I hope you’re all enjoying Yadi Week while I sit in a dark, social media-less hole. Granted, I still have Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, I even found myself searching for solace on Pinterest earlier, but I feel completely disconnected from my life with the absence of Twitter.
Side note: how in the holy hell did my account get suspended, but not Josh Hader’s? Carrying on, I actually do have a point to my incessant rambling about this first world problem.
When you have something, it’s hard to truly understand what you have, and to look at it from 360 degrees instead of just straight on. You think that you know what it’ll be like when it’s gone, but you don’t. Not really at least.
Yadier Molina deserves so much more than this Cardinals team. He deserves so much more than a shotty bullpen, defense that can’t see straight and an offense that can be so much better than it is right now. But, Yadi being Yadi, he chose to stay. He chose his home. He chose us all.
A match made in heaven
The Cardinals drafted Yadier Molina in 2000 as a fourth-round pick after the Reds passed on him because of his offense.
He made his Major League debut on June 3, 2004, when Michael Scott Matheny went on the disabled list.
Unlike the current Carson Kelly debacle, Molina actually saw the big-league field. He appeared in 51 regular season games, hitting .267 with 2 homeruns and 15 RBI. He threw out approximately 52.9 percent of potential basestealers (according to Wikipedia this is one word so I’m going with it).
When he-who-shall-not-be-named moved onto the Giants, Molina got the Cardinals starting job. Hey, at least you-know-who did something helpful for once!
The rest is history.
The Greatest of All Time
🐐
This isn’t a secret, and if what I’m saying here comes as a surprise to you, then I’d like to see how you decorated your home under a rock (I’m currently taking suggestions on how to decorate mine).
For the Cubs fans that might have accidentally stumbled onto this piece, if it ever sees daylight: WILSON CONTRERAS ISN’T ON THE SAME LEVEL AS YADI. HE ISN’T EVEN ON THE SAME PLANET. GET OUT OF HERE.
I could look at the numbers, and that’s what I was originally going to do. I was going to go through all of the numbers, year to year, to quantifiably tell what Yadier Molina means to Cardinal Nation.
That shit doesn’t matter. You know what matters? The way Carlos Martinez gets overly emotional and Molina goes out there just to take a breather.
The way young catchers can learn from him.
His smile when he’s wearing the birds on the bat.
How he laughs and points to his last name in the city that could have had him, being fueled by the boos knowing that all of us are behind him.
One day, pretty soon, those moments are going to be gone. We know it, but we really don’t know what that means.
I don’t know of a time without that number 4 behind the plate, and when that day comes, hearts around St. Louis and Cardinals Nation will break.
And then Yadi will jump out of the dugout, do a curtain call, point to his back and give that Yadi grin.
(I tried my best to put a light spin to end this, don’t worry, I’m crying with you).
Anna Kayser
annakayers.com