A Reminder: This is Yadier Molina's world, and we're just living in it
It all ends in a couple months, too. So soak it up, readers. Soak up the drama.
*I wrote that headline and abstract teaser in the tone of Jack Nicholson in “As Good as It Gets,” a sign of an incoming rant taking place. Or maybe, I’m just enjoying this Gazzurple strain a little too much.*
After his extra strange Puerto Rico knee rehab earlier this season, Yadier Molina came back and gave the team a moral boost. His bat wasn’t there, but his glove and presence helped a young pitching staff stage a second half comeback--something that has the St. Louis Cardinals on another winning streak.
This current one has reached seven games at the dawn of a series in Chicago against their forever rivals, The Chicago Cubs, and Molina is returning for a second time to the team. It turns out the soon-to-be-retired Hall of Fame-bound catcher owns a basketball team in his P.R., something that made him relocate to watch his team play.
He did this while the Cards played a series in Arizona, one that they handily swept without him. Andrew Knizner didn’t hit shit in his initial takeover of the catcher position after Molina’s first team exit, but he sure picked it up after a few weeks.
So, this is where I could roast Molina for leaving a functioning company-taking a couple vacation days-to assist a team he owns. I really could. Or I could just turn up the heat, and pound my chest that no real teammate would leave his team at this stage of the season. Blah, blah, double blah.
What does it really matter? The Cards swept the series, and the actually very old for baseball elder statesman got a rest. Was it so sad that he wasn’t in the dugout, laughing and giggling with his bros, Albert Pujols and Adam Wainwright, in the meantime? Should the team trainer be woken up from his mid-game nap, too? Do something else with your anger, folks.
If you are a moderate to die-hard Cards fan and don’t understand the separate entity that is Molina and this team by now, you never will. But allow me to try, because this is important. He does whatever he wants, and he always has. No other player can, or probably ever will, be able to ask the team for two days off in the middle of a pennant race.
Yeah, this team is playing like a legit pennant contender. I don’t care how much money the Mets finally spent or the Dodgers laid out for their roster. Right now, they fall at the fucking feet of the St. Louis Cardinals. Yeah, I’m a blogger (SO HAPPY) again so let’s cut the shit.
Molina doesn’t have rules, and even teased earlier this year after the lockout was over that this would be a different kind of season for him, outside of it also being his last in the Major Leagues--that is at least as a player. So, you take the long-standing tradition of “Yadi can do whatever wants” and supersize it. Simple as that.
All of this ends in a couple months. Well, maybe two months and a week or so. He isn’t messing around. 2022 is it for Molina, a one-of-a-kind Cardinal legend. Take that last part down the hatch completely. “One of a kind” is a double-edged sword… meaning only this guy can pull this WTF (at least according to a few teammates) stunt and get away with it tonight.
He’ll come up to the plate and smack an RBI single, and the gravy train picks up where it left off. Only Yadi, only in St. Louis. If the team keeps winning, nobody cares. If they start losing once he’s back, those same people who whine about his sudden absence over the weekend will tweet that they are glad he wasn’t there.
This guy has a singular effect on St. Louis baseball fans. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong; it’s okay, it’s Yadi.
Again, this operation ends in October. And then it starts up again when he takes over for Oliver Marmol in three to seven years.