But what about the kids who don’t get big money and never make it, or the kids who don’t end up good enough to get a contract at all?
“Just think about all the time you have to sacrifice,” Prado said. “So education is not a priority. Unfortunately, it is [too bad].”
Prado feels blessed he was able to stay in school as long as he did. He also feels blessed that he was good enough to play for 13 seasons in the major leagues, through 2018. While he was never one of the game’s biggest stars, the amount of money in professional baseball meant he had earned more than $77 million in his career.
Prado also felt fortunate to sign with the Atlanta Braves, and to come up in an organization that taught him about American baseball.
“They taught me how to play the game right and respect the game,” he said. “As much as this game gives you, it can take it away. It looks cool to celebrate success, but my message [to younger players] is I hope you celebrate when you struggle, too. I had a hitting coach in rookie ball who played 11 years in the big leagues. His name is Sixto Lezcano. He came up to me one day, out of nowhere, and told me if you ever make it to the big leagues, make sure you buy a big bed, like a mattress.”
“A mattress?” Prado asked.
“Yeah, just get a big one, a cozy one,” Lezcano told him. “So when you fall from way up there, you don’t hit yourself too hard on the way down.”
Prado wasn’t a flashy player by today’s standards. But he liked to celebrate his success a little, as he puts it. And when he was in the big leagues and he eventually and inevitably had a year when things didn’t go as well, he understood exactly what Lezcano had been trying to tell him all those years before.
He tries to pass that message on.
“I don’t think they listen,” he said with a chuckle. “But to be honest, baseball has given me so much, for me and my family, that the least I can do is give young kids advice so they don’t make the same mistakes I made in the past.”
And when Prado talks about the major-league players he respects, he cites the same players an old-school scout might mention.
Buster Posey, he said. Or Kris Bryant.
“Former MVP,” he said. “Just hit the ball and run. There’s a few guys. They look so much better as a star. You see a guy who is a five-tool guy, but it’s even better when they do everything right. It’s more of an impact for me.”
Prado was so taken with what he was taught in the Braves organization that he said he even applied it to his life away from baseball, to what he would teach his daughters.
“Respect,” he said. “And they have to earn my respect.”
And that’s a sentiment that should mean the same thing in any culture.
13. “You Should Hear the Screams” for Javier Baez
SO IF MARTIN PRADO, BUSTER POSEY, AND KRIS Bryant play the game right, does that mean Javier Baez plays it wrong?
Baez flips his bat. Baez will wave his arms. Baez still shows the emotion of a kid, which is probably why so many kids love him. When they surveyed the players at the 2018 Little League World Series, Baez led the way in mentions as the kids’ favorite major leaguer.
As Cubs radio announcer Ron Coomer said, “You should hear the screams when he comes to the plate at Wrigley.”
You should also hear how much praise Baez gets from more traditional baseball guys—guys like his Cubs teammate Kris Bryant.
“He makes the hard stuff look easy,” Bryant said. “That’s why a lot of people like him… including me.”
Bryant went on to explain that while there’s no chance he would add the flair to his game that Baez constantly has in his, both ways of playing are perfectly acceptable. The flair is fine, if it’s natural, which it obviously is with Javier Baez.
“I just be me,” Baez said. “It’s me out there.”
Bryant’s point was if he tried to play the game the way Baez does, it wouldn’t be genuine and it wouldn’t look right. But the same would be true if you forced Baez to play the game the way Bryant does.
What makes it work is that in the bigger picture, Baez does some very important things the way Bryant and Prado and so many others do. He plays hard and he plays with respect.
“I respect people who respect me,” Baez said. “That’s the way you get respect from everybody. A lot of people talk about how flashy I am out there, but I’m obviously not trying to show anybody up or any team up. It’s just the way I play. It’s my style, the way I learned to play the game.”
There’s room in baseball for that, especially for a player as talented as Baez. There’s a need in baseball for it, in an era when those who run the sport are more and more understanding of the need to appeal to the next generation.
Baez can be that link, because while he plays with the flair and joy of a kid, he also plays with the instincts and the drive of the best who came before him.
“He could play baseball in any era,” said Jason Heyward, a Cubs teammate whose own demeanor is more like Bryant’s than it is like that of Baez. “He’s a baseball player. He plays all over, plays it hard and tries to play it smart.”
That’s all anyone can ask. That’s all anyone should ask.
Sure, Baez flips his bat after big hits. Sure, you’ll see him with one hand in the air while the other is slapping a tag on a runner at second base.
Sure, he plays with flair.
“Flair is in the game now,” former Cubs hitting coach Chili Davis said. “It’s part of the game.”
There’s no doubt that part of the game has changed in the years since 1981, when Davis debuted as a 21-year-old outfielder with the San Francisco Giants. Part of the reason, as he said, is that the players in the game have changed.
Davis was born in Jamaica but from the age of 10 grew up in Los Angeles. And he was one of only two foreign-born players among the 35 who appeared in games for the ’81 Giants. The other was Rennie Stennett, a Panamanian-born infielder who appeared in just 38 games.
Compare that to the 2018 Cubs, who featured players born in eight countries. Baez himself was born and raised in Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking U.S. territory with its own baseball culture, before moving to Florida when he was 12 years old.
He learned to play the game with enthusiasm and emotion, but he also learned to play it in a way that would be respected by everyone in the major leagues. Asked to name the players he followed most as a kid, Baez first lists Manny Ramirez, who he loved watching hit, and then Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
Like Ramirez, he attacks pitches and isn’t afraid to show how happy he is when he connects. Like Jeter, he respects opponents and earns that respect back.
And like A-Rod, he showed great self-confidence at a young age. Baez joined his brother and some cousins in getting the Major League Baseball logo tattooed on the back of his neck when he was still in high school. Also in high school, he once responded to a high-and-tight pitch by pointing to the opposing dugout and saying, “You’re going to pay.”
A scout who was watching said Baez swung so hard at the next pitch that his back knee went to the ground. As for the ball, it ended up on a laser-like path headed for the scoreboard.
Baez still plays with that same enthusiasm, and while he’s a lot less likely to point a finger at the opposition, he’ll still have a right finger in the air as he slaps down a tag with the glove on his left hand. He’ll still flip a bat if he hits the ball a long way, or call himself safe as he slides across the plate.
“He’s not trying to show anyone up,” Davis said. “He’s not. If he was trying to show anyone up, he would be excessively upset when a guy gets him out. And he’s not. He understands the game, and he plays the game.
“But when he’s successful, he enjoys it.”
When Davis played, hitters showed enjoyment at the risk of a fastball in the ribs the next time up. That’s much less likely to happen now, alth
ough not unheard of, as Ronald Acuna Jr. can attest (more on that later). What’s more likely is what happened with Baez and Amir Garrett, the Cincinnati Reds pitcher who gave up Baez’s first career grand slam in May 2017.
Baez didn’t flip his bat, but he did take an extra second or two before making his way around the bases.
A year later, almost to the day, Baez and Garrett met again, and this time Garrett struck him out. And this time, it was Garrett who showed he enjoyed his success, clenching his fist and shouting at Baez on his way off the field, letting out what Cubs manager Joe Maddon later described as “a Lion King’s kind of roar.” The benches emptied, but not much more came of it.
“I love Javy Baez as a player,” Garrett told reporters that day. “I love the way he plays the game as a player, but if you’re going to dish it, sometimes you have to take it. That’s how it goes. There are no hard feelings. It is over with.”
Was it really over? Maybe so. Baez and Garrett met again three months later, with Baez connecting for another home run. His celebration was nothing out of the ordinary, and Garrett had no visible reaction.
Baez said he knows the limits, what will and won’t get him in trouble with opponents. It’s fair to think he would have adapted to any era he played in, as Heyward said. It’s also obvious he fits this era, and that baseball can use his more flamboyant style to appeal to those who might find parts of the game boring.
At Wrigley Field, every Baez at-bat is met with youthful screams from the crowd. The kids love the way he plays. That’s clear.
What’s interesting with Baez is that there doesn’t need to be a young/old divide, no battle between old school and new school. Players who don’t show nearly as much flair themselves can still appreciate Baez’s instincts for the game, and the fact he draws a line at showing up opponents.
He got to the major leagues when he was just 21, and like most young players he still had things to learn. Even in 2018, in Baez’s fifth major-league season, Maddon once pulled him from a game for failing to run hard to first base on a ground ball.
Baez admitted his mistake. And when he returned a day later with three hits including a home run, Maddon was smiling.
“He fessed up,” Maddon said. “He knew he screwed up. He admitted to it. He goes out there and shows why he’s one of the best players in the league.”
Other times, Baez’s teammates have told him when a bat flip seemed out of line.
“I think we know our limits,” he said. “When we do something we’re not supposed to do, a teammate will tell you. You’ve got to admit it if you were wrong. We’re not trying to show anybody up. If it happens, we talk about it and move on.”
Baez knows the kids are now watching him. He knows there will be many in the next generation who will want to play the way he plays.
“Everything keeps changing in the way that we play the game,” Baez said. “We keep learning different things up here, and hopefully kids keep learning. I started focusing when I was 12 and I just kept getting good at it.
“It’s me out there.”
And that’s a good thing.
14. Jose Urena, Keith Hernandez, and an Old-School View Fading Away
AS THE WIDESPREAD SUPPORT FOR JAVIER Baez shows, the unwritten rules don’t always need to lead to a young-old divide. Baez may well be the symbol of the younger generation of players and fans, but plenty of baseball people who count themselves as old school also are unabashed Baez fans.
And when Keith Hernandez spoke out in support of what Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Urena did in August 2018, plenty of old-school baseball people were on the other side of the argument.
Here’s what happened: Ronald Acuna Jr. was one of baseball’s biggest emerging stars in 2018, a 20-year-old five-tool player who helped transform a 90-loss team into one that won 90 games and topped its division. When he came to the plate to start the first inning in an August 15 game at Atlanta’s SunTrust Park, Acuna had become just the second player in the modern era to begin three straight games with a home run.
Urena was on the mound that night for the Marlins, and there was no chance he was going to allow Acuna to make it four straight. His first pitch of the game was a 97 mph fastball aimed directly at Acuna’s left side. It hit Acuna on the left elbow, forcing him out of the game—while Urena was ejected.
Urena had no reason to be upset with Acuna, other than the fact that the kid was good and that all three of those leadoff homers had come in the same series off his Marlins teammates. Acuna was 8-for-13 with four home runs and nine RBI in the three games.
In another era, it probably would have been accepted—or even mandated by a manager—that a pitcher would come inside on him, make him move his feet, make him uncomfortable. In this era, Urena was mostly condemned around the game, except by Hernandez.
Hernandez wasn’t even at the game. He was in Baltimore that night, calling the New York Mets game against the Orioles for the Mets’ SNY network. In the sixth inning, with the Mets leading 8–1, the discussion in the Mets broadcast booth went to the game in Atlanta and the pitch from Urena.
“You’ve lost three games, he’s hit three [leadoff] home runs, you’ve got to hit him,” Hernandez told Wayne Randazzo, who was doing play-by-play that night. “I’m sorry. People are not going to like that. You’ve got to hit him, knock him down… I mean, seriously knock him down if you don’t hit him.”
Hernandez was right on one thing. People didn’t like what he said.
“So by this way of thinking, Jacob deGrom should get drilled cuz he’s the hottest pitcher on the planet? NO!” tweeted Braves Hall of Famer Chipper Jones. “I’m old school just like this broadcaster, but these comments are waaay off base!”
Former major-league player and manager Bobby Valentine, speaking a day later on MLB Network, said, “If [Urena] was doing it intentionally, I think he should be banned from the sport. I think it’s the worst thing about our sport. Some day it’s going to kill someone. And I think it stinks.”
Hernandez didn’t back down from his comments, saying the next day he would have felt different if Urena had thrown the ball near Acuna’s head.
“Sometimes you have to brush people back,” he said on SNY. “I stand firmly by what I said, and I don’t think the pitch was that terrible.”
Hernandez said that if Acuna hadn’t lowered his elbow, the ball would have hit him on the side and it’s likely much less would have been said about it. He may be right about that. While many people were upset by the idea that Urena would throw at Acuna at all, it was the possibility of a great young player suffering a needless injury that got the most attention.
“What happens if they hit him there and it breaks his elbow and he’s done for the year?” Braves manager Brian Snitker asked. “With what we’re trying to accomplish here and where we’re at [in a pennant race], there’s no reason for that. I mean, this is a game.”
It is a game, and I’ve even heard pitchers who have admitted throwing at hitters express regret that they could have endangered someone’s career or even their life. But it’s also true that part of the pitcher’s job is to make the batter uncomfortable at the plate, and part of that usually involves making sure he doesn’t believe he can just take over the inner part of the plate.
When Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets went high and tight on Alcides Escobar of the Kansas City Royals with the first pitch of Game 3 in the 2015 World Series, Escobar and the Royals were upset. But just as many people accepted that the Royals had looked far too comfortable at the plate during wins in Games 1 and 2, and many of them gave Syndergaard credit for changing that right from the start in Game 3.
“I mean, I certainly wasn’t trying to hit the guy, that’s for sure,” Syndergaard said in his postgame press conference. “I just didn’t want him getting too comfortable. If they have a problem with me throwing inside, then they can meet me 60 feet, 6 inches away. I�
�ve got no problem with that.”
There were two differences between what Syndergaard did in the World Series and what Urena did that night in Atlanta.
First, Urena’s pitch to Acuna simply felt like sour grapes from a pitcher tired of watching a great player beat up on his team. Syndergaard’s, as he said, was more about strategy, about putting a thought in the opponent’s head that they couldn’t dig in at the plate.
The other point is that Urena actually did hit Acuna and risked seriously injuring him (fortunately, nothing was broken and Acuna was back in the Braves lineup the next day). Syndergaard threw his 97.8 mph fastball to the backstop. It was up and in, but Escobar didn’t have any problem getting out of the way.
Major League Baseball agreed there was a big difference. Syndergaard remained in the game, pitching the Mets to their only win in that World Series. Urena was not only ejected, but was also suspended for six games.
Syndergaard was within the rules, written and unwritten, as they are applied in the modern game. Urena’s actions broke the rules, as administered by MLB, and also today’s version of the unwritten rules, as proven by the statements by Jones, Valentine, and many others.
There was a time it was different. Most pitchers of yesteryear didn’t actually hit many more batters than the pitchers of today—Bob Gibson and Nolan Ryan averaged fewer than 10 hit batters a season—but most hitters who played in earlier eras tell stories of being thrown at after having success.
“When I came up, guys would throw at you if you hit a couple home runs or got a couple hits off them,” said Chili Davis, who debuted with the San Francisco Giants in 1981 and went on to an 18-year career. “They wanted to try to intimidate.”
Davis stayed in the game after retiring as a player, becoming one of the most respected hitting coaches. He doesn’t like everything about how the game has changed, but he never did like the idea of being thrown at simply because he was hitting well.
“If you can’t get me out, walk me,” Davis said. “When you start throwing at people and doing stuff like that, then you’re taking people’s careers into your own hands. That’s not acceptable, especially with the money out there.”
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