Singular Lee.
It was about this time yesterday that I saw this tweet, sitting at a red light on a nasty cold and windy and rainy morning, with traffic and the blustery weather equally snarled.
@Ken_Rosenthal
2/23/16, 8:03 AM
Sounds like Cliff Lee’s career is over. His agent, Darek Braunecker, told me, “We don’t anticipate him playing at this point.”
At different points of the day I thought about what I wanted to write about this.
Or if I should write about it at all.
I mean, this guy was a Texas Ranger for less than four months.
But man.
Man.
The ratio of how long Cliff Lee was here to how much I’ve written about him — then and since — is so out of whack, but I’ll never apologize for that.
He represented what many in the front office consider their finest moment, and provided Hall of Fame dominance in a flash-quick portion of what won’t be considered a Hall of Fame career.
Cliff Lee was a turning point.
He contributed only 15 regular season starts (only four of which were Lee wins) and five in the post-season (one bad, one very good, three stupid-great), but he’ll always be a top 10 Texas Ranger for me. Until seeing Rosenthal’s tweet on Tuesday, I still held out flagging hope that Lee’s free agency and his market would lead to a Rangers reunion in the next few weeks.
One front office member used to tell me he hated the name “TROT COFFEY” for those rumor dumps I send out in July and December.
I told him a few years ago that if he’d see to it that his group got Cliff Lee back here, I would change it to “PHIFER” (Player Hype Inferno: Filtered Emporium of Rumors), which is Cliff’s middle name.
Deal, he said.
Alas, it won’t change.
The decision not to keep Lee here after his transcendent October 2010 run, whether that should be pinned primarily on the Rangers or on Lee (or on Lee’s wife), led to Texas signing Adrian Beltre instead.
Zero regrets, obviously. No hindsight-ache.
I’m going to miss watching Cliff Lee pitch. It was artistry. It was an exhibit of crazy-cool. It was Don Draper, every fifth day.
It was appointment baseball.
I wrote a lot about number 33 when he was here, and a lot since, and I don’t really have the energy right now to write a requiem on a fascinating career that, fortunate for us, stopped down in Texas for four incredible, unforgettable months.
In a momentary effort to inspire some of that energy, I looked back at a bunch of the reports I wrote about Lee when he was here (and one that I put together a couple years ago).
It was kinda fun getting back in those moments. If you have some time and want to check a couple of them out, here you go:
* October 14, 2010 (on Texas-Tampa Bay, ALDS Game 5, sealing the Rangers’ first-ever playoff series win): http://www.newbergreport.com/article.asp?articleid=2064
* October 19, 2010 (on Lee vs. Andy Pettitte, ALCS Game 3, in Yankee Stadium): http://www.newbergreport.com/article.asp?articleid=2070
* December 14, 2010 (after Lee signed that winter with the Phillies): http://www.newbergreport.com/article.asp?articleid=2109
* August 8, 2013 (a nostalgic look back at the Rangers’ playing style in 2010, which includes several video angles of the final pitch of that Rangers-Rays series that’s still one of my top 5 memories in franchise history): http://www.newbergreport.com/article.asp?articleid=3085
I smiled as I saw Rosenthal’s tweet yesterday morning, remembering on my work-dictated drive from Dallas to Fort Worth, in a diagonal rain that was jamming up the commute, that Kristen Lee had cited DFW traffic as one thing she wouldn’t miss when she and Cliff decided to go back to Philadelphia after their short but awesome time here.
Fair enough. It probably all worked out the way it was supposed to.
Cliff, you’ll be missed, and thank goodness for all the reasons and moments why.
Thanks for everything.
