The Player We Didn't Know. - by Mark Kreidler
THANK YOU. Your support means everything. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber! You’ll never miss another post, and we’ll get to see a lot more of each other.
Jeremy Giambi was destined to be remembered for two things, and only two, apparently. One: He didn’t slide on that play at the plate when Derek Jeter made that circus flip. If you’re a baseball fan, you know the play I’m describing, even though I haven’t come close to referencing the year, the teams or even the point of the remembrance.
Two: He was in that movie. “Moneyball” was pretty incredible, after all. Jeremy Giambi was the guy dancing on the table in the Oakland clubhouse, amusing his teammates after a crappy loss. Billy Beane came into the clubhouse, smashed the boombox with a bat and ordered Giambi down. Not long after, Beane traded Giambi.
And that’s sort of where the trail ends. Jeremy Giambi is the answer to a trivia question — “Who’s the guy who didn’t slide when Jeter made that play?” — and a convenient villain in “Moneyball,” a character who had to be gotten rid of in order for the A’s to right their clubhouse, go on an historic winning streak, and make Beane look like a genius.
But when Giambi took his own life this week, only 47 years old, it was Billy Beane who immediately offered one of the most poignant tributes.
“I’ll always remember him as a fun guy, a good guy, and an underrated player — particularly an underrated hitter,” Beane told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He was, quite frankly, an important piece of probably the best team we’ve had since I’ve been here, that 2001 team.”
Giambi was a multi-dimensional human. His brother Jason was far more famous, and infamous, but Jeremy made six years in the highest-level baseball league on Earth. Great stuff and terrible stuff swirled around him and his life, both inside and outside baseball. Great stuff and terrible stuff, all together.
But we didn’t know that, because, you know, we had the one play and the movie. We felt pretty caught up on Jeremy Giambi.
Among last year’s posts, one in particular resonated with more of you than I ever would have imagined. It was the one in which we discussed Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen and his openness about getting counseling, which ultimately changed the trajectory of Jansen’s late career and helped him love his job again. At the time, I suggested calling it “mental strength training,” since that’s really what it is.
Jansen said that all athletes should get such training, and I cannot more strongly agree. But I think part of the reason that his story was so broadly received is that people were shocked by it — shocked that a guy they watch on TV doing amazing things could be roiling on the inside. I mean, it never showed.
That is where the Giambi story brings us. In that same Chronicle obituary, which is so well reported and so heartbreaking, Art Howe speaks about Jeremy in a way that would surprise most of us who can only remember the Jeter play and “Moneyball.”
“Our fans remember him for that non-slide, but it’s a shame they even think about that,” Howe told the paper. “I know he played hard every single day. He was well liked, he was outgoing, he was a great teammate, and he gave me everything. I couldn’t ask for more.”
Oh, by the way:
That is not Art Howe.
This is Art Howe:
And he’s as decent a baseball man as I’ve ever met. His portrayal as some sort of old-school-addled obstructionist in “Moneyball” is one of the worst sports film disservices to an actual human on record, and I say that as someone who still enjoys that movie.
In 2001, when the A’s went 102-60, Jeremy Giambi slashed .283/.391/.450. He was absolutely in the middle of the winning. But that year ended in a playoff loss to the Yankees, which included the damn Jeter play:
Giambi often maintained, and Howe reiterated this week, that if video replay had been in effect in MLB at the time, he would’ve been ruled safe on appeal. Still, “That’s the decision I made,” Giambi said the following spring. “Maybe it was the wrong one, but we’re all human.”
Well, about that: We are all human, yes, but we don’t all have our lives — or our careers — reduced to a single moment. In Giambi’s case, the movie, which was released almost a decade after the 2002 A’s season that it fictionalized, cast the player into a cemented memory. His role was problem child. He was an obstacle to winning. That’s why Brad Pitt got so pissed that day in the clubhouse.
In reality, Jeremy Giambi was a major leaguer with whom teammates loved to play. He was also the guy in the Jeter play. He was also batting .274 with an .862 OPS for the A’s at the time Beane traded him to Philadelphia in 2002, hardly the profile of someone who was standing in the way of winning. He was also someone who, along with his brother Jason, admitted to using steroids during his career.
He was all of that. He died at his parents’ home in Claremont, east of Los Angeles, and it’s clear that he had been suffering, perhaps for some time. Giambi graduated from South Hills High School in West Covina, and on the baseball team he wore the same jersey number, 7, as his older brother.
In 1995, Jeremy batted .349 as a sophomore for Cal State Fullerton, one of the shining stars on a team that won the College World Series over USC. Six years later, he played for the A’s against the Yankees in that A.L. Division Series, the one in which he and Derek Jeter became forever linked.
Giambi hit .308 in that series. I suppose it doesn’t fit the narrative.
ncG1vNJzZmilkae4rL7EopulnaJjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oq6GdXaW5osXEq2SwnV2ZtqW602aip6en