One more.
“One yard. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been thinking about that one yard for the past 17 days.”
Russell Wilson said that in a Players’ Tribune article and video just about 40 days ago.
And every one of us can relate, given what happened on a baseball diamond just about 40 months ago.
That lingering sportsache doesn’t go for every player in the Rangers clubhouse these days — in fact, it applies to fewer than a fifth of them — but based on several written accounts this morning, it was clearly a big part of the things Wilson talked about with his Texas Rangers teammates on his day in camp yesterday.
“We had a great conversation,” Wilson told reporters. “We talked about how you get back to winning and get back to that opportunity where you are there again and the focus that it takes. It comes down to fundamentals, but also team bonding and that ‘I’ve got your back kind of mentality at all costs.’ I think we have that. . . . You learn from winning, but also how to deal with a loss. I think consistency in your perspective shouldn’t change. The idea of having a championship mindset, that shouldn’t leave. . . . When everybody has that championship mindset, you never fear. You never doubt.”
Wilson apparently brought brand new Bose headphones and speakers for every one of his teammates and every member of the Rangers staff, but it’s the other thing he brought, the stuff you can’t put a retail price on, that for me goes into the stack along with Prince Fielder’s handful of opposite-field square-ups and the strikeout barrage Jon Edwards and Keone Kela fired yesterday, the first with the uniformed Wilson in the dugout hanging with young baseball players and the second just after he’d left the stadium, and now I’m tormenting myself obsessing over how much Kela’s temperament on the mound might have made a difference on October 27, 2011. One more . . . .
Stop.
I’m so ready for ball.
Forget counting sleeps at this point.
One more Sunday.