>This was a career .352 hitter in a bad college conference and
>decided that he was good enough to play big league baseball
>and played 7 years in a Canadian independent league until he
>manages to convince somebody else that he is good enough to
>play big league baseball. And he actually made it. And now
>he's a serviceable 4th OF/back-up 1B for a mediocre team.

It was light-hearted snark, but they kinda made fun of him on BPro's hitlist for turning down about a million dollars for play for a Korean team this past winter. His logic seemed clear enough, and you described it above. He thought he was a major leaguer. I was a bit disappointed in the writer. "Dear sir, your incredibly rare dream that you worked incredibly hard and well past the point of routine effort to achieve? That's dumb"

I was really pleased at the double he hit in Cleveland the other day. His approach last year was geared entirely around poking balls out to right center, like those weird homeruns Mike Piazza used to hit. To do this, he basically nestled himself in the far southwest corner of the box, and by the end of the season when pitchers had developed a little bit of a plan against him, it almost looked like his arms literally couldn't reach strikes on the outer part of the plate.

That seems to be less of a problem for the moment.