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In Praise of the Jeff Reboulets of the World
Hidden behind the Cult of Celebrity are the people who do the work.
This article is only slightly about sports. It is mostly about life. Tonight, baseball, the second greatest sport, puts on its annual carnival, the All-Star Game. I’ve never been a fan of the All-Star Game. It always struck me as rather meaningless phony pretension. Only 70 of the roughly 1,800 major league players are in the game, which isn’t really a game, more a spectacle reflecting our society’s Cult of Celebrity.
At All-Star Game time, I think of Jeff Reboulet.
Why Jeff Reboulet? Well, I have always been a Twins fan, he had a cool ‘stache, he seemed a nice guy, but mostly because two quotes about him have long stuck in my mind.
The first was from around 1994, from then Twins manager, Tom Kelly. TK, as he was known, said something to the effect of, “Jeff isn’t a star on the team, he just goes out there and works his butt off anywhere I put him on the field.”
The second was from 1996, also from TK, after the Twins let him leave in free agency.
There are certain spokes in your wheel. When you take one of those out, the wheel doesn’t go so well. It’s tough to eliminate that kind of player. It’s a spot I didn’t have to worry…
