One of the sad parts of professional sports is when very popular
players have to move on. Especially when it’s not just another free
agent jumping ship for a preposterous amount of money elsewhere
(Albert Pujols, call your office).
Kevin Youkilis, late of the Boston Red Sox and now with those
other Sox, is one of our one-name players, like Yogi, or Reggie.
Kevin’s sobriquet is Yook, normally exclaimed fortissimo in Fenway
Park with at least one exclamation mark behind it. He’s been
heavily identified with the Sawks. With good reason.
The Fenway faithful have enjoyed yelling “Yook!” (who wouldn’t?)
for nine years now every time Kevin did something good, which was
frequently. He’s been a producer, a clutch player, a major part of
the Sawks’ success, including championship seasons in 2004 and
2007. But the Sawks have taken the business over the sentimental
approach before. They unloaded uber-popular Nomar Garciapara
(pronounced No-mah! in Boston and thereabouts) in the middle of the
2004 season when his production had dropped off. And that worked
out. The 86-year Curse of the Bambino ended in October of that
year.
It will take some getting used to by all hands, not the least by
Kevin himself, to seeing Yook in a Chicago uniform. But at age 33
and coming off of injuries, Yook found himself to be a physician
without a position.
When not injured this season Yook was only able to put up an
underpowered .233 batting average, well under his .286 lifetime
mark. His replacement at third, rookie Will Middlebrooks, is 24 and
hitting .325. He’s the present and the future there. Yook isn’t
going to take Adrian Gonzalez’s place at first. And as even the
Sawks don’t have more than a million dollars a month to pay Yook to
ride the pine (or whatever Major League dugout benches are made of
these days), it was time to go.
Yook’s aggressive, always red-lined, pre-Miranda approach to the
game will fit in just fine on the South Side. To win, Yook will do
whatever it takes, down to and including biting your ankle. He
likely has more good baseball left on his odometer. And fans in
Chicago will like him for the same reasons he was appreciated in
Boston.
If White Sox players pick up on some of Yook’s intensity by
osmosis, that won’t be all bad, either. But let’s hope they don’t
try to copy his stance, one of the oddest in baseball. (In an
interview on hitting some years back, the late Ted Williams had
some complimentary things to say about then Sawks’ right fielder
Dewey Evans. But he said Evans’ batting stance made him “want to
throw up.” We never heard Teddy Ballgame’s take on Youkilis’s
approach. Probably just as well.)
The White Sox are leading the AL Central now and Yook may well
help them be in the mix in October. He replaces a guy at third
hitting a buck-seventy. If things work out the way they can, Kevin
will be humming Sweet Home, Chicago before the frost is on the
pumpkin.
Yook got a well-deserved
fond farewell Sunday in Fenway when he was lifted for a
pinch-runner after hitting one of his patented dirty-shirt triples.
In the middle of July, the White Sox come to Fenway, where Yook
will surely get a good hand and a full-throated “Yook!” when he
comes to bat. At least the first time. The real test of affection
in Red Sox Nation will come when Yook robs a Sawks hitter of a base
hit, or hits one off or over the Green Monster, but in a White Sox
uniform. Then it might just be, “Yook! Ya bum!” Thus it is and ever
has been in the Grand Old Game.
