Meanwhile Johan Santana and the Mets made it official last night, of course, and there was much rejoicing. MetsBlog must have set some sort of page view record yesterday; I did little but click "refresh" for three hours straight, and I was not alone. Anyway, I was going to do a Get To Know post on him, but really, I pretty much covered Santana back in December. As I said then:
I think one reason I'm fascinated by Santana is that I know so little about him, which is what happens when relatively quiet people play for teams in the middle of the country. I don't get to see a lot of interviews or quotes from the guy, which means it's easy to make him into something of an ideal figure. (Plus I used to read a lot of Bat Girl; she referred to him simply as El Presidente).
The only off-field Santana antic I can remember made me like him even more -- it happened this past summer, when the Twins came to Shea. Minnesota broadcaster Bert Blyleven bet Santana he couldn't throw a complete game shutout (note to Blyleven: this works much better with Sidney Ponson); it turned out Santana could, and indeed did, so Blyleven had to let him shave his head:
I think the best part of all this is that while pitching his complete game shutout, Johan Santana was apparently thinking about how he would get to shave Bert Blyleven's head.
I say trade every minor leaguer that isn't nailed down.
Rewatching that video, I'll add that Santana also sounds a little bit like a muppet. But in a good way! Also, check out this additional Johan video, from a fan in the stands; anyone who messes with Sidney Ponson during his downtime is, clearly, a man after my own heart.
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