Bob Ryan Also Sucks –
Today, Bob Ryan actually gets a
little creative and compares the city’s point guard with the city’s center fielder. The comparison is sound. Let’s rip
his asshole a new asshole anyway, shall we?
Double Dose Of Talent And Flair
Flair’s alright, but I’m more of a
pizzazz kinda guy. And a pizza kinda guy..
When Jacoby
Ellsbury stole home against the Yankees in the fifth inning of Sunday
night's game…
Um, hello?
Tell me you couldn't imagine Rajon
Rondo doing the same thing.
I couldn’t imagine Rajon Rondo
doing the same thing.
Oh and…
Shouldn’t that have been…
One paragraph?
Are these two electrifying
young players not bookends?
No, they’re electrifying young
players.
Doesn't each bring a certain
panache to his game?
What’s that? Is that like a
man-purse? In that case, ‘Coby probably does.
Does anyone in the NBA go about
his business with quite the specific flair Rondo brings to the point guard
position?
Chris Paul. Derrick Rose. Ricky Rubio, next year..
Are there many other baseball
players scoring from second on a wild pitch as Ellsbury did in his rookie
season or on a stolen base/passed ball, as he did last Friday night?
Chone
Figgins. Carl
Crawford. Dexter Fowler..
The only current difference is
that Rondo is on the way to fulfilling his promise, while Ellsbury remains a
colossal tease.
Tell me about it. Put out a
little, ‘Coby. Jeez!
If he could keep doing what he
did against the Yankees this weekend for an entire season, he'd be the Rajon
Rondo of baseball.
Come on, now. Close your eyes.
Can't you see Rajon Rondo as an Ozzie Smith with gap power?
So, Ellsbury should play
shortstop?..
"Not only can I visualize
it, I have seen it," says Danny Ainge, the only man in town who won two
NBA championship rings as a player and once knocked in the tying run and scored
the go-ahead run in Yankee Stadium.
Yeah, for the Blue Jays..
"When we drafted him, we
brought him into
That seems dangerous. Were they
playing Thunderball?
"There is no question he'd
be a great center fielder, or a shortstop, for that matter. I mean, he had a
cannon for an arm."
Meanwhile, wouldn't Ellsbury be
legit point guard material?
How ‘bout they just play the
sports they’re playing now? Hmm, how ‘bout that Bob?
He was a very good high school
basketball player, and he is undeniably athletic, as the Red Sox discovered
during a private workout prior to the 2007 baseball draft. According to Sports
Illustrated, "Rain forced them into a gym. Ellsbury saw a basketball on
the floor, grabbed it and took off, leaping from near the free throw line and
throwing down a vicious dunk. The scouts looked at each other in amazement . .
. 'Guess my basketball game helped me get drafted,' Ellsbury says."
That was Ben
Grieve’s downfall. Couldn’t thread the gap on a fast
break..
Once you get by LeBron James
and
Uh oh, let’s not head down the
road of stuff Magic used to do.
Larry Bird used to do stuff
like this. LeBron currently does stuff like this.
He does better stuff than this.
Each is at least 7 inches
taller and 30-80 pounds heavier (LeBron's got to be 270).
Fat-ass.
Throw in the 14 steals and the
7 turnovers in 203 minutes. Then factor in that he remains far more of a
driver/penetrator/open-floor player than a standard jump shooter, and the
simple truth is that, style-wise, there is no one like him now and probably
never has been. Rajon Rondo is utterly sui generis.
Do I have to read this in a
mirror? What is this, Highlights?
But that's not the whole story.
Of course not. Your round head’s
gonna go on for another six-hundred words..
His extraordinary physical
gifts are evident. But for this package of skills to be properly utilized, it
must be accompanied by an equally extraordinary inner drive. No matter how
gifted, no matter how long the arms, no matter how quick the feet, no one
should be able to do what he does, the way he does it, as consistently as he
does it. But he does.
The jerk.
"I really believe he wills
things to happen," Ainge says. "He wills in some of those
shots."
With his mind!
Oh, if only Jacoby Ellsbury
could will himself on base.
He just doesn’t have Rondo’s inner
drive.
Lazy Indian.
There's the difference.
There’s the flavor.
No one can keep the ball out of
Rajon Rondo's hands. He brings it up, quite often after rebounding it himself,
and sometimes after stealing it. He has the ability to initiate the action,
with or without the ball.
But Jacoby Ellsbury can't do
his thing until he gets on base. And he just doesn't get on base often enough -
yet.
Dun dun dunnnnnn.
When Jacoby Ellsbury gets on
base, he has a good chance to score. Make that a very, very good chance. Think
back to the beginning of the Yankee series. Friday night, bottom of the first.
Ellsbury singles to right. A distracted Joba Chamberlain balks him to second.
Those darn hot dog vendors
shouldn’t wear such bright shirts.
Ellsbury takes off for third,
and when the pitch goes between catcher Jose Molina's legs,
Ay dios mio!
Ellsbury never stops running
until he has slid home with the game's first run.
It brought to mind that
electrifying moment in 2007 when he scored from second on a wild pitch. These
are not things we are accustomed to seeing from Red Sox players.
Ellsbury reached base via hit
or walk 196 times last season. He scored 98 runs, only 20 fewer than league
leader Dustin Pedroia, who reached base 263 times via hit or walk.
Wow.
Solid analysis again, Bob.
We all see what happens when
Jacoby Ellsbury gets on base. He reached base six times in the weekend Yankee
series and he scored five runs, one of them via a solo homer. It was a
scintillating display.
Geraldo Rivera wants his adjective
back! (Or is that an adverb?..)
The problem is, he doesn't get
there enough. His on-base percentage last year was a disappointing .336. After
last night's win in Cleveland, it is .318. He either has to hit better, walk
more or, preferably, both.
Walk and hit at the same time!
That’s like double the on-base.
It didn't appear we would be
having this discussion in the autumn of 2007.
Yeah, we thought you’d be dead by
now you ovoid.
He personally
And literally!
jump-started the Red Sox in the
playoffs that year, when he had a .429 on-base percentage and scored eight runs
in just 12 times on base. He looked as if he would be an ideal leadoff man, one
with a discerning eye and pop in the bat.
Illegal.
Some (OK, me), foresaw a .340
average with 60 stolen bases.
Ha, you suck.
Obviously, the American League
pitchers have had something to say about that.
They said you suck.
Ainge has had his eye on
Ellsbury from the beginning. Fellow Oregonian, you know.
And he’s totally gay for him.
"He's very exciting,"
Ainge says.
Like, pants exciting..
"He had that great start
two years ago, and people expected a lot from him. But there was all that
confusion last year with him splitting the time in center.
"Now he has the job. He's
like a lot of young players. He needs to get consistent. But he is a special
talent, and players like that are hard to find."
Rondo has figured it out. Now
it's Ellsbury's turn. Raw talent like that is a terrible thing to waste.
Terrible waste. Those words seem
fitting.
Bob Ryan is a Globe
columnist and the host of Globe 10.0 on boston.com. He can be
reached at ryan@globe.com. 
~~~
This is
actually one of the better pieces Bob’s written this year. Could’ve been
fleshed out more. Ideally into a magazine piece. Unfortunately, for at least
another month or so, Bob is a slave to the Grey Lady’s unflinching deadline.