The Rock (One Sixty-Two: Day 113)

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 One Hundred Thirteen: Orlando Cabrera, Cincinnati Reds

The rock rises about eight feet above the water, and it’s anchored to the bottom of the pond some five feet below the surface. It’s a nice-looking boulder, and it serves as a magnet to those tooling about Tispaquin Pond in Middleborough, Mass.

Those in kayaks paddle to the rock. The sailboats sweep around it. The kids in their inner tubes kick their way over to it. And the swimmers, who start at their own docks dotted around the edge of the pond, swim to the rock.

It is the destination, the goal. Your job, as you paddle or bear off or push through another breaststroke, is to find your way there. You look at the round, grey rock, visualize the act of reaching it, then watch as you inch closer with each movement. When you finally touch the smooth stone, you stop and look around. A gull flies off the top of the rock just to be safe, and you catch your breath as you feel the rocks beneath your feet or let your hand skim the surface in this shallow but glorious body of water. Then you turn around and begin to steel yourself for the trip back.

Swimming to a boulder in a pond just north of Cape Cod may not sound like much, but it feels like an awesome accomplishment once you’ve gotten there. We set goals for ourselves all the time, and the clearer we can see them in front of us, the more likely we are to reach them.

In baseball, making it to the postseason is the primary goal of any self-respecting ballplayer. But what does it really take to get there, and how do you maintain the momentum needed to reach the playoffs over a marathon season of 162 games? The Cincinnati Reds are trying to figure that out. This year’s Reds have been in the pennant race all season, and are still just a game out of first place in the National League Central despite a difficult week. Some of the Cincinnati players are young and very talented, but they have no idea what it’s like to compete in a pennant race, as the Reds haven’t been to the postseason since 1995.

So before and during this season, Reds management has acquired a number of veterans who have played baseball in October, and who know what it takes to reach that rock. Catcher Ramon Hernandez made it to the playoffs in five of his first seven years as a big-leaguer. Third baseman Scott Rolen and outfielder Jim Edmonds both won two pennants and one world championship in St. Louis. Utility player Miguel Cairo, pitcher Bronson Arroyo and reliever Arthur Rhodes are all veterans of the playoff scene.

And then there is starting shortstop Orlando Cabrera, who has the unique experience of playing in the postseason for four different teams over the previous six seasons. If he does it again with the Reds in 2010, Cabrera will make it five different teams in seven years. Ever since the Montreal Expos traded Cabrera to the Red Sox in July of 2004 and the shortstop helped lead Boston to a championship that fall, he has been showing players how to make it to the rock year in and year out. Last year, it was in Minnesota. The year before that, Chicago.

This year, as the Cincinnati faithful hope upon hope that this might just be the year, the young players will get a bit nervous at times, and perhaps a bit cocky at others. That’s why you need a guy like Orlando Cabrera to remind those players how to keep their eyes squarely on that rock. Every step of the way.

You can’t let up, at least until you’ve made it there and back to your own deck. Then you can lie down on the wooden planks, soak up the sun, and let out a smile. Then you can say that you’ve gotten the job done.