MLB Showdown Cards

Remembering a Showdown Great

                Baseball gives us so much. For many of us the only thing we get to take with us from the game is our memories of it. For many of us we take those memories and put them in a bottle and pour them out later. Sometimes that bottle is a stat or a replay. Other times the bottle is a hat or a jersey. We like to think around here we make you guys one more bottle. The thing we make bottles for most often is individual players. Recently news broke Jason Giambi will no longer be giving us memories as a player. For that I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on what is inside the Jason Giambi memory bottle.

                My earliest memory of Giambi is of a young player being tapped by his team to fill the role left by a traded Mark McGwire (earliest as in it happened first in Jason’s life, I would not gain this memory until decades after it occurred). MLB.TV and other all access channels were not as common then and we wouldn’t have got it even if they were. So I never saw a young Jason Giambi. I got this memory from reading Jose Canseco’s book “Juiced”. In which Canseco describes a young, fun loving Giambi taking steroids but also eating bad and drinking too much. Canseco prided himself on what he put into his body and thought Giambi irresponsible with his body. I think as I watch old footage of Giambi he is just a fun loving, west coast guy. I would also say Giambi didn’t have as many road blocks to get the Majors and Cuban born Canseco did. It is funny at 44 he would never grow into a hyper serious person and we would love him for it but at 24 we would resent him for it.

                He actually progressed pretty naturally from there from a statistical sense. Naturally meaning that his numbers constantly improved the way all of us wish our team’s young prospects will. McGwire left and went on to record breaking things and sports illustrated put this famous cover up. 

               Young, good looking, talented, much more exciting to talk to then Mark McGwire. Mark McGwire is actually also from California but if I told you he was from Iowa I doubt you would look it up to prove me wrong. Jason Giambi was from California and you could feel it. He wasn't going to be casted in "The Natural 2" like McGwire could have. He did take an inferior Oakland team twice to the playoffs to face the juggernaut, evil empire Yankees. Both times coming up a game short. In 2001 he could thank his brother for not sliding on that great Derek Jeter flip play. The memory was of a fun loving guy who could play with the big boys and do it his own way.

                The first Showdown memory I had of him was seeing his 2001 card. Those who had it probably had the same memory. He had something that made him special... an 11 OB. He wasn't the only one Carlos Delgado also had an 11 but Giambi was the first I saw. We actually didn't have the 2000 Giambi that I can remember. This was the first time I was able to pour memories of this great player into a great card. 

                 Sadly I wasn't able to put memories into Showdown cards for a while after that since I did not collect the 2002-2005 cards but I still kept memories of Giambi. In 2002 after his brother was tagged out by Posada, Giambi would join the Yankees. As I assume all non-Yankee's fans felt it was like seeing him "go corporate." It was like when The Rock was in The Corporation with Vince McMahon. I loved watching this guy perform. . . but for them? He was a productive player for them for the first few years. As a Red Sox fan, it felt like Giambi had a swing built to hit every Tim Wakefield pitch into the stratosphere. Then 2004 happened. . . he finally got worse as a player. I bet there were injuries. There always are in stories like this. The memory though is that he was finally cracking. The steroids and the New York bright-light pressure was too much for the now Giambino. 2005 had this sad memory. . .

                  Those who remember this bonus footage at the end of Goodfella's will remember this is when Jason apologized to us all for. . . well he never said. We all knew what it was and we all knew why he couldn't say it. He would lose his money if he did (see A-rod's current situation). That memory is one of a man trying to hold back an avalanche. I don't know if Canseco bullied him into it at first. I don't know if he was an aging minor leaguer in an organization that had an all-time great at his position so he felt pressure. I do believe that Jason Giambi in this memory was the first athlete I watched that I could remember who actually felt guilty for taking steroids before being caught. He also was the first to at least attempt to apologize to me. That is the first time I remember learning that we love to build guys up just so we can cut them down sometimes. He would get better and continue with the Yankees. He would take a small step back statistically. Not because baseball is hard but because he was off the juice my memories told me. In 2008 he hit 32 home runs which earned him the whopping pay check of 4 million dollars for 1 year from the Oakland Athletics. The memory was he was coming home and happy. 

                Billy Beane said it was like marrying an ex-wife at a news conference with Jason there. The problem was he was 38, past his prime and 4 million dollars is a lot of money in Oakland. He was traded with his 401 career home runs at the time to Colorado. There was some belief that if he stayed there and got healthy he had an outside shot at 500. The memory is of an injured and old legend who was being forgotten while he was still playing. I am not sure he didn't enjoy it that way. I also think pinch hitting and floundering was what many of us thought he deserved for what we believed his crimes to be. 

                 I understand he signed a $100 million dollar deal with the Yankees so no one feels bad he "only" made $3.75 million over 3 years with the Rockies. Then he went to Cleveland and I remembered something. I found a memory. I liked Jason Giambi once. He was once young and ate junk food and drank too much and enjoyed life and baseball. Not that I don't like the Kevin Youkilis of the world. The hyper intense, hyper focused, hyper competitive athletes. But I also like the kid with the tattoos and hair in his face enjoying a game. He had a handful of big home runs for the Indians his last two years and I remember being happy for him.