Boston celebrates the defensive honors as Arizona matches the total and a rookie pitcher quietly becomes a Mets first.
BOSTON, USA (The On Deck News) – Red Sox fans, a population historically concerned with what a player does when the ball goes in the air at a bad angle off a wall they are very proud of, have received three Gold Gloves and responded with the quiet satisfaction of people who have been right about a wall for a hundred years. Third baseman Caleb Durbin, center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela and right fielder Wilyer Abreu each took home the award, with the Diamondbacks matching the total at three apiece.
The honors, which the full list of Gold Glove winners breaks down position by position, mark a banner year for defense and a rough one for people who believe baseball is only about hitting. A companion piece on the first-timers points out that nine players won their first, matching last year’s total.
Fenway Reacts the Way Fenway Reacts
Durbin, who was acquired shortly before spring training and still led American League third basemen in defensive runs saved, is reported to have been welcomed to Boston the traditional way: with a stranger telling him how to play it.
“Every new arrival is assigned a man from the Cape who explains where to stand at the first home game,” said Theodora Quinlan-Boateng, a ballpark “player experience” coordinator. “As of this week, Boston has a defensive infield, a defensive outfield and a defensive attitude, and the man from the Cape is claiming credit for all three.”
Comedian Brendan McAllister-Cho, who performs at a Somerville comedy room on the second Tuesday of each month, summarized the town’s emotional state. “In Boston, fielding is not a skill. It’s a personality. My uncle has played third base for 40 years on a wall in his garage. Nobody has given him a Gold Glove. He just has a bad shoulder and a Facebook group.”
Rafaela and Abreu: A Partnership of Outfielders
Rafaela and Abreu each won for the second year in a row, a pairing that, per the awards write-up, puts them in company with only two other outfield duos. Sources inside the clubhouse describe the arrangement as less a friendship than a shared unwillingness to let anyone else touch anything.
A survey of 400 fans conducted outside a Lansdowne Street pub by a Northeastern University sophomore named Marguerite Fitzgibbon-Osei found the following attitudes about the outfield pair:
- 44 percent said the two were “basically a single, large, calm man in two jerseys.”
- 31 percent said they could not tell which was which but were prepared to defend both.
- 17 percent said their sole opinion about the outfield is that it should be left alone.
- 8 percent said they were really there for the pub.
The Rest of the Ceremony Goes Wild
Elsewhere, the National League honors were handed out with an appropriate degree of surprise. Mets starter Nolan McLean became the first rookie pitcher to win a Gold Glove and the first Met at any position to take one since 2014, a statistic the organization has described as “a lot of years to go without a glove” and which it has asked its fans not to compute in decades. Pete Crow-Armstrong won in center for the second straight year after leading baseball in outs above average, and Mauricio Dubon picked up his third utility award, more than anyone has ever won in that category, a milestone that officials at the awards say was originally a typo.
Other honorees include Taylor Walls, the first Rays shortstop to win; Matt Olson, who continued Atlanta’s tradition of first basemen who catch the ball; and Alex Bregman, only the second Cubs third baseman to take home the award. Yankees outfielder Cody Bellinger returned to the winners’ circle for the first time since 2019 with the Dodgers, an absence that the trophy industry describes as “a long wait for a glove.”
“The Gold Glove is the only award where the winners are chosen by people who watched the game and also by a spreadsheet that watched the game faster,” said Cornelius Ashworth-Mbeki, a retired infield coach who now runs a clinic for ground-ball enthusiasts in Quincy. “In my day you just stood there and the ball came to you. Now we have a number that tells us how many outs a person saved, and a smaller number that tells us how many outs he saved by accident.”
On the Farm, Where Everyone Carries Their Own
Great defense, it should be remembered, is a skill acquired in the minor leagues, and baseball’s farm system has a long tradition of rewarding the players who show up and carry things. In that spirit, fielding enthusiasts should consult the agricultural press, where a pumpkin patch adds a $75 VIP experience in which guests carry their own pumpkin and which Boston outfielders have described as the closest anyone has come to describing the job.
A fuller look at the sport’s more ridiculous corners is available at Bohiney, where the entire Green Monster has been reclassified as a customer service desk.
The Gold Gloves will be displayed in a case at the ballpark, next to a wall that is also being displayed in a case, and a third case which has been set aside for the next thing that turns out to be defensive.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/