When the Stats Don't Add Up

.278/.372/.452. Being a believer in the "Moneyball" approach to baseball those numbers tell me I should be happy to have this guy penciled in my starting lineup on a regular basis. Assuming this guy isn't a statue in the field, a lineup full of guys like this would make the 1927 Yankees look like 2003 Detroit Tigers.


But as much as this guy is a statistical stud, his greatest contribution is that he makes you realize that as much as you want to boil down baseball to statistical measures, the joy of the game doesn't come from the box score. The joy of the game is about the story behind that box score. Griffey Jr.'s follow through. Ichiro throwing a 375 foot strike. Lou Piniella throwing a base 17 feet. Beltran going from first to third. McGwire negotiating a 15% discount off the price of his monthly pharmaceutical supply. That's where the love of the game comes from.


An astute observer would already surmise that I am talking about Milton Bradley. And yes, this is probably the 5,297th blog written about the man since he put on the Cub uniform. Everything that I know about baseball says that at the end of the year I should be happy that my starting right fielder is putting up offensive numbers that are on par to those of the Cub's 1987 N.L. MVP. But watching him play and looking back at his cumulative stats in October are two different things.


I started this article with the intention that I would write about the fact that the strongest muscle in his body seems to be the one attached to his pointer finger. Look back to his time in Cleveland, LA, Oakland. Blowing out his ACL arguing with an umpire... blaming the umpires for his early struggles with the Cubs... about blaming others for his short stints with other teams. It's never Bradley's fault. But then you took a closer look and see something else.

It's not that the man is lazy. This Friday I watched him hit a somewhat routine fly to right in the middle of a game destined to get lost amongst the other 161 games of the Cubs' forgettable 2009 season. Bradley then proceeded to run out a ball at full speed that will be caught 999 out of 1,000 times... and this guy's hamstring is about as reliable as your old college roommate that still tours with Widespread Panic at the age of 34.

And it's not that he's a player that takes talent for granted. Anyone who rehabs a torn ACL in one offseason isn't sitting around watching Deadliest Catch re-runs all day. The man may be injury prone but it's not like he's showing up to Spring Training with a severe case of Dunlap disease.


It's because Bradley does not play the game because he loves it, he plays the game because he's exceptional at it. And he knows it. "I don't get happy for myself. I might do something, but you don't ever see me smile about it. But when other guys do something, I get happy."

How many people do you know that drag themselves to work every Monday despite dreading the week ahead? Are those the people you like to have lunch with? And do they sound like Milton? They are not happy people.

But let's not kid ourselves, very few of us look forward to Mondays with an earnest eagerness and expectations to change the world with every key stroke. We may do fulfilling work, but the moments in which we derive pure joy from the job certainly don't occur every day. And that's why we can't root for Milton despite the fact he's more than a productive major leaguer. While most of us would kill to turn on a fastball just once, you get the feeling that Bradley wakes up every day and wishes for the anonymity of a desk job. It's hard to root for a guy like that.

And if he had a desk job with your company, you'd probably eat lunch with someone else .