Day Twelve: Marc Newfield

Well, if The 'Bull was a clear and enjoyable memory, Marc Newfield is both the same and utterly different. The same in that I remember Marc Newfiel very well. I remember this Minor League Diamond Skills card, the top prospect cards, the 91 Topps #1 Pick card, the Prospects checklist card with him and Rondell White on it (really slick card) and I remember the name "Marc Newfield" so fucking well. It's crystal. I remember Newfield better than I remember David Segui, or David Bell, or Erik Hanson. And those were productive players over the years. And that's where the difference lies here. Marc Newfield was never productive.

Damn, I just looked at Newfield's Baseball Reference page and it's worse than I remembered. I thought that Newfield had a couple of seasons where he wasn't just totally overmatched after he left the Mariners but that just isn't the case. He was only in the Bigs for about 5 years and they were all quite bad. If you are into that sort of thing, he has a lifetime negative WAR. I don't really know what all goes into creating the WAR algorithm or space math or whatever, but negative can't be good. Anyways, Newfield is a memory of card collecting and Mariner fandom from the early 90s. He was gonna be something great and then he wasn't. But that's baseball. You can't really count on anyone being good until they are. The game is just too damn hard. There's way way too much that can go wrong and so many ways that the mental aspect of the game will just destroy people. When a blue chip baseball guy really hits its something extraordinary and the people who found and cultivated that player should be proud. It rarely occurs. But in all fairness, the Mariners are very terrible at cultivating those kind of talents and they should never be proud of themselves. Newfield is just one example. There are tons of players with names that I readily remember who never amounted to anything. I am sure that is true for all fanbases. However, as Mariners fans we need those guys so much that you end up kind of disliking the dude. It's not a good habit and I plan on eliminating it from my lifestyle in the coming years. But for today I am eternally disappointed in Marc Newfield, Roger Salkeld, and Dustin Ackley. Those three. Everyone else can have a pass. And I hope those three are happy and healthy today as well. And that Dustin Ackley is bogged down by some shame.