Sunday, October 4, 2009
Blog of the Week: Torii's Storiis
Anyways.
In honor of the end of my favorite season of the year, this week's featured blog is Torii's Storiis.
When Torii Hunter moved to the Angels last year, after several years with the Minnesota Twins, the City of Anaheim was excited. He's a star outfielder, an excellent hitter, and has a smile that could light up the stadium. He steals opponents' homerun hits right out of the sky, runs into walls at full speed and does what he can to keep his team together, focused, and laughing.
Plus, he has a blog.
The season is 162 games of pure joy, so he, understandably, doesn't find a lot of time to write. But I always love it when he does. He is so positive, so complimentary of his teammates. When injury kept him from playing the All-Star Game in July, he admitted that it sucked, but chalked it up to just one of those things and kept on going. And when Nick Adenhart died in April, Torii's post moved me to tears.
On Thursday, I had the opportunity to go to the last home game of the regular 2009 season. There was a rally afterward and Torii spoke for a few minutes. I could listen to him speak for hours because you just can't help feeling uplifted after listening to him.
And then I watched as one by one all of the team walked across the field (and directly past my seat!) to get on the bus to Oakland for the final three games before the playoffs start. They have this tradition where the new kids that were just pulled up from Triple A in Salt Lake have to wear these crazy outfits (a baby, a kid with a swim floatie, a tiny pink dress, the dude from Reno 9-1-1...) As funny as it was to see those boys parade around looking like they had lost some kind of bet, what really impressed me was seeing the rest of the team, all cleaned up and dressed in suits, brandishing cameras and laughing together. They are a team, but they are also a family. I love my team, but I've never gotten to see that side of them before.
And Torii's smile was brighter than them all.
I've got my fingers crossed for an amazing post-season. We have a lousy playoff record against the Red Sox, but this year, that's going to finally change. This year, we're going to win. We're going to get past them and move on to the Championship and then the World Series.
And I know Torii Hunter, Number 48, will be writing about it.
And I can't wait to read what he has to say.
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This is a great post - I wouldn't have guessed that a team would have those kinds of fun and silly traditions. I'll have to check out Torii's blog. He sounds pretty darn cool.
ReplyDeleteI never would have guessed that Torii was a man!
ReplyDeleteDid you get the wall hanging?
How incredible that with all that he has going on, he still finds time to blog!! Wow!
ReplyDeleteI just had to say I'm sorry I've been absent from your comments the last few posts! My lousy Internet Explorer has freaked out on me shutting down the last few times!
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