It’s without apology or more than a split-second’s introspection that I admit that, in certain years — most of them, lately — my rooting interest in the playoffs once Texas has exited has been that I pretty much want every team to lose, with only slight indifference in some cases.
The last two seasons, for obvious reasons, the exception has been that I have found it intensely simple to get behind The Team Playing Toronto.
And even more so this year, because I will never not pull for Mike Napoli.
(Well, I can think of one outlier scenario for 2017 and beyond, but I’m going to stop thinking about that now.)
He’s played with four teams, and if he returns to Cleveland next year, then, health permitting, he will have played fewer games with Texas than with any of the others.
Still, I’m pretty sure Mike Napoli is one of my 10 favorite Texas Rangers ever.
Chris Davis played more games as a Ranger than Napoli did. So did Craig Gentry. And Jack Daugherty.
Napoli has helped the four franchises he has played for (Angels, Rangers, Red Sox, Indians) earn playoff berths eight times in his 10 full big league seasons.
The key phrase in the above sentence is “played for.” Because Napoli has actually been with five organizations. He never played for one of them.
On January 21, 2011, the Angels, prepared to give Jeff Mathis a bigger role behind the pltae, traded Napoli and Frosty Rivera to Toronto for Vernon Wells. (Which may not have happened if Los Angeles had managed to close its deal with Adrian Beltre a few weeks earlier.)
Four days later, Toronto traded Napoli to Texas for Frankie Francisco.
The story is that Texas tried more than once to trade for Napoli during his five seasons with Los Angeles, but the Angels would never listen.
And then less than a week after he became an ex-Angel, he became a Texas Ranger.
There’s so much awesome there, both at the time and then over the next nine months, when he put together insane career-year numbers (.320/.414/.631) — mostly at catcher — and was one strike away from earning World Series MVP honors (.350/.464/.700, 10 RBI in seven games).
There was less success in 2012, for both Napoli (.227/.343/.469) and the team, after which he left for a one-year deal, heavy on incentives, with Boston. That was followed by a two-year extension with the Red Sox, nearly at the end of which he was shipped back to the Rangers, where he turned around what had been a lackluster 2015 season (.207/.307/.386) by hitting a robust .295/.396/.513 for Texas and giving the club, not at all surprisingly, a boost in what was already a good clubhouse.
In Game Two of last year’s ALDS, when Texas beat Toronto in 14 innings, 6-4, Keone Kela quick-pitched Josh Donaldson with the game still tied in the 13th. The Rogers Centre benches cleared. Two pitches later, Donaldson struck out. Five pitches after that, Jose Bautista walked, and when he reached first base, he and Napoli had words. Words that wouldn’t get by your email filter if I repeated them here. Words that were mostly issued by Napoli. Bautista didn’t say a whole lot.
It was that same first base bag in Toronto that Napoli and his Cleveland teammates charged out of the dugout toward last night, one year and 10 days later, as Carlos Santana squeezed a Troy Tulowitzki foul-out to end the ALCS in five games and send the Indians to the World Series.
That was awesome.
(As was listening to the Blue Jays radio broadcast for most of the game, and then the post-game fan call-in show. Glorious sports-schadenfreude.)
Napoli gave the Indians a lead two different times in the extraordinary bullpen game (Game Three) they won in Toronto.
He drove in the decisive run last night in Game Five as well.
Napoli is going to his third World Series in six years. One with Texas. One with Boston. One with Cleveland.
Indians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti during last night’s clubhouse celebration: “It would be impossible to overstate Nap’s impact on our team. You saw what he did on the field. But in the clubhouse, the way he unified guys. . . . We wouldn’t be standing here without Nap.”
The dude’s a ballplayer. And a winner.
Not to mention a Blue Jay for four days.
He was a Ranger for all of 2011-2012 and part of 2015, and while I would love to see him back here for a third stint in 2017, he’s coming off another .800 OPS season and is probably going to get a healthy contract from someone this winter (Jon Heyman [FanRag] predicts one year and $12 million, but I’m not so sure he’ll be limited to one-year opportunities).
I never wanted that guy to leave. Either time. I want him back here. But it’s probably a longshot.
In the meantime, his 2016 isn’t over, and while I’m caught up like so many in the Cubs narrative and went into this post-season thinking they were the team I second-most wanted to see succeed, that’s no longer the case.
I’d like to see Mike Napoli get one more champagne celebration in this year.