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If Anthony Rendon Doesn’t Love Baseball, Maybe He Can File TPS Reports for Bill Lumbergh
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This story is a few days old, but we didn’t put anything on the site and I think it’s still worth a mention. Anthony Rendon, who won a ring with the Nationals before signing a 7-year, $245 million deal with the Angels, doesn’t really care about playing baseball. Sam Blum, who writes about the Angels and MLB for The Athletic (now with ads), shared on Twitter the transcript of an exchange between the pair:
“I emailed myself a pros and cons of why I wanted to stay in the game.”
Here are the pros: you make hundreds of millions of dollars and get to play a game for a living. You get four and a half months off in the winter.
The cons are that you have to do a lot of traveling. You have to speak to the media at 7 in the morning and you don’t get to enjoy a lot of quality family time in the summer. You risk injuries and opposing fans say mean things.
The baseball season is a slog and a grind, and for some the lifestyle is not glamorous, but if you asked the guy working at the sewage treatment plant if he’d like to switch places with Anthony Rendon, then sewage guy is probably saying yes. Rendon would then be preparing for his blue collar 3 a.m. Saturday morning shift, because the sewage ain’t gonna treat itself. Maybe he would rather file TPS reports for Bill Lumbergh.
To each their own, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. People always say faith and family comes first, but no shit. That’s a given. You can prioritize several things at the same time, so the generic “family” thing always feels like a nothing statement. Most people balance family and their job and look for a work-life balance that makes sense for them. No one in the history of humanity has ever publicly said “my job takes priority over my family.” Millions of people believe that, but they don’t say it out loud, which is why these kinds of statements don’t mean anything.
If Rendon doesn’t love the game, so be it. He wouldn’t be the first or last guy to be good at something but not necessarily enjoy doing it. I just think about his teammates and what they make of these comments. Sure, it’s the Angels, and no one gives a shit about winning out there, Mike Trout allegedly included, but what if Matt Gelb asked J.T. Realmuto these questions and J.T. said that “baseball has never been a top priority for me.“? We’d have a field day with it out here. Anthony Rendon would last five seconds in Philly. And what’s most annoying is that this guy was a stud in 2019 and a stud in the World Series, so there’s a baller in there somewhere. It’s like he won his ring, got a big contract, and then throttled down to 2nd gear mentally. Meantime, Bryce Harper, who lives and breathes baseball, is still looking for a ring. It’s an outrage!
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com