During the winter, when Fernando Tatis Jr. he was not working to try to accomplish his goal of becoming the best baseball player in history, he spent his free time working on his farms in the Dominican Republic. He rode horses and fed chickens, cared for lemons and hunted ducks. Tatis Jr. could be the flourishing face of baseball – the officialization of his 14-year contract and $ 340 million with the San Diego Padres was made on February 22 – but he is very happy to get dirty doing this kind of work. every now and then. More than once this offseason, Tatis Jr. he squatted on the ground, milking cows.
If the idea that Tatis Jr. play field pawn baffles you, well, get ready for more. It’s not all loot and dreadlocks. If 2019 was the introduction and 2020 the break, 2021 is poised to be the Year of Tatis Jr .: the full bloom of amazing talent the appeal goes far beyond baseball. Without disrespecting Mike Trout, who still holds the title of Best Player on the Planet, or Juan Soto, who is quickly securing the Best Hitter on the Planet, or Mookie Betts, who demonstrated the ability to make his a whole month when he stole October.
It’s one of those moments where everything aligns perfectly: the player, the team, the time. There will be triumphs and there will be impediments, and it’s all part of the hero’s journey, which, when imposed on a 22-year-old, may seem a little premature. May be. Probably so. But then, Tatis Jr. it is here, with all these things, because when you are presented with other challenges, other burdens, you have overcome them. And with each conquest comes a little more, this time, winning the Parents ’first championship or their first MVP award or doing the kind of things that only great players can historically accomplish.
Before that, he needed some time to return to the place where he grew up, Sant Pere de Macoris, the beach where he trains and the very modest gym where he lifts weights, the rivers of the whole country where nothing in the search for waterfalls. At its most basic, like this inimitable feeling of digging your hands into the ground and knowing that even in the middle of something dirty, you can find something beautiful.
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It’s a really nice time to be a baseball fan. It’s not just Tatis, Trout, Soto and Betts. Ronald Acuña Jr. shares qualities with all four. Luis Robert and Tim Anderson have their own dynamism. Jacob deGrom and Gerrit Cole are fighting a battle for mound supremacy as the Mets and Yankees ascend. Wander Franco is coming. The Parents and Los Angeles Dodgers could be the two best teams in baseball and will play 19 times this season and hopefully more in October. Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Francisco Lindor and Christian Yelich are suddenly the old bosses. Yelich is the most wrinkled in the group at 29 years old.
It’s also a really scary time to be a baseball fan. For the first time in a quarter of a century, job unrest is looming. This is not pessimism. Signs are everywhere. In conversations with players’ association and league officials, with players and owners. In the words of former Seattle Mariners president Kevin Mather, who, amid the commotion of a talk with a group of local Rotarians, said on the topic of labor relations, “I am very concerned about what will come in the future. “. And in the changing free agent market, the parties’ mistrust of each other and divergent views on the future of the sport.
Watching baseball in 2021, adoring baseball in 2021, doesn’t require thinking about what will happen after 2021, of course. There is something powerful in enjoying the moment, something in the idea that if the sky were falling, perhaps those who did not panic would be the most enlightened, because they are enjoying what is before them.
Nor is it so easy for others. There is anger, legitimate anger, just anger that this great game, these great players, can be sidelined for a valuable time in their careers, a time when they could do miraculous things and not be able to do it because of money fights. . That a new generation of homeowners who don’t understand the damage of a labor war is now leading teams, and that this generation of players is so tired of losing in collective bargaining that a fight is the inevitable conclusion.
And if this is, in fact, the case, if the drums of labor discord sound beyond the expiration on December 1 of the collective bargaining agreement, the accompanying music should be a eye-catching to savor the Year of Tatis Jr., the improvements in his batting turns and treasure his bold plays on the field and appreciate how he runs the bases and adores them in their entirety.
Tatis Jr. it resonates with a wide range of people, and particularly with a generation of children that baseball desperately needs, because that whole thing is equal to the sum of the parts, and each of those parts is stimulating. As heavy as Tatis Jr.’s appeal may be, with each epic flip bat and 3-0 swing in a beating game, another small part of baseball’s archaic past dies, the substance matches, it even surpasses style.
The best parts of Tatis Jr. they don’t come from an invented emotional reserve, but from a genuine passion for the game he’s playing, for the gifts they’ve given him. He doesn’t throw his bat for GIFs; he does it because he plays with emotion and passion, and the last thing the sport should do is regulate it. He doesn’t swing at 3-0 because he wants to set the other team on fire; he does it because sometimes a monolith deserves to fall, and if it’s him who helps remove the restrictions of the past in the game, he’s not here to argue.
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Fernando Tatis Jr. he smiles when compared to Lebron James and Patrick Mahomes.
Knowing what Tatis Jr. can do, knowing what he can be prevented from doing, could be the best reason of all for the union and the league to do everything in their power to avoid a work stoppage. Baseball certainly has its flaws, and those flaws also deserve revenge. But if the collateral damage from this is stealing time from Tatis Jr., Trout, Soto, Betts, Acuña, Robert, Anderson, deGrom, Cole, Franco, Harper, Judge, Lindor, Yelich and many others, then he deserves until the last moment the deluge of rage and anger that will accompany him.
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Fourteen years, in sport, is an eternity. In the 2007 season, 611 position players recorded at least one appearance on the plate. Today, 11 of them are still under contract with a Major League organization. So, to understand what the Parents did when committing to a player for almost a decade and a half, and to also understand why Tatis Jr. you would marry a team, you have to understand the player and how he thinks.
That, more than anything he does on the field, more than his appearance, he could be the most beautiful of Tatis Jr. He could have waited and chased all the money and become much richer. He didn’t. However, this is not the laudable part. If someone like Tatis Jr. prioritize money, you are entitled.
No, it’s that Tatis Jr. he reciprocated San Diego’s faith in him, his support, with his own. It is that all the Parents and their star illustrated that the relationship between player and team can be of mutual respect, admiration and benefit. It’s that the Fathers didn’t manipulate Tatis Jr.’s service time, as Mather managed to do with the Mariners ’best prospect, Jarred Kelenic. Is that San Diego never tried to switch to Tatis Jr., to end the most incendiary parts of his game. Parents don’t make fun of him when he says he wants to be the best player of all time; they surround him with championship-sized players, because they understand that part of the calculation is the success of the team.
This is how baseball can work. This is how baseball should work. Young players, the soul of the sport, receive a proportionate and fair pay. Teams trying to win are rewarded by players who appreciate the effort. Tatis Jr. he really cares about baseball, about cultivating it. This offseason, after a season of MVP caliber, he played for the Eastern Stars, his hometown team in the Dominican Winter League. Current stars don’t play winter ball. Tatis Jr. he felt it was his duty. As much as he wants to be the best, his main goal is for everyone to say that Fernando Tatis Jr. loves baseball.
And look where that took him. At 22, he is in the midst of the best team rivalry today in the sport with the Parents and Dodgers. It’s in the middle of a fascinating conversation about who you’d choose to start a franchise with: Tatis Jr., Soto, or Acuña. He has revived baseball discourse, though the truth is that no matter how much he embraces it, he doesn’t necessarily want it for himself. Baseball, he says, doesn’t need a single face.
Although, if he’s going to have one, he could do a lot worse than Tatis Jr. He is not shying away from responsibility. Sometimes it’s annoying, and sometimes it’s hard work, but he already knows it: getting a little dirty is just part of the journey.