Mike Matheny Calls It A Day

Due to post-concussion symptoms, Spurious Baseball favourite, Mike Matheny has had to call time on his career and its been a great career but many will just dust it under the carpet. In this day and age where numbers are crunched and double crunched before anyone can formulate their own opinion, Matheny's .239 and 67 career homeruns will likely see that he doesn't quite make the Hall of Fame but that was never going to be his legacy.

Long ago, as we travel through the mists of yore, the position of catcher used to be a true defensive position. He was the general on the field, dictating to his team what was needed to cut down opposing hitters.

Catcher was the toughest position to play and day in and day out you would take a beating from foul tips, over-swings and baserunners charging down the line looking to maim you and it would beyour job to take it, dust yourself off and ask for seconds. Mike Matheny was one of those players.

Watching him don the tools of ignorance was sheer poetry in motion. The way he would shift his weight behind the hitter, the speed of his feet as he gunned down wouldbe base stealers and the way he would work with pitchers to baffle and bemuse hitters. All of the things you would need from a catcher, he was it.

It was inevitable in hindsight owing to the fearless nature with which he would block balls that he would eventually have to call it quits due to some related injury but its the measure of the man that even after he took those foul tips to the mask he still expected to be playing the next day and not being able to play again must have been a bitter pill to swallow. But it also says a lot that he has offered himself up for medical testing on the impact of concussions on athletes and, in particular, ball players.

I will certainly miss the opportunity of seeing him go after his fifth Gold Glove (even though they are bunk he still could have done it) and it only makes me feel like he should have played more while in his days in Milwaukee and Toronto and earned himself more silverware.

Its always a sad day when your heroes come to the end of their careers and he certainly was one for me and with the way the game is changing (some would say evolving but I wouldn't) it could be a very long time till we see another Mike Matheny.