It's the little things

I give you this player's stats -

	BA	HR	RBI	OBP	SLG
2005	.317	33	90	.417	.598
Career	.306	414	1,186	.384	.575

and then I tell you the guy is only 30 years old... you have to admire this guy right? Fantastic career numbers, and a pretty special year so far in 2005.

And when we talk about star players doing the little things... we mean hustle, we mean running down to 1b on a towering pop-up, we mean playing every day when your team needs you regardless of the niggles...

And yet this star player continues to do "little things" that drive me crazy, and I think reveal the character flaw that stops us truly admiring his talent.

In a game earlier this week, our 'star' hit a ball to RF which required the RF to make up quite a bit of ground. The guy on 1b thought it was likely a hit, and broke hard, reaching 2b before realizing that the RF would make a catch and that he needed to retreat. But no worry, our star player saw what was developing, and as the ball was fired in by the RF he quite deliberately (he had two looks to make sure he had his angle right for goodness sake) got between the ball and the bag, letting the ball hit him, and killed the double play - all an accident clearly, as demonstrated by our star player putting his arms out wide in a "how did that happen" shrug...

And tonight, our star player goes in hard to 2b to make sure that he broke up the double play - personally I am not that big a fan of the clearout at 2b - but the opposition SS knew what was coming, so having made the force at 2nd, he stepped wide to the 1b side and prepared to throw to 1st. Again, our star player had thought about this - he reached out with his arm and tried to pull the SS's leg - this wasn't a trailing arm, he physically reached out and stretched to get him...

This is a genuine superstar of baseball, someone that in these troubled times we should be able to look at as a beacon of quality. But these little things that Alex Rodriguez continues to do in his effort to be a team player just continue to detract from his undoubted talent.