The word is shōgakkō. Japanese writer Haruki Murakami first used it in his 1986 essay “Afternoon in the Islets of Langerhans,” and loosely translated, it means “a small but meaningful happiness.” It’s less about the word than it is about a way of life. Acknowledging and appreciating the small things — think the smell of your morning coffee, a favorite landscape or the smile of a loved one — as important, knowing that they add up over time to a larger sense of fulfillment or contentment.
If you’re confused about why I’m quoting Murakami in a column about Adrián Beltré, it’s possible you didn’t follow the Texas Rangers from 2011 to 2018. When Beltré arrived from Boston, he was meant to be the finishing piece of a roster that was coming off its first World Series loss, favored to win the whole thing. By the time he retired, the team was mired in a rebuild that felt interminable. There were very few “big happiness” moments available to Rangers fans in his later years.
So when he created small ones out of nothing — a seemingly impossible defensive play, a home run hit from a knee, a bit of silliness with an opponent or teammate — it felt like magic.
Watching Adrián Beltré was like watching magic.
In his Dodgers years — from his debut as a 19-year-old in 1998 through his final season in L.A. when he hit 48 home runs en route to a second-place finish in the 2004 NL MVP vote — Beltré was a very good player, hitting .274 with a .794 OPS, but lurked just below the surface of the conversation about the game’s biggest stars. He signed a five-year, $64 million deal with the Mariners before the 2005 season, and while he won two Gold Gloves in Seattle, his offensive output — he hit .266 with a .759 OPS — wasn’t enough to make anyone think he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory. It wasn’t until his “pillow deal” in 2010 with the Red Sox that he got back to the sort of star-level production he had flashed in 2004.
But when he arrived in Texas, it all clicked. He went from “very good player” to Hall of Fame lock in his eight years with the Rangers. It was also when he really began to let his personality shine on the field.
There is one moment I keep coming back to when I think about what it meant to me to cover Beltré’s Rangers, which I began doing in 2016. It was the bottom of the eighth inning on July 26, 2017, and the Rangers were losing 18-6 to the Miami Marlins. At that point in the game, there were two storylines worth paying attention to. First, Giancarlo Stanton had hit a home run in the top of the eighth off Jason Grilli. He demonstratively slammed his bat to the ground and skipped to first base — a response to what he perceived as Grilli’s overexuberant celebration the night before when he closed out a Rangers win. Second, Beltré was 3-for-4 on the night, putting him four hits from 3,000.
He wasn’t going to pass the milestone that night, but with six games remaining in the homestand, every hit counted — fans, players, writers and team employees alike wanted him to get No. 3,000 in front of the home crowd.
As his teammate Elvis Andrus dug in to take his at-bat, Beltré stood in his usual spot in the on-deck area, but closer to home plate than the actual on-deck circle. He would later explain that after 20 years of experience, he found that he was safer there, less likely to be struck by a stray foul ball. He’d been doing it for most of his career. But on this night, second-base umpire Gerry Davis intervened. He told Beltré to move back to the circle. After a brief exchange, Beltré demurred. If Davis wanted him to stand on the circle, he would do just that.
Davis immediately ejected Beltré, seemingly unable to find humor in the moment (or at least unwilling to acknowledge it — Davis did admit in a recent interview with MLB.com that he did, in fact, find it funny).
But for as funny as this moment was, the truth is that I could have chosen…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .