Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Forty-Three: David Eckstein, San Diego Padres
This is a short story. About a short man. He’s easy to mistake for Dave from accounting, or Dave the IT guy, or “Hello, this is Dave, may I take your order?”
He is 5-foot-7, and could easily blow away in a wind storm. Do you waste an early draft pick on an infielder who’s 5-7? Of course not. You take him with the 581st pick in the draft, then send him to the minors.
You raise an eyebrow, though, when at age 26 he’s starting at shortstop for the Angels and stealing 29 bases as a rookie. The following year, you really perk up when his inspiring infield play and leadoff hitting plays a key role in the Angels’ first-ever world championship. You watch him earn All-Star appearances in 2005 and ’06 for the Cardinals, and by this time, when he earns a World Series MVP for St. Louis in 2006, you’re no longer surprised by anything this man does.
You remember the bridge to Randy Newman’s song Short People: “Short people are just the same / As you and I … All men are brothers / Until the day they die.” David Eckstein, all 67 inches of him, has been exceeding expectations on the baseball field for nine years now. This year, as the Padres’ second baseman, his consistent hitting and fielding are one of the reasons why San Diego has surprised the baseball world by standing atop the National League West division, four days into June.
The Padres aren’t supposed to be this good. But then again, neither is David Eckstein. He chokes up on the bat, stands there looking like your cousin at the batting cage, and waits for the pitch. Then, as he did in the bottom of the ninth against the Mets’ Francisco Rodriguez two nights ago, he shocks you with another big base hit.
Turtles survived the dinosaur era. It makes no sense. David Eckstein lived through the steroid era. Again: inexplicable. But perhaps Randy Newman meant for those words to come out a little different. Maybe short people are not the same as you and I. Maybe they’re better.
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