The Giants win on Tuesday, and it's cause for a vicious assault on the manager. The Giants lose last night, and that just kickstarts the effusive praise generator.
Omar Vizquel will do that. If you only read the dust jacket on the offseason book, you wouldn't like the plot. He's, like, 50, or something. He was paid how much money? Yick. And just as you're about to put the book down, your eye catches the critical blurbs. "A defensive whiz!", writes Paul Gramm of the Akron Stout-Turbine. "He can still get on base!", raves Cheryl Foons of the Cleveland Inquisition. Suddenly, you're thinking maybe there's something to this guy. For once, the out-of-context quotes have it. Vizquel is as fun a player to watch as any the Giants have acquired in the past decade.
Neifi Perez -- bless his soul, which is going through Satan's accounts receivable department right now -- was also a defensive-minded fellow. He was impressive enough to never begrudge him the Gold Glove he had earned, no matter how much he was unwanted on the team by the internet masses. He never did impress over his Giants career, however, like Vizquel has done over his first month. Every groundball hit Vizquel's way turns into a freaking circus, as he pushes the dancing bear and lion tamer out of the way to do some ridiculous trapeze act. On his back. Jumping in the air, legs splayed out, hurdling an encroaching lug. Even the plays he can't turn are impressive.
His hitting is better than we have a right to, at least at this point in the season, but his bat still makes it through the strike zone quick. He'll take a walk. His newfound legs are allowing him to steal bases at a ridiculously productive rate. The Giants as a team are getting on base extremely well to start the year, and Vizquel is playing a good part of that. More than one regular on this site has admitted a burgeoning man-crush on our fair Omar. Well, shucks, dust off the Whitman's Sampler, and add my name to the "from" tag.
There are still plenty of worries about the 2007 version. How can there not be some trepidation? Still, in the first 30 or so games of his contract, Vizquel is worth the entertainment dollar. Who needs the execrable ThunderSticks when you have 42,000 people simultaneously fluttering their eyelashes?