Let's Hope Today's Jose Bautista Isn't Yesterday's Brady Anderson

While we’ve all been engrossed in the goings on of the Vick Kolb Reid love triangle a few other things have been happening across the national sports landscape.  Some interesting and some not... but the one that caught my eye took place last night up north in Queen City.  One Jose Antonio Bautista launched his 50th home run. Who did what, you say.

Here is a story that’s been told far too often the past fifteen years.  Unknown baseball player X muddles through the Minor League system for a few years getting only a smattering of hits before finally getting the call up to the Big club.  He gets his first taste of Big League pitching and immediately turns into Pedro Cerrano from Major League, “Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come. 

Player X toils on the bench for another year or two seeing only spot duty all the while receiving the most exposure as that guy who runs to home plate after a walk-off home run, bouncing around the outside of the pig pile looking for someone to high five.  The rest of the team ignores him, pretty certain that he is the equipment manager. 

Another lack luster season comes and goes and aside from his mother, no one else actually knows he’s even made it to the Majors. So it’s back to the drawing board or the batting cage and weight room as it were. Cue inspirational theme song from Chariots of Fire... Player X rededicates himself to the game he loves, the game he’s been playing since the time he could say “hey dad, toss me a knuckleball.”  The extra time he’s put in seems to have finally paid off.

He comes into the season with a new fire in his eye and a reinvigorated approach at the plate.  The ball is simply jumping off his bat.  All hale the Gods of hard work and dedication.  A little tike says to his mom, “See Ma, with just a little more effort and focus I too could reach the stars... Just look at Brady Anderson and how great he’s become!” 

As the great Aristotle once said (according to Wikipedia anyway) “Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope.”   

Unfortunately for that little tike, he would come to learn that Mr. Anderson, though cool as ice with those sideburns, was far from a guy who reached the stars.  The sad reality was that those fifty homers he hit in 1996 weren’t what they appeared.  In fact he’d go on to hit just sixty over the next three season.  I point out Anderson because he is the most absurd of the group and who from the outside looking in most closely mirrors the heroics of Bautista.  

We all know what followed of course.  Sammy and Barry, Mcguire and Clemens, A-Rod and Madonna... Well that last one doesn’t really pertain.  

Anyway, the point is how sad, cynical and untrustworthy the post-steroid era has made most all fans.  Sure the record books will forever be tainted and every time we talk about the home run king we’ll be forced to do it with sidebars and footnotes, but I suppose thats the easy part.  What’s hard is being so snarling and derisive that instead of rooting for a guy like Bautista and allowing yourself to be amazed at the fantastical turnaround this guy managed this year you instead find yourself wondering out loud, “have they been in the lab creating a new clear and cream?”

Here’s to hoping that the magical home run hit last night became possible through one players hard work and diligence. And here’s to hoping it will dull the prickly edges of cynicism. 

To quote our friend Aristotle again, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Congratulations Jose and heres to doing it the right way... hopefully.