Movin' On Up (The Right Way)

On an easy summer evening in Boston, my friend (and fellow blogger) Shuman and I made our way to legendary Fenway Park to see the second game in a 4-game set against the cellar dwelling Texas Rangers. There was no element of heated rivalry that accompanies a Red Sox/Yankees game, nor was there the tension that might go along with a late-September game between two teams vying for one playoff spot. It was just a sunny Saturday at the end of June and seemingly just another game in the 162-game marathon that is a major league season.

However, after arriving at the park just before first pitch (Blog note: We left from his house nearly 2 hours in advance, but Shuman is possibly the worst driver ever and we practically ended up on Landsdowne Street fighting all the traffic and trying to find parking.), I immediately noticed that Coco Crisp, the streaking Red Sox CF, was out of the lineup. In that instant, a huge grin spread across my face as I saw that batting in the No. 9 hole was none other than #46 Jacoby Ellsbury.

Now for most fans outside of Red Sox Nation, Ellsbury’s promotion from Triple-A Pawtucket is about as deserving of headline news as Fifi the poodle winning the Tri-County Dog Show. Nevertheless, for every fan sitting in their uncomfortable wooden-backed seats inside historic Fenway Park, it was a special night. It’s not everyday that you can say that you saw the first big league game of a future star, but in Ellsbury’s case (who, by the way, is the #1 rated Red Sox prospect and the #33 rated prospect in all of baseball), his future stardom is more than likely.

Admittedly, that first game didn’t get off to the start I’m sure everyone (especially Ellsbury) had hoped. In the 2nd inning, Ellsbury chopped one off home plate that appeared to be foul, but Rangers catcher Gerald Laird sprang up, grabbed the ball, and tagged Ellsbury out before he even left the batters box.

For a player like Ellsbury who is noted for his speed (He was once clocked in the 4.2 second range on his 40-yard dash, a time that would make even the fastest NFL cornerbacks to be eating Jacoby’s dust), getting tagged out while still standing in the box will not be a normal occurrence. It took only a few innings of waiting though for the fans to see that speed firsthand. Stepping up to the plate, Ellsbury grounded to Michael Young at short and took off. On what should have been a routine ground ball out, Ellsbury flew down the line and beat out the throw for his first major league hit. How perfect is that?

That single left me searching for superlatives to sufficiently define his speed. Phenomenally fast? Outrageously fast? Michael Johnson-ly fast? It was unreal. In the split second between Ellsbury landing on the bag and 1B umpire Jeff Kellogg making and emphatic ‘SAFE’ signal, the stadium was deafeningly silent only to erupt in all-out euphoria. You would have thought the Sox just won the pennant. The atmosphere in the stadium was absolutely electric. By legging out a normally routine play, Ellsbury turned a mid-June, ho-hum game into pennant race environment in the few seconds that it took him to zip down the first baseline.

In the days following his debut 1-for-4 performance on June 30, Ellsbury has started three more games, batting .286 in 14 total at-bats. The kid is certainly holding his own. Although this is most likely a short-term arrangement and Ellsbury can expect to be shipped back to Triple-A soon after the All-Star game as Curt Schilling and others return from the DL, last Saturday’s game and his subsequent performances with the big club certainly prove that Ellsbury belongs. And what’s more, he’s done it the right way. No over inflated ego of a top young prospect (In response to a reporter asking if he was expecting to get called up “I didn't want to put a timeline on myself. I knew that if I went out and played hard, continued to improve -- that's the biggest thing, continued to improve -- that things were going to happen.”), no checkered personal history (See: Elijah Dukes and/or 75 percent of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals), and no possible steroid allegations (listed at a generous 6’1” 185 lbs., Ellsbury looks like a little kid out there).

All in all, for every kid who sleeps with a new mitt under his mattress and hops into his mom’s minivan with a mesh hat and a locally sponsored team uniform -- personally, I touted the maroon of Patrick Pontiac -- Ellsbury is living proof that the major league dream comes true. As he said, hard work and continued improvement led to the fulfillment of his dream, not steroids and corked bats.

On second thought, maybe Ellsbury’s first few games in the bigs should be headline news. It would certainly be a breath of fresh air.