“…he just wouldn’t make that choice to run hard all the time. The reasons aren’t going to make sense. He might say his legs didn’t feel good, or he was playing every day and needed to save his energy. To me there was no acceptable answer.”
-Kevin Long
"I understand I get it. I was a major league player. There are times when you hit balls and you're frustrated as hell and you don't give it 100 percent. As long as you don't dog it down the line, what's the difference between 65 and 85 percent? Just run down the line. Sometimes that stuff is blown out of proportion.”
-Lloyd McClendon
Kevin Long, Yankees hitting coach, opened his mouth about Robinson Cano’s lack of hustle during his tenure with the Yankees. Cano’s new manager Lloyd McClendon of the Mariners fired back regarding Long’s comments. While the media is more focused on the argument between these two coaches, there is an underlying story that Mariners fans and Little League coaches across the nation should fear.
When a person starts playing baseball one of the first lessons they learn is hustle. That no matter the situation; whether you ground the ball to second base or hit a double in the gap, you need to run as hard as you can. Now I’ve never played a single MLB game in my life, not to mention 162 games in one season so I can’t attest to how tired a player might be on game 150. But as Long said, I don’t think there is an acceptable answer to not hustling.
McClendon on the other hand has now admitted that a lack of hustle is OK in his book, as long as the player is “frustrated as hell.” Mariners fans should heed warning right now because of that one comment. This man is leading the Seattle Mariners franchise and his first real public comments say that he is OK with players not hustling. But then he goes on to say, “What’s the difference between 65 and 85 percent?” The real answer to that question is that you should never know. No player should ever try at 65% or 85%.
I’m a Yankees fan so I am biased but I truly believe Yankees, Red Sox and Cardinals fans are the most intelligent fan-bases in baseball. Yankees fans have noticed that Cano doesn’t give it his all and while the initial sting of losing our second baseman hurt; we’ve realized in the long-run it’s better for the team. The Yankees lost a great ballplayer in Cano but they picked up a lot of guys who are known to play hard and hustle on every play.
McClendon also mentions that he played baseball so he understands the frustrations. But take into account that he batted .244, with 294 career hits. And now he admits to not hustling on some of those at-bats. Maybe if he tried harder he could have been a better player. Maybe if he hustled in his career 100% of the time people would remember him in a positive light. David Eckstein wasn’t a great baseball player but I remember him for one thing—giving the game everything he had. In his career Eckstein batted .280 with 1,414 hits. He gave baseball everything and in 2006 baseball gave back to him when he won the World Series MVP.
McClendon might believe that not hustling to first base is blown out of proportion but the truth is that fans notice these things. He needs to realize that, at the end of the day, when a player of his doesn’t hustle it’s the fans, who pay to watch that player, who will be “frustrated as hell” when their team loses.
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