The problem is, the width of the basket was the width of the plate, not the width of the plate plus two balls, so all my good pitches that nicked a corner would just bounce off the frame and reinforce the idea that I was throwing balls, not strikes.
Shortly thereafter, I gave up my baseball dreams and started playing guitar all afternoon long and hanging out with the stoner kids…
Now I’m in a band going nowhere, and wondering why I didn’t grow up to be a pirate or a bandit, or find a do-nothing office job like Grandpa…
And although I don’t and never will have kids, I make sure to take time to play catch with the kid next door whose parents are junkies and don’t pay any attention to him.
@Nightfly:
or you make Mark Lemongello. . . .
Chet Lemon was a better player than Carney Lansford. I guess that’s why I never collected baseball cards …
I played against Chet’s AAU baseball team that he created in Florida after his playing days, and everyone knew they were the best. They also had some guy by the name of Prince Fielder playing 1st for them. Haven’t heard what happened to him since then.
Great post. Looking for the Tom Watson post next.
I wish Bill Plaschke wrote like this…
mrh, you read my mind…
I liked Chet Lemon an awful lot…One main reason was because I heard Bill Veeck call him “Chester” in a most wonderful way. Boy, I miss guys like Bill Veeck too!
Chris B said it best – when I read columns like yours, Joe, I think “Wow, that’s how you’re supposed to write sports columns”. You’re definitely a major star, but you write every day with the humility of Raul. Keep it up.
Raul may be a great guy – I have no doubt that he is. But it was still a bad signing at the time by the Phillies. Burrell was asking for less money, is a slightly better fielder, is younger than Ibanez, and has better career numbers. Of course the Phillies look like geniuses now with the outlier year that Ibanez is having – but the Ibanez deal was a bad signing period.
Curtis wrote:
“Damon, that may be the single greatest comment made on this site. A perfect combination of Sopchak and James.”
Well I like your style too, man. Got a whole complimenting thing goin’.
Sorry Joe, but the only reason Ibanez had 2 home runs last night is because I’m playing against him in my fantasy league this week. Come Monday he’ll be back to normal. Wondering why Jose Reyes got injured this year? Or why Markakis is so awful? They’re on my fantasy team. Remember when Ryan Zimmerman lost his hitting streak earlier this year? That was the first game he was on my fantasy team after I traded for him.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ibanez hit 2 more home runs tonight, and then 2 again on Saturday with 3 following on Sunday.
This is all my fault.
I’m sorry.
Great piece. Too bad the Cubs didn’t get him and instead are stuck with Gameboard.
Oh, its Effington (not Effingham). Great song though.
“Oh, its Effington (not Effingham). Great song though.”
Yes, but there is a town in Illinois where I-70 and I-57 intersect. It’s about halfway between Indianapolis and St. Louis. It’s a truck stop haven, has a HUGE cross along the highway, and its water tower proclaims it as the Crossroads of Opportunity.
Dude, get with it.
And that town is called … Effingham.
Yeah, he was 29 and he started hitting…right as the Steroid Era got into full swing. That sounds not at all fishy, or weird. But he’s a great guy! He studies hard! Studying hard makes you swing faster!
It’s difficult to give any ballplayer who’s had career years after age 30 the benefit of the doubt. I don’t care how sincere (cue Raffy’s “point”) or how great a teammate (cue Pettitte’s “heal” excuse) or how hard-working (cue Clemens who was universally praised as one of the hardest working players in MLB) he is. Honestly, wouldn’t being a scuffling ballplayer who was designated for assignment TWICE be a classic backdrop of a PE user? Or is Ibanez a very rare exception? Occam’s Razor anyone?
Always glad to see a Steve Emtman reference, because he remains the single-most dominant athlete I’ve ever seen. He went through college football like a Pamplona bull running through a junior high school chess club, with lots of little nerds being thrown some truly prodigious distances.
I’m also a big Ibanez fan, and I’ve been a Posnanski fan since you wrote that great piece on Ichiro back in 2001. You, Sir, are a Steve Emtman class sportswriter.
Thanks, Joe.
I didn’t know any of that about Raul, but I’ll certainly root for him now…just not against the Cards.
I hate to join the chorus here, I really do, but this blog post would have made me suspect Raul of PED use even if all the furor and suspicion over his legitimacy hadn’t already been raised.
As far as I can tell, most of the Ibanez steroid speculation has revolved around the fact that he’s a 37-year-old having (by far) a career year. While I know it wasn’t Joe’s intention, this post gives more reason for speculation.
Now, looking at Ibanez’s minor league stats, it looked as though he could have developed into a consistent 20 HR guy with solid splits, but looking at what’s presented in the blog – guy can’t make it in the bigs, suddenly shows noticeable improvement once he’s toward the tail end of (and past) his prime, then explodes in his age 37 year…well, people are going to draw conclusions.
Talk of his determination and nice-guy-ness are all fine and good, but I refuse to believe that all PED users are jerks and scumbags. I’m sure there are plenty out there who worked extremely hard and were wonderful people but who felt (or knew) they wouldn’t make it unless they did something that was maybe unethical, but was also par for the course for many who were able to succeed in the world of pro ball.
I’d love to think Raul’s clean. I’d love to be one of the naive many who feel the game’s “clean” now, and that anyone who’s doing anything wrong has been (or soon will be) caught. Unfortunately, baseball’s (and the players’) implicit involvement in and acceptance of what was going on makes that pretty much impossible for me.
[...] Joe Posnanski ” Blog Archive ” Rah Rah RaulGreat read on Raul Ibanez – to bad he will be our enemy come October. Hell, I like all the Phillies. [...]
[...] Wrote Posnanski: [...]
Damon R: Thanks for the Rand McNally geographic brain slap to mindless Matt #37.
Had Matt been w/Joe earlier this year he would have read about ordering the “effingham” for breakfast at one of those famous truck stops @ the Crossroads.
Joe to waitress: “I’ll have the two-egg special, over medium and wheat toast.”
Waitress: “Do you want ham, bacon or sausage with that?”
Joe: “I’ll have the effingham.’ (This was obviously on a trip that did not include the lovely Margo and/or the two daughters!)
Sometimes, it’s wonderful to hear about people who succeeded through dogged persistence and unshakeable self-confidence. But is that kind of self-confidence always a virtue? Here’s what G.K. Chesterton had to say on the subject:
“Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.”
I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”
He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief.”
astorian: You can keep your G.K. Chesterton, that’s fine. I’d rather stick w/Chester Earl Lemon!
Joe, one major typo that I think was unintended (another one could have been meant as a joke, so I ignore it): that’s juss hit lot in life should be “that’s just his”. It looks like you transposed one s and one t.
[...] wrote a column, or ranting, babbling blog post really, about Raul Ibanez. Actually, he has written at least one [...]
“You probably know that Raul was the oldest first-time All-Star position player ever”.
A pedantic note:
Jose Cruz was a slightly older 37 for his only ASG (but didn’t start).
Andres Galarraga’s only start was at 39 (after being a backup four times, from age 27).
So Ibanez, 37, was the oldest non-pitcher to be a starter in his All-Star debut.
Unless you count Babe Ruth, 38, who started in the very first All-Star Game.
Ibanez has been one of my favorite players ever since the Royals picked him up. I just have one question Joe. Why, if AB liked him as much as he did, did he DFA him? I heard it wasn’t only once but twice. It seems like he’d give him more of a shot than he did at the time he DFA’d him.
My most fond memory of him really says nothing about him as a ballplayer, or his intelligence for that matter. It’s just something that, for some reason I’ll never forget and really hit home with me when it comes to the type of person he is. He was, for some reason, swinging the bat in the dugout and hit another player, who I think was Beltran. We’ll use Beltran’s name for argument. It wasn’t hard so that was no big deal but the reaction from Ibanez after it happened said it all to me. He was extremely apologetic and was really worried that he had caused Beltran any discomfort. It was obvious that Beltran wasn’t injured and all he was saying was basically get away from me you dumbarse, which Ibanez probably deserved to some effect at the time.
You just don’t get that kind of reaction out of someone even when they do something stupid like swing the bat in the dugout around other players. It was then that it really hit home what kind of person Ibanez was and I’ve liked him as much as anyone ever since then. I can’t exactly explain why that had the affect on me that it did, or what made it all that significant, but for some reason it did. That’s a pretty lame story but sometimes it’s those little things that you don’t see from others that affect people the most.
I wonder where Bill the blog writer got his idea to write about that?
My bad, I didn’t realize he was giving JoePo credit for it. It sure wouldn’t hurt to look at something before I comment on it. That would be too easy though.
Well done, Joe. I’d pay a quarter for your card, easy. Maybe even a dollar for your rookie card, even though my dad told me “not to spend it all in one place” when he gave it to me before the show.
Reading this piece makes it clearer to me why my frustration is growing and I am starting to hate the Royals — they don’t play the game right and nobody in the organization seems to care that they don’t. Instead they pay $12 million a year for a guy like Guillen, who has a horrible reputation for not playing the game right. A $70 million payroll has produced the same half-assed, incompetent ballclub.
Joe–Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m able to enjoy your talents free of charge. And to think that I would have to pay to bask in the genius that is Buster Olney. Keep up the great work, and I’ll be purchasing The Machine after I write this. Small price to pay…
Brock, I was just wondering if you had seen Chest Rockwell lately. I hope he’s doing well.
Joe,
Beautiful post, one of many. I have to say, I cut Raul Ibanez off my fantasy team, and I have no regrets. As you say, “lots of people like to pick against Raul Ibanez”. Having said that, I absolutely must say this–the “Raul Ibanez”s of the league are why I watch baseball. They are why I care so much about one particular group of grown men playing a child’s game. Beautiful post. Thanks Joe, and thank you Mr. Ibanez, for inspiring it.
Beautiful story! Thanks so much for sharing it, and your talents -
Ibanez’s minor league numbers:
.295/.360/.473
Betancourt’s minor league numbers:
.280/.327/.426
Betancourt’s major league numbers are worse than Ibanez’s were as well, and over a larger number of plate appearances.
The numbers aren’t infallible, but they are a good guide. Should I laugh at scouting accuracy because of the round Albert Pujols was picked at in the draft?
A Mariners fan here. Raul is a terrific guy and a fine ballplayer. A lot of “smart” fans in Seattle gave him grief for his lack of speed in the outfield. I would take him back anytime.
Didn’t Kurt Warner only work at the grocery store for like… a month?
Scott @ 63, a lot of fans gave him grief because he was absolutely atrocious on defense, giving back almost everything he provided on offense. One of the biggest reasons a flyball pitcher like Jarod Washburn looks so good this season is because Ibanez isn’t out there letting singles turn into doubles or watching doubles drop in juuuust over his outstretched glove. He has little speed left and takes horrible routes. We’re denigrated as being “smart” because we want the team to win?
Enjoy him all you want on another team, but I’ll be thankful our new GM is smarter than the average fan.
Great work. I’m rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and I plan sharing this with some fellow rehabbers. Perhaps these stories are so wonderful because they inspire others to try and live them out.