Sunday, October 26, 2008

Youkilis Honored, Manny Humanized

MLB handed out the Hank Aaron award today. This award is voted on by fans to honor the best offensive player in each league. National League honors were given to Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramirez, and American League honors were handed out to none other than Kevin Youkilis.

In February of this year
, I pointed out how Youkilis' bat has improved every year with the Red Sox. This year, we finally saw Youkilis become an elite offensive force. The gold glove first baseman hit .312 with 29 home runs and 115 RBI.

In other news today, Bob Hohler of the Boston Globe reminds us that Manny wasn't all bad. When he wasn't driving in 100 runs or hitting postseason home runs, he had his moments when he was a good teammate. In 2003, he sat out the final game of the season to ensure that Bill Mueller would win the batting title.

Speaking of "The Professional", earlier this month he admitted that he's itching to suit up again. Mueller's 38 and barely has any cartilage left in his knees, but wouldn't it be great to see him in uniform just one more time? Perhaps the Red Sox could offer him a symbolic invitation to Spring Training so he could retire with the Red Sox, like the Yankees did with Jeff Nelson last year.

2 comments:

Peter N said...

Youk was in Hartford Saturday for the UCONN/Cincy (his alma mater) football game. Cincy got killed!

Olde Town Glory said...

That's just more aggression for him to channel into next year : )