Abreu only an all-star on paper

As a Phillies fan, nothing made me angrier than seeing Bobby Abreu named to the National… As a Phillies fan, nothing made me angrier than seeing Bobby Abreu named to the National League All-Star team.

Sure, he’s got the numbers. He’s among the top 10 in (deep breath!) average, homers, RBI, walks, on-base percentage and runs. A menace on the bases, he has stolen 21 bases in 25 tries. In the outfield, he has a cannon of a right arm. Based solely on the numbers, there is absolutely no reason he shouldn’t start in this year’s game.

There are a couple of stats that don’t appear on paper, though. The most important of these is an intangible: work ethic. No matter how closely one looks at Abreu’s numbers, he won’t find a measure of attitude. That’s disappointing, because I’ve been following the Phils since somewhere around conception, and I don’t know that I could name a handful of players to wear the red pinstripes with a worse attitude than Bobby Abreu.

A microcosm of the Abreu’s situation came in the Pirates-Phillies game on Monday. After grounding to first baseman Daryle Ward, Abreu barely budged. He started to trot after Ward moved to tag the bag. This sort of laziness happens with a disturbing frequency, and every time it happens, I feel like yelling, “Remember Bill Buckner?!” Run out the ground ball, because you never know what’s going to happen! But anyone reading a recap of the game won’t hear about that. He’ll read about Abreu’s grand slam, his five RBIs on the day.

The average sports fan isn’t following every play of every game, so he won’t see all the balls Abreu doesn’t run after in the outfield. He’s not going to see the angry look in the collective eyes of the Phillies’ pitching staff when players easily stretch singles into doubles while the all-star jogs after a ball instead of running. And he’s not going to see the all-star fail in the clutch, time and time again, because it just isn’t in the stats. Abreu gets huge hits, to be sure, but so many of them come when the game is in hand; he’s not a great hitter under pressure. His grand slam against the Pirates Monday surprised me, because it came with the Phillies trailing 1-0.

But then again, if I were making $13.1 million a year, I might be content to do what I felt like doing and nothing more. Why work any harder than you have to for that money? Besides, it’s not like Abreu is the only player in today’s game who doesn’t work his absolute hardest every play. He’s just one of the many.

Take this past weekend. Carlos Beltran, whose $119 million contract combines with his awful season to make the biggest multi-million dollar joke since Enron, made his year even worse by popping up to Marlins’ first baseman Carlos Delgado with a runner on first. Instead of running out the play, Beltran stood and sulked in the batter’s box. Delgado saw, let the ball drop, and quickly picked it up and threw to second to start a double play. Beltran started running eventually, but it was too late to solve the problem. (Funny coincidence: Beltran’s also an all-star.) But I suppose that’s not a whole lot different than pitchers who don’t run out ground balls when they bat, even though it could help their own cause.

It’s enough to drive me away from watching major league baseball a lot of the time. After all, there are other venues. In the minors, everybody knows what’s at stake. Every play sees a batter sprinting down the first baseline like John Daly toward Dunkin’ Donuts, urging his body to move just a hair faster to beat the throw. And it doesn’t matter if the ball’s a 410-foot blast over the wall or a little duck fart that the second baseman couldn’t miss even if he fell down, rolled over, and got half-eaten by a crocodile while the ball was still in the air. Minor leaguers still take off out of the box. It’s a shame that once people start making a lot more figures, they can forget how important work ethic is.

And then there’s college baseball. I’ve had the privilege of being the PA announcer for the Pitt baseball team — I like to refer to myself as “The Voice of Trees Field” — and every game I’m treated to guys busting their buns every play. Why? Because there’s no money involved. At that level, it’s about something more important: pride. Too bad a lot of guys get to the majors and forget about that.

Don’t think for a second that it’s every ball player. The highlight reels are filled with guys making amazing diving stops and beating throws to the plate. But there are definitely high-profile players who don’t work hard, who take it easy day in and day out. They forget they have a duty to the fans to give it everything they’ve got.

Bobby Abreu is one of these players. And that’s why when I flip on the All-Star Game on July 12, I’ll be rooting for the National League, the Phillies’ league, but I won’t be rooting for Abreu.

Brian Weaver is the assistant sports editor at The Pitt News. E-mail him at bweaves_pittnews@hotmail.com.