| Corey Koskie is the team clown. He is the worst
dresser, most easy going, most well-liked, fun guy to be around
according to all of the reports that I have read. Nothing, and I
mean nothing, will ever top the time he filled
David
Ortiz's underwear with peanut butter and jelly. Corey is one of
those guys who has extremely thin hair all around his hair so that
he looks bald from one angle, but upon closer inspection still has
hair on most of his head. Give him five years, however, and he will
be bald down to his sides.
Last season, it was expected that Corey would be a presence in
the middle of the lineup. Unfortunately, he was injured and placed
on the DL in May and he never completely recovered. This season he
again started off slow, but really caught fire in June. He was the
AL Player of the Week in the middle of the month and he hit over
.400 for the month. He finally has arrived as a big-time threat in
the Twins' lineup and is the very obvious and best choice to hit
third in the lineup. (For once, Gardenhire has actually put a player
in the correct spot in the lineup - now if he could just learn that
Jacque should never
be allowed to leadoff, then I would have more faith in his managing
abilities.)
Corey provides the best combination of power and patience at the
plate and currently leads all American League third basemen in
Win Shares, a statistic created by Bill James to measure a
player's overall contribution to the team. Sadly, Corey was not
chosen to the All-Star team in what is one of the biggest snubs this
season. While he and Hank Blalock both have very similar stats,
Blalock is playing in an extreme hitter's park. Plus, Corey is much
better defensively than Blalock, and is also rated as the best
defensive third baseman in the American League.
Unfortunately, I feel that Corey is very underappreciated not
only throughout baseball as evidenced by his All-Star snub, but in
Minnesota as well. Twins fans love
Torii Hunter,
Doug Mispelling, and
Jacque Jones, but the
best player on the team is Corey. He just does not make the flashy
plays and fans cannot truly appreciate the consistency at which he
plays unless they watch every game. Someone, somewhere needs to get
a huge Corey Koskie campaign rolling to really increase the overall
awareness of Twins fans to his excellence. After all, he is playing
at a higher level right now than
Gary
Gaetti ever reached, but most Twins fans would easily rank the
G-Man higher than Corey.
Lastly, Koskie is a Candian born in Anola, Manitoba. Every season
there are a couple of games in which virtually his entire hometown
travels down to the Dome to cheer him on. Because of his
nationality, his is often the butt of jokes around the locker room
because Canadians are such easy targets. However, it also led to one
of the best billboards I have ever seen in which Corey is portrayed
as a lumberjack. While in the previous paragraph I asked for Corey
to receive a little more attention, I cannot blame the Twins'
publicity people because their "Get To Know 'Em" ad campaigns have
been great. Instead, it needs to be a grassroots effort organized by
diehard Twins fans like those who frequent the
DT
Twins Forum or religiously read the
Aaron's Baseball Blog everyday. C'mon Twins fans, let's get
Corey some attention
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