TAMPA – The world was picking on poor Gary Sheffield again, baiting him, disrespecting him, antagonizing him, aggravating him, persecuting him, prosecuting him.
“It’s the same thing every year,” he said. “You always have something to prove. Everyone always say you gotta do this or do that. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.”
He shook his head gravely.
“Once again,” he said, “I have to do what I always do.”
And that is?
“Well, I have to prove I’m a good player,” he said. “Every year. Obviously, nobody’s convinced yet.”
It’s funny how it works with guys like Sheffield, who continually post great numbers and then find themselves moved along to another city, a new team. How can a player like this wear out his welcome so quickly?
There’s a lot to like about Sheffield. He played through pain all through last year. He had a terrific first season with the Yankees, was their most indispensable player, finished second in the American League’s MVP balloting.
But Sheffield’s personality is too complicated to be reduced to cold integers on a spread sheet. He’s never understood that. Sheffield wants to be accountable only for what he accomplishes on the field. He wants to be judged only on that.
He doesn’t want to hear about steroids, or about BALCO, or about his role in the center of baseball’s most grievous scandal since 1919. He doesn’t want to be lumped with Jason Giambi, even though he is every bit the ad mitted fiend Giambi is (although he favors the ignorance clause that his former friend, Barry Bonds, wields like a billy club). And so he gleefully tosses Giambi under the bus, fa mously declaring, “I’m not like Jason Giambi . . . I’m not going to cry about things being un fair.”
No, he won’t cry, that’s true. He’ll just glower, and glare, and grouse, and grump when ever he’s caught, and called, on one of his growing list of quirks.
Say what you will about Giambi, but he would never do to another teammate what Sheffield did to him last week. Slander Giambi, or anyone else on the Yankees, but none of them would ever have pouted over the language in his contract the way Sheffield has done this spring, acting like the worst kind of petulant, enabled teenager.
Sheffield was reluctant to engage in a discussion about the deal yesterday – “Ain’t nothing to discuss,” he said – and said only, “I’ve done everything everybody else has done. Whatever they tell us to do, that’s what I do. My contract is my contract.”
Instead, he somehow decided the time was right to talk about how misunderstood he is, how misinterpreted his moods are, how nobody truly understands him or his value as a baseball player.
“You can recognize something, but to report it as accurate is two different things,” Prof. Sheffield explained. “People haven’t been reporting accurately about anything I do. I’m always mad at everybody? That ain’t the case. Because I don’t sit here and smile with everybody, that doesn’t mean I’m mad. It’s just my personality. I don’t see Randy Johnson smiling, but that doesn’t mean he’s mad. People just have that look on their face.
“I watch the news and listen to people talk – listen to people talk, the experts talk, like everybody else. And it’s always: I’m never put in that elite class. Only when it’s something negative, I’m put in that elite class. So I have to shut critics up most of the time.”
He was asked if finishing second in last year’s MVP race wasn’t enough of a vote of confidence that most folks think he’s an OK baseball player. After all, Derek Jeter has never finished higher than third in an MVP vote. Same with Jorge Posada. Bernie Williams has never been higher than seventh.
Sheffield thought about that question for a moment.
“No,” he said.
Which is the same answer as the one belonging to the other question we asked earlier: Is it any surprise how quickly Gary Sheffield wears out his welcome?
