sports, man. *sigh
every so many years, a player comes along (i am looking at you, tim hudson, lebron, mike vick, ichiro, julio jones,
it's not prerequisite for said player to play on one of my favorite teams. obviously, it helps that i am connected with and to the braves and alabama football on a more intimate level than most other squads, but, as you can see from my list above, percentages are just as good that my man-interest will come from other places.
jordan schafer was different than most on my list, because he wasn't nearly as recognizable (if recognizable at all) to the casual fan of his sport. i caught wind of schafer about four years ago after baseball prospectus named him as the top prospect in the braves organization. so, for sure, he wasn't a diamond in the rough, but he was, at the very least, a diamond in the minor leagues, and no one has time to care about minor league baseball.
i tracked schafer over the course of 2008 at random intervals, just making sure he was progressing through the system as he was projected. sure enough, he was. he performed well enough in 2008 to get an invite to the braves spring training camp in march of 2009. the trip to camp was meant as nothing more as an introduction to "the show", expectations being that schafer would get 25-50 at-bats and they'd then send him down to triple-a to start the season. of course, a funny thing happened.
jordan schafer set the grapefruit league on fire. for the better part of the month long exhibition season, his batting average hovered just under .400. his obp was close to an unthinkable .500. after two weeks, he was playing on the "a" team of the split squads so the braves brass could see how he would perform against better pitchers. his average didn't dip. he kept getting two hits a game. every game. stole a base every other day. stories started circulating that he might be the defensive heir apparent to andruw jones (arguably the best defensive center fielder of the last 25 years). he had speed to burn. a massive arm. judged the ball well off bats and got great jumps.
as the spring neared conclusion, bobby cox had no choice. consensus was that schafer was not only the best centerfielder in spring, but put on the best display of tools and talent of any player on the team (remember, the team then and now includes two future hall of famers in chipper and mccann). with a week left, jordan schafer was named the opening day starter for the atlanta braves in centerfield. it was incredible.
i was ecstatic. baseball is littered with stories of can't miss prospects that miss. baseball is just so hard. too many things are required of an every day player to master to even make it into the big leagues, much less stay there, much less thrive there, much less be an all-star, much less be an all-timer. you can have all the tools in the world and just not get it. you can get nailed in the head with 90 mph fastball and never have the mental strength to get back in the box. you can get stuck behind a guy in your own system and waste prime years in places like birmingham or durham or pawtucket (glorious, right?). get nicked up and lose part of your timing that came natural for the first 20 years of your life and the player is never the same. so many things that can and do go wrong. obviously, the same logic can be applied to any of the professional sports leagues in this country, but the sport of baseball, especially hitting a baseball, is so much muscle memory and repetition and strategy and experience that i don't know if it's not the toughest nut to crack to become a star.
make no mistake, jordan was no star. not yet. but he had made it through the minors and into the majors with a quickness.
what happened next is documented aplenty here. first major league at-bat? home run. team wins. kevin o'kelley loses his mind. four games in, schafer hurts his wrist. bobby cox loses his mind. rather than letting his young gun heal, he keeps trotting him out there. schafer strikes out. a fucking ton. kevin o'kelley gets cancer. schafer gets sent down. the cosmos connects kevin o'kelley's and jordan schafer's redemption and recovery stories together with a string i created in my own imagination.
yada, yada, yada, (two years later) schafer gets flipping traded for a light-hitting centerfielder who steals bases (like schafer), who bats left-handed (like schafer), who covers a lot of ground in center (like schafer), who has a cannon for a right arm (WAIT A SECOND, no he doesn't. he doesn't have near the arm schafer has). the light-hitting centerfielder is considered an "upgrade" from schafer even though advanced metrics that i've seen only value the new guy worth one, MAYBE two wins above the schafer he's replacing.
schafer is sent to die in houston. given up on by the organization that once was breeding him to be a star.
other than the cancer/redemption thing, i don't know, really, why i hitched my wagon to jordan schafer the way that i did. i loved watching him play. i lived and died with every one of his at-bats. truth be told, i think it's more fun to watch sports when you are especially invested in one particular player, a "sun" for your fandom to orbit. such was the case with julio and alabama. i love alabama football, but this year has a totally different feel for me. i know that i'll root for alabama to win every game, but i also know that i don't have "that guy" that i've been tracking since he was a junior in high school who is now "my guy" that i'll root hardest for as he takes the field this fall. "that guy" who was going to be "my guy" ripped up his knee before practice officially started. i haven't recovered yet (rip, dee hart. you're likely never to be the same). jordan was my braves "sun". i tried making the heyward/julio thing work, but it turns out that heyward kind of sucks. he may still be great one day, but my fairweather fandom has turned away from him. i am okay with him not being in the line-up if it gives the braves a better chance to win. i never felt that way about schafer.
schafer being in houston now won't make me an astros fan. it'll just make me sad. i can't watch the astros every day unless i pay for the extra innings package. i am not going to pay for the extra innings package.
what it does is presses the reset button on my love for the braves in a way that'll take a couple years and a few young prospects that i can make into something bigger than they are to get back.
in the meantime, i'll keep being really mean towards derek lowe on twitter in the hopes that i can #reversejinx him into being a relevant pitcher again. i'll keep putting chipper in my fantasy line-up and cutting myself with tiny razors every time it's the wrong move. i'll keep telling everyone that will listen that jv and "billy" kimbrel are the best back-end in baseball. even though i jumped off his boat two months ago, i'll keep pointing back to my prediction that uggla was going to be an all-star, which means i totally "believed" in him all along. i'll keep hoping the phillies lose every game even though they never lose any games, because that's what a braves fan does. wish injuries and ill-will upon the phillies.
where were you when you heard about jordan schafer being traded? the answer to that question will stick with me every bit as much as "where were you when you heard about the first plane hitting the tower?" (draw your own conclusions on what you think that says about how worthless a human being i am). in an ironic kick to my crooked teeth, i was in the sanctuary during sunday morning worship, a place i had told myself couldn't get any worse. burn. (i kid because i love!) two friends texted me that twitter was blowing up with the news. when i saw it was all true, i shared it with my pew. they frowned to mirror my frown. they tried to pick me up. "new guy" will be great, they said.
aw, shucks. maybe he will.
but he won't be jordan schafer. when the cosmos connected our narratives (in my head) in the summer of 2009, i never imagined that my letting go of my daily fear of dying would also mean i would have to give up my jordan. the universe has a cruel, cruel sense of closure. i wish i saw it coming. maybe it wouldn't have hurt so badly.
to jordan schafer, thanks for being there. i made you out to be more than a ballplayer.
you were never more than a ballplayer.
1 comment:
Poor Kevin. You are a throwback to the 50's and 60's before the Reserve Clause was overthrown. (Every MLB player should send at least 1% of his paycheck to Lou Brock.) When I followed a team growing up, they fielded the same players year after year. Yeah, everyone loved/hated the Yankees, but they were great for us kid fans. A trade was Earth shaking for the fans and made front page news. Now, I have to look at the Braves' starting lineup every Spring and do several whodats? On top of that, by the time I've really gotten into a player that I hope the Braves will have for the next 10 years (e.g. Jair Jurrgens), I read that Scott Boras is his agent and there's no way the Braves will re-sign him come Free Agent time. It is what it is. I watch the Braves and cheer hard, but I don't live and die with them. It's a business...
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