The press convention for Robin Yount’s retirement started with Bud Selig talking for six minutes, pausing after every sentence in an approximation of gravitas. Sal Bando, GM and Yount’s former teammate, added just a few phrases of his personal. Behind them, the inexperienced and purple eyesore of a model overhaul loomed, an unsubtle warning: change is right here, and it’s not gonna go nicely.
“You would say I’ve by no means actually regarded ahead to today,” Yount started, failing to talk into the mic. “Nevertheless it’s right here.” That the speech was occurring now, on February 11, made that clear: the bosses who had stated such good issues had additionally been those telling him, in no unsure phrases, that his providers as a beginning ballplayer have been not crucial. There’s a Roger Angell passage on Yount that I can’t discover now—as with every thing Angell, it will probably simply be dreamed in his voice—that casts the Corridor of Famer as nearly wordless, not out of a scarcity of intelligence, however via a pure internalization of his craft. Yount speaking about baseball was like a violation, breaking the fourth wall; he was baseball. His speech, which was a proof that he’d been supplied a nebulous job by the workforce however would pursue some outdoors pursuits for a 12 months, lasted one minute and 9 seconds earlier than he opened the ground for questions. He regarded relieved when it was over.
