Make It Look Easy

[Centerfield]

Watched the replay last night. The coolest thing about the Cano throw home was how casually he did it. It looked like he was just flipping the ball back to the pitcher. I wonder if this is part of why he is polarizing. He makes it look so easy, some don't appreciate how good of a play that was. In a way he's like Beltran. Beltran also made things look so easy that people didn't understand how great he was.



I think Cano is the Make-It-Look-Easy-est player we've had since Beltran. Though Cespedes has some of that too. Robin Ventura was also super smooth in the field.



On the other side of the spectrum, the two greatest Mets were strongly in the Takes-a-Ton-of-Effort camp. Piazza looked like he had pulled a muscle every time he hit a home run. And Tom Seaver pitched like he was trying to throw a ball through a brick wall.



Off the top of my head:



MILE-iest Mets

1. Beltran

2. Cano

3. Glavine



TaToEs

1. Piazza

2. Seaver

3. Ordonez

[Edgy MD]

Olerud made it look easy.



Kingman made it look hard.



And, of course, Wilmer made moving his body look hard. And looking at Asdrubal Cabrera was like watching Earl Campbell play football. He looked like he needed to be taken out of the game immediately after every play.

[MFS62]

Some guys could and some couldn't.

When I was a kid, the reporters would say that Mays made the easy plays look hard and DiMaggio made the hard plays look easy.

There may have been some subtle racism in there that I was too young to understand, but when when I saw them play (yes, I saw DiMaggio at the end of his career), that seemed accurate.



Later

[TransMonk]

Edgy MD wrote: Olerud made it look easy.

This was my initial thought, too.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Ordonez made it look easy most of the time. I think he might have made some hard plays look harder but he could play.



Muffy made it look hard

Lagares made it look easy

Leiter made it look hard

[Valadius]

Dickey made it look like he was constipated.



https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2308798349/DickeyFace_400x400.png>

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, Dickey made it look like it was torture.

[Centerfield]

Agreed on Olerud.



I disagree on Rey. He was very smooth, but also incredibly acrobatic and athletic. When I watched him I thought "Omg. How can anyone do that?"



Whereas with Beltran, I'd watch him run down a ball and think "Outfielding is easy".

[Willets Point]

Bartolo Colon made things look easy because he was always so damned relaxed.

[smg58]

I always thought Jay Payton was an underrated centerfielder; he got to just about everything and never looked all-out in the process.

[Frayed Knot]

My response to MI in another thread:

Frayed Knot wrote: =metirish post_id=5575 time=1553871243 user_id=72]...Cano makes everything look effortless (as a MFY I classed this as lazy

Oh make no mistake, both conditions can be, and often are, true.

There is both an effortless ease about him AND more than a bit of a dog at times too.

[Edgy MD]

Jeter was just the quintessence of making the easy plays look easy. And the novice plays look heroic.

[Centerfield]

Edgy MD wrote: Jeter was just the quintessence of making the easy plays look easy. And the novice plays look heroic.

Hi. I'm Derek Jeter. I catch the ball in fair territory, take two steps, then dive into the stands. I'm awesome.

[G-Fafif]

Watching Beltran made me get what was said about DiMaggio. The graceful play in center, that is.

[Frayed Knot]

The old line about DiMaggio is that he never made a mistake on the field. Presumably that included stuff such as correct routes to the ball, throwing to the right base, when to take the extra base, etc.

Of course those quotes always came from DiMaggio acolytes speaking about how awesome DiMaggio was so it's tough for those who didn't see him to know how they rate on the accuracy meter.

Doesn't mean he wasn't great and graceful, only that there was usually a degree of hagiography involved in discussions de DiMag.



On those rare occasions (or ocassions if you prefer) when someone would suggest that Joe D wouldn't rate with the greater athleticism of more modern players, such as saying that he never dove for balls,

the retort would always come back that he always got such great jumps and was in such great position that "he didn't have to". Of course one could suggest that an OF who got great jumps and took great

routes and caught balls with athletic dives and leaps would be even better ... but I think those points were put down with some version of "[insert number] Rings!!"

[Willets Point]

But Dom DiMaggio was an even better defensive player, or so I've heard.

[MFS62]

Willets Point wrote: But Dom DiMaggio was an even better defensive player, or so I've heard.

That may be true, but t was hard to judge because he played half of his games in Fenway Park. Less distance to run (and throw), but he had to play tricky angles of caroms off the CF wall. Don't forget that when Joe played CF in the original YS, it was 402' to left center, and center ranged from 457' to 461'. - lots of ground to cover. In those days "strong up the middle" meant defensively and there were many good field, little hit center fielders who played a long time - Curt Flood, Bobby Gene Smith and Bill Virdon come to mind. The ones like Willie, Mickey and the Duke who could hit were the exception rather than the rule. But of those, Joe had the most ground to cover and he did make it look easy. And that was at the end of his career.

BTW, I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan, hardly a DiMaggio acolyte.



Later

[Edgy MD]

DiMaggio was the model for Derek Jeter in massaging the narrative of his legacy. And I put the "Joe DiMaggio made the hard plays look easy" line in the same bag as "Derek Jeter makes every one around him better."



The first statement was a way of throwing an unquantifiable factor into the mix to try to plausibly make the argument that DiMaggio was as good as or better than Ted Williams, when he clearly wasn't by any fair measurement.



The second statement was a way of throwing an unquantifiable factor into the mix to try to plausibly make the argument that Jeter was as good as or better than Alex Rodriguez, when he clearly wasn't by any fair measurement.



I not only put them in the same bag, but it's a bag I don't really like to open.

[Fman99]

I think about guys who, at least while hitting, made it look easy, and I think of Straw, turning on a fastball and just with that wrist flick sending it out into space. I can't remember anyone else who did it like that before or since in a Mets uni.

[LWFS]

Easy: Straw, Keith, McReynolds

Hard: Dykstra, Carter, Wally

[G-Fafif]

Swoboda made it look hard, but boy was it worth the effort.



Agee, too, come to think of it.

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: I not only put them in the same bag, but it's a bag I don't really like to open.

Then don't.

But (channeling Fmann), if your tool was getting lubricated by Marilyn Monroe, you'd be smooth, too.



Later

[Edgy MD]

>>> "So, what are they talking about on the Crane Pool, Dear?"



>>> >>> "Well, to be honest ... um ... my cock."

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Edgy MD wrote: Wilmer made moving his body look hard.

On the bases and in the field for sure. But he had one of the easiest looking swings in club history.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Ordonez made it look easy most of the time. I think he might have made some hard plays look harder but he could play.

I'll tell you something that I think about Ordonez, apropos to your comment quoted above, that I've kept to myself for more than 20 years. I've never discussed this publicly until now.



I've seen a lot of Ordonez up close. I was a full season ticket holder at Shea for many years, including Rey's entire Mets stint. I had excellent seats and I could pick up elements of the game that you couldn't sense from watching on TV. Once in a while, I'd sit right behind home plate, in the first few rows of Shea, sometimes in the very first row. On those days, I had a better view than the view the actual players had from sitting in the dugout. There's no question that Rey was a defensive whiz, quick agile and acrobatic. But I'm convinced that many of his highlight reel plays were staged. Fraudulent. I'm convinced that Rey, on occasion, would intentionally hang back on a play for just the right amount of time, a second, or a microsecond, so that he could purposely make a routine play look outstanding. And he could pull it off because he was so mobile at shortstop. I'm convinced that I'm right in my observations and nobody will be able to talk me out of this. And then, taking in the whole Rey Ordonez experience, I believe that he had the personality consistent with this type of behavior. Like throwing a hissy fit whenever Valentine gave him the, unfortunately, rare day off, as if he was Lou Gehrig or something. Like wasting an out trying to bunt the runner over to second with the pitcher due up next -- so that he wouldn't be charged with an official at bat because of the sacrifice rule unless the bunt rolled in such a way that he could beat out the throw to first and he'd then be credited with a single. What a selfish thing to do -- making an out on purpose to preserve his crappy batting average and leaving it to a sub .100 hitter to drive in the run.





Off-topic -- I started to write this post on my smartphone. It took me about 10 minutes to get through the first sentence and a half. I think I had to correct every single word at least twice, and fix words I hadn't even intended to type because there's some wacky spellchecking auto-filling going on there. I finally gave up in frustration and wrote this post on my PC. I don't know how anyone can type on those smartphones. You need fingers like the size of the fingers on a GI Joe doll to type on those things.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I'm replying on my phone using voice see if this

[Edgy MD]

And that was the last anyone heard from Johnny.

[A Boy Named Seo]

No matter the situation, Familia always looks like he's on mile 24 of a marathon.

[Fman99]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: No matter the situation, Familia always looks like he's on mile 24 of a marathon.

I can attest, mile 24 is a rough one.

[Edgy MD]

=Fman99 post_id=5623 time=1553913765 user_id=86]
I think about guys who, at least while hitting, made it look easy, and I think of Straw, turning on a fastball and just with that wrist flick sending it out into space. I can't remember anyone else who did it like that before or since in a Mets uni.