There’s a nagging paradox on the coronary heart of baseball — or any sport, actually — and it’s this: The aim of each single participant is to play the sport completely; but when they ever did, there would now not be any purpose for us to observe.
To the followers, perfection shouldn’t be solely boring, it’s ineffective. It defeats the aim of caring within the first place. The rationale that baseball is fascinating in any respect is as a result of it’s onerous, as a result of it will probably by no means be performed completely. The worth of sports activities shouldn’t be in watching perfection, however in watching gamers attempt to obtain perfection whereas inevitably failing, similar to the remainder of us do in actual life day-after-day.
Ceddanne Rafaela is a freak of a baseball participant. He’s able to persistently doing issues on a diamond that nobody else can do. Issues like this:
And this (there’s higher footage of this one on the market, clearly, however the fan cam provides a degree of realism to this play that makes it look much more spectacular):
These are jaw-dropping performs, every of them, and so they solely start to scrape the floor of Ceddanne’s defensive brilliance. And that’s why it got here as no shock to utterly anybody that, final night time, ‘Nuff Cedd was honored along with his first career Gold Glove Award, alongside along with his teammate Wilyer Abreu, who gained his second.
Final night time’s award gained’t be Ceddanne’s final. Barring one thing catastrophic, fifteen years from now Ceddanne can have collected a lot gold he may very well be solid as a Bond villain. The Gold Glove winners will likely be introduced, we’ll learn his identify within the press launch, and we’ll shrug our shoulders and say, “yeah, duh, clearly.” Ceddanne profitable the Gold Glove will develop into, dare I say it, boring.
That’s not say that the play on the sector itself will — when you can watch these clips above and really feel nothing, you’re hopeless as a baseball fan (I’ve already rewatched the second catch six occasions since I embedded it on this piece). However Ceddane’s arc as a fielder is already full: he’s the very best and he will likely be for fairly a while. There isn’t any grand wrestle in direction of perfection for him on the market in centerfield. That’s why I truly want watching Ceddanne hit. Actually, he could be my favourite hitter to observe in all of baseball.
Is {that a} loopy factor to suppose? Perhaps. He’s an extremely flawed hitter. He’s a hitter constructed of wiry energy and fast wrists and unbelievable hand-eye coordination — instruments that would make him among the best hitters within the sport… if not for one large, deadly flaw that stops him from attaining perfection. Nevertheless it’s that enormous flaw — his nearly complete incapacity to manage the strike zone — that makes me lean nearer to the TV each time he steps as much as the plate. Can he lastly lay off these sliders eight inches off the plate? Can he lastly power a pitcher to remain within the zone? If you watch Ceddanne hit, you’re watching somebody preventing their demons. What’s extra fascinating as a fan than that?
If he ever figures it out, Ceddy will develop into pretty much as good as anybody not named Shohei Ohtani. We noticed that ourselves this summer time. For 48 video games between Might 25 and July 22 — almost a 3rd of the season — Ceddanne was the fourth-best participant in all of baseball per fWAR, slashing .314/.341/.599 with 12 homers to go along with his near-perfect protection. We all know precisely what his ceiling is. And we all know precisely what demon he has to slay to succeed in it. Watching that battle play out over the subsequent 5 years goes to be riveting.
However within the meantime, watch this one once more:
A tremendous catch that was solely wonderful as a result of it began out imperfectly. Simply the way in which we prefer it.
