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I guess El Caballo is happy being under .500

Steve9347

By Steve9347
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Steve9347 Grand Master

Steve9347

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http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/sto...yson&id=2092535

 

Happy to be a Brewer.

 

Now there's a concept not many folks are familiar with.

 

But the moment Carlos Lee realized it described him came in April at Wrigley. Shagging before a game. Soaking in the boos. Then hearing one of his old Chicago admirers screaming from Da Bleachers: "Hey Carlos, go back to the White Sox."

 

"Nooooo," Lee hooted back. "I don't want to go back there."

 

Noooo. He was happy to be a Brewer. But more than that, Lee needed to be a Brewer. Needed to escape the South Side to recast himself as one of the most feared run-producers in the game.

 

Check that National League leaderboard, and up there at the top of the RBI column, you'll find more than one Lee. Yeah, there's Derrek – the Lee getting all the air time. But tied with him, through Tuesday, was that other Lee – the Lee the White Sox traded last December to get Scott Podsednik.

 

When Milwaukee GM Doug Melvin outmaneuvered the Blue Jays to deal for that Lee at the winter meetings, the Brewers knew they were getting the right-handed, middle-of-the-order thumper they'd been missing since the exit of Richie Sexson.

 

What they didn't know, says manager Ned Yost, was they were getting "so much more."

 

What they got was El Caballo. A leader. An energizer. A 6-foot-2, 240-pound offensive monster who lives for the sight of his fellow Brewers in scoring position.

 

"That's when the game is fun," Lee said, "when you know you've got a chance to put your team ahead. That brings out the best in me, when I've got people on base."

 

Not that this is anything new, you understand. Lee did hit .323 with men in scoring position in his final two seasons in Chicago. Just no one seemed to notice him swatting in the shadows of Frank Thomas, Magglio Ordonez and Paul Konerko.

 

"Every time I go to bat with this team, I've got guys on base," Lee chuckles. "In Chicago, with Frank and Magglio and then me, I'd go to hit and there was not much left out there."

 

But that wasn't the only thing different about life in Chicago. Lee was a name in that imposing White Sox lineup. But he was never the name. Of course, even Carlos Lee didn't need to read the media guide cover-to-cover to understand why that was.

 

"When you're on a team where you've got Frank and Magglio and Konerko, we were all four guys who do pretty much the same things," Lee said. "Frank's been in the game so long and been so good. Magglio was an All-Star like five consecutive years (actually four out of five). So obviously, people are going to look at Frank and Magglio before they look at someone like me. I was just one of the guys."

 

Transplanted to Milwaukee, though, he's now the guy. And not just when his time to hit rolls around.

 

"I didn't know we were getting a guy," Yost said, "who would be so good in our clubhouse."

 

That wasn't, after all, his reputation on the South Side. In fact, the week he was traded, stories began to surface in the Chicago papers in which "clubhouse sources" painted Lee as being too selfish, too concerned with the state of his own swing and his own numbers. He was portrayed as more of a me guy than a we guy.

 

But Yost said: "I haven't seen any of that. He's been nothing but a first-class teammate."

Lee admits his blood pressure did spike a few points over that talk, "because I never thought I was that kind of person. The stuff that started to come out, I was really disappointed in. But you've just got to move on. I'm with a new team. I want to start moving in the right direction, with all that stuff behind me."

 

Well, he started the moment he got to Milwaukee. He pointed his compass toward the top of the Brewers' clubhouse flow chart. And from the first time he put on his Brew Crew uniform, he seemed to be viewed by everybody around him as the central presence in the room.

 

"Everyone on this team knew the void – the big void – he was here to fill," Yost said.

 

When Lyle Overbay was given his 2004 Brewers MVP trophy this spring, he announced he was just "keeping it warm for Carlos." Which tells you what these guys expected Lee to mean on the field.

 

And when the effervescent Lee merely strolls into the clubhouse, said coach Rich Donnelly, "It's like Muhammad Ali just walked in. He's a ray of sunshine – but you have to wear earplugs." Which tells you what he has meant off the field.

 

"He comes to the ballpark laughing, joking and he's singing all the time," teammate Bill Hall said. "He brings some life to this clubhouse. And no matter what he's done the night before, he's the same the next day."

 

And it's obvious, just from watching him bounce through the room, that they feed off his one-man energy plant. Not that they aren't a little worn down by the sound of Lee bopping around, crooning Madison Avenue's "Don't Call Me Baby."

 

"He sings that line a million times in the clubhouse every day," Hall moans. Which would indicate that, as the great singing voices of our time go, he ain't exactly Alicia Keys.

 

"Oh, he likes to think he is," Hall laughs. "But he can't sing at all."

 

Then again, if he drives in about 130 runs, they'll be willing to pretend he's Ray Charles.

 

“ When I got traded to Milwaukee, people would go, 'That (stinks),' or this or that. But you know what? I like it.”

— Carlos Lee

 

Maybe Lee could have led in Chicago if he'd stayed there long enough. We'll never know. But transplanted only an hour and change up the interstate, it was a role that just seemed to fit – because of his personality, and because of what he represented on a team with so many young players working to become what he already is.

 

"You never know about people until they're with you," Melvin said, "and you get to see them in a certain environment."

 

"In Chicago, it was different," Lee said. "The guys in front of me had been in the game longer than I was, and I was just looking up to those guys. … Here, these guys look up to me. I'm the guy they rely on to be there every day.

 

"I like to help everybody. I talk to guys. Anything I pick up on the pitchers, I share. I try to keep everybody loose. I tell them it doesn't matter how much they criticize us. We're the Milwaukee Brewers. Nobody expects us to win."

 

But being a leader is about more than making people laugh. And it's about more than just talking the talk. It's about making the players around you better. And Lee has had an effect on quite a few.

 

"Talk to Bill Hall," Yost said. "Here's a guy soaking up everything Carlos does."

 

"As soon as he saw me hit in spring training," Hall said, "he said, 'Dude, there's no way you're going to strike out 120 times again in 390 at-bats. You'll never do that again.' So he worked with me on coming up with a two-strike approach I was comfortable with. And I listened, because he's a guy who doesn't strike out. He said, 'Allow your hands to work with two strikes and put the bat on the ball, and you'll hit better.'"

 

Voila. At last look, Hall had cut his strikeout rate nearly in half and was headed for the best season of his career.

 

But in the meantime, Lee is headed for the best season of his career as well. Melvin says he thought he was trading for a guy who might hit 28-30 homers and 100-105 RBI. Oops. Through 70 games, Lee was on pace to finish with 39 homers and 139 RBI.

 

So suffice it to say Melvin isn't agonizing about trading away one of his favorite players, Podsednik, plus a reliever who might have been his closer, Luis Vizcaino.

 

"When they asked for Vizcaino, I was a little reluctant," Melvin confesses, "since we'd already given up Danny Kolb. But in the end, I felt that for us to get Carlos, we had to do that.

 

"It came down to us needing someone to bat in the middle of the order, somebody in the prime of his career, who had a presence. There weren't many guys like that last winter. We talked about Jermaine Dye and Richard Hidalgo. But those guys weren't going to sign here. And usually, middle-of-the-order hitters are like No. 1 starting pitchers. They're hard to come by."

 

So now that they've found that kind of guy, it looks as if the Brewers won't be deliberating very long over whether to pick up Lee's $8 million option for next year. And that's cool with Carlos Lee, a man who has heard enough El Caballo chants reverberating around the ballpark to know he's finally found a home – in Milwaukee, of all places.

 

"When I got traded to Milwaukee," Lee said, "people would go, 'That (stinks),' or this or that. But you know what? I like it."

 

Happy to be a Brewer. Even happier to be the Brewer. Sheez, who's the last guy who could say that? Robin Yount?

 

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

Edited by Steve9347
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Cerbaho-WG Grand Master

Cerbaho-WG

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Wait, Lee says he doesn't want to be back on Chicago because he's overshadowed by Frank, Paulie, etc? But he enjoys Milwaukee because he's looked up to?

 

EGO alert, WAKE THE f*** UP NED YOST!

 

Enjoy trying to hit 10 run homers, El Caballo, we don't miss you.

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bjm676 Grand Master

bjm676

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QUOTE(Jimenez4MVP @ Jun 23, 2005 -> 02:40 PM)
Interesting, what do you think we would have gotten from Toronto since it says Milwaukee beat them out..

 

Catalanatto? :huh But they have god-awful pitchers, so who knows. We might actually be regretting the trade if it was made with Toronto.

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Fotop Mentor

Fotop

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QUOTE(Cerbaho-WG @ Jun 23, 2005 -> 03:57 PM)
Wait, Lee says he doesn't want to be back on Chicago because he's overshadowed by Frank, Paulie, etc? But he enjoys Milwaukee because he's looked up to?

 

EGO alert, WAKE THE f*** UP NED YOST!

 

Enjoy trying to hit 10 run homers, El Caballo, we don't miss you.

 

I agree Cerb, that article came off as classic Carlos "egomaniac" Lee. I don't care how many HRs he hits for Milwaukee, to me, this is just more evidence of him being a me-first player.

 

I'll take a Scott Podsednik, a Tadahito Iguchi, or an AJ Pierzynski over Carlos Lee any day of the week. They know their roles, and do everything for the TEAM.

 

Granted, we could have gotten a bit more in the deal but you have to give talent to get talent. I mean Pods is a huge reason why we're dominating right now yet everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too by desiring a sweetheart deal from Milwaukee.

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