Fire Gardy

In case anyone’s been wondering what Torii Hunter has been up to lately, well, he’s been talking. Not surprising at all. 

“He said he really wanted to come back, but he needed the Angels to step up. I didn’t know what he meant, because I thought eight years and $160 million was a pretty impressive offer.” —Hunter, on what Mark Teixeira told him.

That’s … brilliant, Torii. Just brilliant. Perhaps someone will point out to Torii that three years and $45 million is also pretty impressive, and that he himself took the larger offer just a year ago.

If anyone’s going to understand Teixeira’s motivations in going to New York for a ludicrous amount of money, it ought to be Torii Hunter. In Torii’s world, the Twins didn’t “step up” to fulfill his contract demands, and he left for someplace offering bigger dollars deeper into an uncertain future. Teixeira did the same thing. Why does Torii have a problem with this?

Oh. One more thing. Teixeira only spent a couple of months in Los Angeles of Anaheim of California, or wherever the Angels play. Did anyone think that’d be enough time to develop enough connections to consider a “hometown discount” to stay with the free spending Angels? Especially Torii, for whom ten years wasn’t long enough?

I miss Torii Hunter. I love it when he opens his mouth. Pure gold, really.

I also have the feeling that that’s yet another area in which Gomez will eventually replace his production — but as with hitting and baserunning, he’s got quite a ways to go to match Torii. Keep working at it Carlos, you’ll make it eventually.

(And can we also hope for Denard to be a dark horse in the “Replacing Torii” sweepstakes? He’s largely been happy and congenial thus far, but so was Torii when he was younger. And Torii passed along the “play angry” wisdom to Denard, who took it to heart and apparently turned his career around. So it may be only a matter of time before Angry Denard hits the media and gives us some Torii-like craziness. I can’t wait. We could have two Torii-mouths in our outfield soon!)

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