Monday, April 05, 2010

Steve Sax, on High Fives

I'm pretty far behind on my Sports Illustrated reading, so I apologize for being late in passing on a great Steve Sax yarn from the March 15, 2010 issue (Matt Wieters cover). In a Chris Ballard piece chronicling high fives (Ballard is much better suited to shorter pieces like the rotating formerly-occupied-by-Rick-Reilly page, rather than the long-form format which meanders on with no direction or endpoint (sort of like a Coldplay song)), Steve Sax leads off a section subtitled, "The Overheated Five":

Imagine hitting a walk-off home run against your archrivals. You'd feel good, right? Real good. Well, so did Dodgers infielder Steve Sax in 1985 when he went deep against the Giants. As the crowd roared, Sax rounded second and saw third base coach Joe Amalfitano waiting, hand extended. So Sax reared back and, with one mighty low five, broke Amalfitano's hand.

"All I remember is, after I hit him, I turned around and saw him jumping up and down and I figured, Damn, he's really excited that I hit a home run!" says Sax, now a financial consultant and motivational speaker in Roseville, Calif. "I was like, Wham, and he was like, Yeeee-ahhh, and I was like, Right on, Joey," Sax says, and then pauses. "He came to the park the next day, and he had a cast on."

That's right, kids: don't get in the way of a fired-up Steve Sax.

(I also really enjoyed the cover story on Wieters, who is bringing excitement and hope to an otherwise moribund Baltimore Orioles team that has a beautiful ballpark and nothing but a fourth-place divisional finish to which they can aspire. Wieters sounds like the real deal. Man, it would be nice to have a highly-touted catcher who could hit for power, played incredible defense, and was an emerging team leader. Know anyone like that?)

4 comments:

Kyle Baker said...

I wonder if Wieters is interested in catching former O George Sherrill?

Steve Sax said...

DB, are you suggesting a Martin for Wieters trade?

Or an Ausmus for Wieters trade?

Kyle Baker said...

I'm suggested giving Sherrill back to Os for free.

Kyle Baker said...

OT:

More details on the Double Down:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36179954/ns/business-consumer_news/