HoraceClarke66: One Man Stood Tall

 

This started off as a riff on something the estimable Kevin wrote the other day, about how no one saw what a disaster the Giancarlo acquisition was going to be.

I’m afraid that’s not correct. One man did. One man saw what an utter disaster that move was, what a millstone Stanton—seen here the night he picked up a Grammy for his smoking rendition of Robert Johnson's, "I Believe I Will Dust My Broom"—would be from the moment that deal was announced.

Not me! I had visions of the Twin Towers hitting 125 home runs between them and countless championships, dancing in my head.

I should have known I was wrong because the last time I had such visions—putting aside certain LSD experiments—was when the Yanks acquired J-Lo’s ex and I actually said out loud: “We’re going to win the next seven World Series.”

Of course, now I would pay cash money for anyone who could net us the 6 division titles and 1 world championship we won with the face of male make-up.

But I digress.

The man who called his shot on Stanton? Our Dauntless Leader, of course: Alphonso, from his all-seeing eye in the Fortress of Solitude, or do I have that mixed up?

I don’t know how he did it, but Alphonso took a close look and decided that contract would drag us down to hell. Maybe it was the 30-plus games missed a year that Stanton had already amassed at age 27. Maybe he actually watched Stanton play, unlike most of this town’s sportswriters.

But whatever it was, he saw just what a poison pill Derek Jeter, a GM who actually knows something about baseball, had slipped us with the Former Slugger Formerly Known as Mike.

The players on the Marlins we should have been trying to pry loose were Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto. But we didn’t. Because Brain knew better.

To date, Giancarlo has missed 552 games early in this, his 11^th full season of play. Mickey Mantle, the most famously injured player in the history of the game, missed 131 games in his first, full 11 seasons.

When you are injured more than four times as often as Mickey Mantle, something is wrong. 

Just what that is, I have my own theories—but this post is already long enough.

Let me say for now, I completely endorse El Duque’s—Peerless Leader’s!—guidelines regarding criticisms of the players. I don’t think this is about the days when men were men, or about the money. I wouldn’t have turned down a nickel of what Giancarlo was offered, and neither would anyone here. 

There are other, systematic things that are very, very wrong. But all I want to reiterate is…No one saw the Stanton mess coming? You’re wrong, McGee! One man stood tall. Or at least, slumped tall with a cool highball on his lawn furniture.

You heard it here first.