Every summer night when I was a kid, I would sleep on the pull-out couch in our basement. It was cooler down there than up in my room, and there was a little TV where I could watch Baseball Tonight several times over, soaking up highlights (again and again) until I could barely keep my eyes open.
In the morning, I would wake up and play baseball, often by myself. Since I couldn’t pitch to myself, I would hurl a tennis ball against the garage, then get into my crouch and try to hit it over the house and into the backyard. I was a righty hitter, but had to play this game left-handed, because the second story was on the pull side, and I was trying not to break our windows.
I only broke a window once, at least from what I remember. Looking back, our next-door neighbors were ridiculously patient with me as I peppered their house with pulled foul balls.
When I grew tired of hitting, I would fire the tennis ball for hours against the brick pylon between our two garage doors, pretending I was painting the corners of the strike zone. I threw so many imaginary pitches, a wear pattern started to emerge on the brick. It’s decidedly not on the corners of the strike zone and might explain why I spent a fair amount of my high school pitching days craning my neck to watch balls sail over the outfielder’s heads.
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That wear pattern still exists to this day at my parents’ house, a permanent reminder of what it felt like to be a kid who loved a sport in ways he couldn't begin to put into words.
I can’t say exactly when Joey Votto became my favorite professional athlete to ever walk the earth, only that it happened the way these things sometimes go, gradually, then suddenly.
He didn’t sneak up on me, necessarily. I saw his name in Baseball America. I read the scouting reports. I understood he might one day be a contributor to the ballclub. But it never crossed my mind that he might be The Dude. If you polled Reds fans in 2005 or 2006, I think 90 percent of us would have told you Jay Bruce was The Prince Who Was Promised. He was the Beaumont Bomber, the generational talent who had the potential to be a savior.
Votto seemed, by comparison, like just about any other prospect. There’s potential there, sure, but is there anything special?
He was a little older than Bruce, and he arrived with considerably less sizzle. A Canadian kid from the suburbs of Toronto, Votto’s approach to hitting in the minors was methodical, whereas Bruce’s was instinctual. Votto had a great ability to avoid making outs, and if he had a strength, it was his patience. Every at-bat was a chess match. Votto, vs. the pitcher. Bruce, by comparison, dominated minor league pitching with pure talent, particularly in 2007, when he was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year.
It was easy to get excited about Bruce, and all the potential wonders soon to unfold. I had not one, but two Jay Bruce jerseys. I even sprung for the authentic one at a time when I absolutely should not have been spending $200 on a jersey, just because I could not stand how cheap the letters and numbers looked on the back of the replica.
It was hard to get excited about a guy with an excellent walk rate.
Baseball, however, was in the midst of what can only be described as a modern enlightenment, a sea change of strategy and thinking. It would take years for it to permeate the public consciousness, but Votto was at the forefront of the idea that the most important skill a hitter could possess was to avoid making outs. Home ru
Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/a-farewell-to-my-favorite-athlete