by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–When you hit a walk-off Homerun, you make the Major League Baseball highlights with another bunch of walk-offs that day, but when you make a throw like the throw that Yoenis Céspedes made to the plate on the recent series in Anaheim against the LA Angels, you stand alone. Over 300 feet on the air to Norris the catcher who put a tag on Howie Kendrick for the out. Now, we do not see this very often, do we? After I called the play in Anaheim, my broadcast partner looked at me and said “what was that?”

Céspedes is leading the major leagues in assists from the outfield. During a previous series, also against the Angels at the Oakland Coliseum, he threw two Angels runners out at the plate, in the same inning, first Angels catcher Chris Iannetta, who is not very fast, and then Kole Clahoun who is really fast. By-the-way in that same game Yoenis drove in five runs.

Josh Donaldson is having a great season, although the last series in Anaheim was his worst, fielding and hitting, Josh is having his best season so far and will be the starting third baseman at the July 15 All Star Game for the American League; yet it is Céspedes who is making baseball news around the country.

It is very simple. With all the changes in baseball today, true baseball purist still love to see an outfielder with a great arm throwing a runner at the plate or at any base. Granted hitting a 500 foot home run is something to admire, same can be said about a great throw to the plate that negates a run to your adversary.

It is one of the real talents of baseball (to have a great throwing arm)that is now-days basically forgotten. And for the new baseball fans, the younger crowd, they are not used to see throws of that
sort. Could be that in the US many kids that have a good arm, are immediately converted to pitcher.

Yoenis told me in Spanish; “I just threw the ball”, he is a man of few words, he is not playing to make Sportscenter, he plays hard all the time and loves the big stage, so if it happens it happens, he never changes his approach, because he came from Cuba, where if you play baseball you play hard all the time, and in Cuba you are playing basically for free, for what in the US it is called “perdiem”type of money.

In Cuba there is no free agency, agents or owners, it is all own (everything) by the Cuban government, in Cuba there is only one employer, the Government.

I remember vividly what Céspedes told me during the first time we met, at the A’s Spring Training facility in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2012, when he had not played a game yet during a regular season: “Yo quiero que la gente sepa quien soy yo” trans: “I want the people to know who I am”. He was a star in Cuba with the Granma team for close to a decade. And by the way, they know who you are now Yoenis.

So, no, I am not surprised at Yoenis Céspedes, he is a complete athlete, not just a baseball player.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for A’s baseball and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com