He had just returned with a golf cart from the medical room at the opposite end of the field, where a doctor used two stitches to close the pit he had opened in Guerrero’s finger hours earlier than Aaron Hicks’s left gill. On the televisions above him, the show after the YES Network match began airing the highlights of the Toronto Blue Jays’ 6-4 victory over the New York Yankees on Wednesday, an exciting contest that you may have heard Guerrero had some effect. on. Another in a long list of important games in a rising career that is just beginning. Whack. Guerrero’s first Homer of the night, except for the second pitch he saw from Yankees champion Gerrit Cole – a hanging slider – was parked above the wall at 109 mph. Guerrero looked up from his phone. Still stoic, but now I’m watching. Crunching. Guerrero’s hand was trampled by Hicks as the first key player used his bare hand to balance while picking a ball on the ground. He was quickly cut to Guerrero, with his trouser pocket flushed, walking calmly back to the Blue Jays dugout seeking help, blood flowing rapidly from his wound. “He was bleeding a lot,” said Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo. “It was like being in that Rocky movie: ‘Cut me, Mick – I’m bleeding!’ Through all of this, as Blue Jays trainers Jose Ministral and Voon Chong worked furiously to stop the flow of blood and bandage the area, Guerrero kept repeating the same thing over and over again. I’m not coming out of this game, Charlie. I’m not coming out of this game. “I do not want you to leave the game!” Montoy then exclaimed as he recalled the moment and laughed. “You have to give him a lot of praise. So many people would have come out, you know? “I saw a lot of blood. But I waited to let the trainers work, to see what they could do, if they could stop the bleeding. And they did. So, they deserve a lot of praise. We never really talk about coaches. “But apart from Vladdy, the coaches were the MVPs today.” Crack. A second shot by Cole was shown on that club television, this is an absurd, innate blow in which Guerrero pulled his hands to put a quick 98 mile ball as he ran several inches from the plate below the his belt, creating a dent. the rear wall of the left plot. Guerrero will tell you that his plan against Cole was to find a good pitch to hit. The first was. But this second was not. Not in the slightest. Regular players can not get to this stadium, let alone take it for that ride. Even very good strikers can not. Run it back a thousand times and Cole probably doesn’t throw it any differently. It’s just a special ability that you either have or do not have. And Guerrero may be the only one in the game who has it. “I was just trying to react,” Guerrero said. “I mean, when you’re up there, you don’t really notice a location, especially on this arrow. “All I did was look at the pitch and react.” Montoyo used to hit himself a little. Not like Vlady. No one hits like Vladdy. But he had almost 900 hits in his career in the minor-league. He thinks he may have beheaded a fan trying to put his bat in this thing. “Anyone who knows baseball and saw what they did tonight knows it’s just impressive. “It was an internal fastball at 98 from one of the best pitchers in baseball,” said Montoyo. “It simply came to our notice then. Like, it’s not easy to do that. I would kill someone if I hit them like that. If I can do it. “ Slice. Watching the expressionless moments after the match from his closet, Guerrero saw himself winning a third shot from Cole in the sixth – a double – after falling behind, 0-2, cutting his swing and throwing another warm-up 98 miles / hour in the opposite corner of the field. Even Cole – one of the best pizzerias on the planet, you may have heard – had to tip his hat after that. Guerrero did not see the gesture at that moment. Someone showed it to him on his phone after the game. He thought he was quite careful. Cole was less happy. “I mean, did you see at night?” Cole said angrily. “If you had a lid, you would give it a tip. And it got better after that. Oh my god.” Click. After that it got better. A third hostage from Guerrero’s barrel, this time in the eighth inning by Jonathan Loaisiga, a completely ugly right-hander who left only three hostages over 70.2 innings in 2021. And from a barrel 95 mph in the middle – Loaisiga bread and butter tar on right-handers. Some data. Loaisiga threw 363 immersions inside the plate or beyond on right-handers in his five-season career. Only one of them – in Trea Turner in 2020 – had ever left the park before Wednesday night. Only four others were hit for extra bases. These things that Guerrero is doing are not normal. “When this cradle starts, it’s just…” began the Yankees’ first key player, Anthony Rizzo, before leaving. “She’s just better than everyone else. It does not matter who is on the embankment, what pitches are thrown. He put these cots in very good courts. “And when men do that, it’s not fun when you’re on the other side.” Wait – back to Guerrero in his closet. He stopped watching for a moment around Cole’s lid, turning his gaze to his phone and to whoever you text when you are the best player alive and you just spent the night setting fire to the baseball world. Above him, the highlights came to an end. A frame score read Blue Jays 6, Yankees 4. Guerrero’s line was highlighted: 4-for-4 with three homers, one double, three run, four RBI. And after a clip from the press after the fight Yankees manager Aaron Boone quickly replaced it on screen. “An eerie blow,” Boone said. “One of the best heaters in the world.” There is no controversy with this. What Guerrero did in the Bronx on Wednesday was amazing, riveting, lively. It did not matter who you were cheering for, which side you were on. It does not matter if your answer to these questions was either. Guerrero’s night was just incredibly exciting theater from one moment to the next. The hostages, the presence, the determination to continue with a hole in the hand. The moments, the celebrations, the deliberate jogging around the bases. The final of the night that trapped with the big glove of his first key, a 108 mph Josh Donaldson that seemed magnetized to him only a moment after the coach of Montoyo and Blue Jays, Luis Rivera, called from the bench to replace Guerrero. a little to his right. What night? what player? what incredible scenes. And yet, you would not know what had happened once you saw him shirtless in front of his closet 30 minutes after the final appearance, his right index finger was glued tightly, with an amber nose poured from the back of his head, rolling stoically through of his phone. The best striker on the planet, a unique, innate talent, who spends a quiet time after a long day at work. A short moment to sit with himself, to think, to send a message to someone important. Before packing his things and returning to his hotel, where, sometime tomorrow, he will get up to do it again.
