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Q.  How is Cano taking this slop-storm?

A.  Smiling like a Cheshire cat, that he'll never have to spend one more lousy minute in front of a New York media crowd.  If New York wanted to really rub his nose in the fact that he's about to be a much happier man, they couldn't have found a better way.

Edgar didn't bust it down the line; he took care of his legs.  Junior trotted out a ground ball or ten. In Seattle, we don't take out our frustrations on our best players.  Also, we don't grab every possible opportunity to knee our best player in the man region, just because of our morbid fascination with love-hate relationships.

I mean it in a good way.

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Q.  Do PLAYERS care about a teammate's trot down to first?

A.  Minor notes like these --- > get lost in the Marshall-stack power chords of a ballplayer's actual attitude about winning and losing.

Jose Canseco got in fights with Tony La Russa all the time, because a team can't afford to have its best position player be a selfish individual.   Tony Gwynn -- reportedly -- didn't help his teams win, because "we win, and he goes oh-for-four, forget it.  He's [ticked]."  Real athletes HATE it when teammates couldn't give a rip about winning and losing.

Now, on the other hand, Ichiro would bunt in RBI situations, and he'd refuse to dive, but ... those little flakes of dandruff were lost in the Category 5 tornado of his workouts, his practice sessions, and his jaw-dropping laser focus on playing perfectly.

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Q.  Like, when would an athlete not care about winning and losing?!  C'mon.

A.  Like, when he cares about his stats, amigo.  Banking jack and bagging women, some guys rather enjoy that.

There are a few "manny being manny" NBA types playing baseball.  Don't kid yerself.  They show up, they lose the game, and then they scramble out into the night to do their thing.

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Q.  Oh.  So an actual athlete, on the field, is looking at a teammate's overall attitude.

A.  I play basketball with a guy.  If the game is a wipeout, he'll quit.  No effort.  He'll mail it in from there.  Very annoying.

But!  Any time the score is within +20, -20, either way?  He's the first one down the court, offensively and defensively.  He's diving for the loose balls.  He's sharing the basketball.  He wants to win more than anybody on the court.  You think his teammates don't know that?  You think we don't see him blow by us in the passing lane, getting back to play transition defense?

You get a guy like that, his teammates develop an inferiority complex about his work ethic.  They then do this:  They Try To Play More Like He Does.

Guys like that, if they have a quirk, it is a snowflake lost in the snowstorm of his overall persona.  So it is (obviously) with Robinson Cano.

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Q.  Can a pitcher be a team leader, in baseball?

A.  I've never seen it happen, have you?*

Randy Johnson wasn't a team leader.  He was a 5-day coupon for an automatic victory, and the other days he was a tall mangy guy in the corner, and everybody walked by on the other side of the clubhouse.

Ask a blogger and he'll tell you that Cano's leadership in Seattle doesn't mean much.  Ask guys in uniform and they'll say the opposite.  Pay yer money and take yer chances.

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Junior was awesome, and he had his moments of leadership -- notably when the Yankees went up in the 1995 ALCS.  Edgar was awesomer, but evidently not a leader.  Jay Buhner did some leading, but class clowns aren't team captains.  Ichiro was a great team leader -- of Japan's WBC squad, that is.

You thought toughness was overrated in football, until you saw it this year, and now you realize that some NFL teams do beat other teams down.  You've thought leadership was overrated in baseball, but that's because you've been watching the Seattle Mariners.  The Mariners had leadership exactly once:  Lou Piniella's leadership.  Check their record before Lou, and then their record beginning the day he arrived.

Robinson Cano is, potentially, the Lou Piniella ingredient in this mix.  For the Yankees to take sour-grapes swipes now, it shows you how bad they feel.  

And you can be sure that Cano is laughing his no-moustache beard off right now.

Eat yer hearts out Yank$,

Dr D

*I take that back.  Seaver in 1969.  The Mets couldn't win, and Seaver showed them.