The Underappreciated Man: Tweet All About It (One Sixty-Two: Day 77)

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 Seventy-Seven: Michael Young, Texas Rangers

This evening, we received news that Nick Swisher had been voted to the American League All-Star team in the increasingly popular fan vote to determine the final member of each league’s team. Swisher, who has a wildly popular Twitter account, spent part of this week actively promoting his cause via tweets. He edged out Boston’s Kevin Youkilis, who received a heavy dose of support from Red Sox Nation.

A little while later, ESPN broadcast the most-hyped free-agent signing announcement in the history of the world, in which LeBron James sat before Jim Gray, a group of youngsters and a VitaminWater vending machine to announce that he’ll be playing pro basketball for the Miami Heat this fall. LeBron’s announcement was broadcast via a one-hour special, which ESPN titled “The Decision.”

It was a day for self-promotion in sports. But what day isn’t? The potent combination of sports and electronic media in the 21st century has placed individual stars under the microscope more than ever before. Swisher and James, to their credit, seemed to be trying to maintain some humility in discussing their triumphs. But try as they may, they could not erase the fact that each had helped turn an event into a media frenzy.

Michael Young doesn’t do media frenzies. The Texas Rangers third baseman finished fourth in the American League fan vote, leaving him out of the midsummer classic for the first time since 2003. The Rangers certainly encouraged their fans to vote for Young. But the 33-year-old did not speak out on his own behalf.

And if anyone had a right to do so, it was this guy. No active major-league player has been as clutch in All-Star play as Michael Young, as he drove in the game-winning runs in both the 2006 and 2008 All-Star games. Young is a six-time All-Star, who at age 33 has more than 1,700 hits and a .302 career batting average. He rarely misses a game for Texas, and has agreed twice in his career to change positions when the Rangers asked. In 2004, he moved from second base to shortstop to accommodate Texas’s acquisition of Alfonso Soriano. Last year, months after winning a Gold Glove at shortstop, Young moved over to third to make room for the younger Elvis Andrus.

Humility may be hard to find in sports these days. But over in Arlington, Texas, the first-place Rangers have a healthy dose of it at third base. Michael Young may be the most underappreciated player of his generation. But he won’t tell you that. He won’t tweet it, either. Sometimes, just knowing for yourself is good enough.