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 Fifty: Mark Teixeira, New York Yankees
And so it begins – one month of frenzied passion, as athletes from around the globe converge in South Africa for the most-watched tournament in sports. As the World Cup kicks into gear today, 32 teams are vying for the ultimate title, to be determined in the World Cup final one month from today. There’s a lot of soc … ahem, football, to be played in the next 30 days, and a lot of amazing plays to be seen along the way.
As I left school today, I saw two students looking at a bracket that one of them had filled out for the tournament. I walked over and took a look. The student had Argentina defeating Brazil in the final – a pretty safe pick, as Argentina has won the tournament twice and Brazil has claimed it a record five times. Since only seven countries have ever won the World Cup, most of the teams in the tournament are playing for their first-ever title. And that makes their fans all the more rabid.
Portugal is one such country with a reputation for success yet an empty World Cup trophy case. Star forward Cristiano Ronaldo will try to take his team to the promised land this year, but with Brazil, the Ivory Coast and North Korea in the same first-round group, just making it to the second round will require serious effort from the Portuguese team.
Outside of Ronaldo, the most famous athlete of Portuguese descent in America is probably New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira. Now in his eighth season as a big-leaguer, Teixeira has already slugged more than 250 home runs and driven in more than 800. The 30-year-old switch-hitter claimed his first championship last year with New York, and he’s won a trio of Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards.
Teixeira is known for his slow starts. But his 2010 season has been even slower than normal, as he’s hitting only .226 nearly midway through June. At this rate, he won’t come close to meeting his average batting numbers for a full season. The Yankees remain patient, though, penciling his name into the lineup’s No. 3 spot every night.
Perhaps Teixeira was just waiting for the World Cup to get his blood boiling. As Ronaldo and Co. fend off those tough teams in Group G, maybe Teixeira will draw inspiration from his ancestral home and lift some long fly balls to deep right field. Perhaps it will be Portugal’s year, at long last. If by chance it is, there will be a man in pinstripes waving the flag. It’s that time of year.
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