Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Kevin Youkilis, A Man Afire

Jackie MacMullen's profile on Youkilis - or maybe more on Youkilis's intensity - is a great read, but is anyone surprised at all that:
  • Boston fans love Youkilis for being the guy who made good by working hard and beating the odds. I'd say that's probably going to be the case no matter where Youkilis played, because it's a part of the American national myth: we love self-reliance and work ethic and we love the underdog. Put them together and you get some sort of living legend with an awesome beard.

  • Pedroia doesn't think Youkilis should change a thing. If you took Kevin Youkilis, shrunk him down a few inches, and gave him a complex from people either underestimating him for his height or seeing him like the second coming of David Eckstein, you'd have Dustin Pedroia. On a side note: how lucky are we to have a left side of the infield that's so committed they don't understand why people think they're a little crazy and really good at their jobs?

  • Some of the other players find Youkilis a bit much. I can understand that: his intensity is a lot of fun to watch and makes me love him as a player, but I'm trying to imagine a co-worker who blew up at himself in public every time he missed a minor deadline and I can imagine it would make things pretty uncomfortable.