Jayservation: 003/2008

I was watching Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN tonight and the announcers were discussing Jose Reyes, shortstop for the New York Mets. He is the latest model of “Mr. Excitement” in professional baseball and they were commenting on how much fun he has playing the game (which is not too difficult when you make over $4 million to play a game but I will try to back off the cynicism for a brief moment). Then they told the story about how he was ten years old when he started playing baseball in the Dominican Republic and he used “an egg crate for a glove and an orange for a baseball.” My initial, obnoxious American response was to question the authenticity of the story, wondering if it was some Latin version of a Monty Python skit. All I could picture was a little boy asking to get in the latest pick-up game at the dusty, litter-strewn field only to be rebuffed by the other boys because his “glove” was too small—it was a 12 crate and not an 18. “You can’t catch a tangerine with that glove, Jose, much less an orange!” Oops, I forgot I said I would back off the cynicism. I suck.