NEWSLETTER
On an Atlanta Braves team loaded with stars, and with a long-time veteran face in Freddie Freeman, you may have been surprised to learn that it was Dansby Swanson who was called “The Sheriff” on the team. But we’ve now heard for months about who Swanson is, what he cares about, and how he conducts himself on a team, so it’s certainly no longer a surprise.
I recently talked about what it means when people – constantly! – choose to describe Dansby Swanson as a “winner,” so I found it funny when an Athletic piece with quotes from Freeman on Swanson wound up chock full of that word.
“All he knows how to do is win,” Freeman told Patrick Mooney of Swanson. “He cares about the game. He wants people to be good around him. He brings playing every day. You can have five tools, but those five tools don’t mean a thing if you don’t have that sixth tool, which is grinding every single day. That’s what he does, no matter how he feels. Being a shortstop and playing 162 games, that’s special …. That’s a winner. The Cubs got a really good one, and they’re going to be good for a long time because of him.”
Winner winner Swanson dinner.
Here’s hoping Freeman is right about how much the Cubs will win with Swanson in tow. You wouldn’t necessarily expect Freeman to say anything else about his good friend and former teammate, but I did chuckle at his main line being the win-win-win stuff. Truly, it’s always what it comes back to when anyone is talking about Swanson. I still think it’s a little bit fuzzy as a concept and a descriptor for an individual baseball player, but as we saw with the way Swanson wants to work with the pitcher and catcher on game-calling and adjustments, he is certainly doing much more for the team than merely playing great defense and hitting some homers.
