No. 4: Nick Castellanos is all of us
No. 4: Nick Castellanos is all of us
Thoughts on the Phillies' most vulnerable and relatable player
For as good a baseball player as Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos is, posterity will likely remember him for a derogatory comment he had nothing to do with.
“I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went out over the air that I am deeply ashamed of,” Reds play-by-play man Thom Brennaman said during a game in August 2020. “If I have hurt anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart I'm so very, very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith – as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run.”
The botched apology went viral, then became entrenched in a certain slice of American culture, i.e., among people who like baseball and dark humor and dislike homophobes. The moment even has its own Wikipedia page.
Understandably, we cherish only a fraction of the 270 players whose faces adorn a wall in Cooperstown—who the hell was Charles Radbourn?—as well as a handful of local favorites. Larry Bowa, Mickey Morandini, John Kruk, and Greg Luzinksi cycle through the Former Phillie role like a wrestling tag team. The 20,000 other players who’ve played in the major leagues, even some great ones, fade into some form of obscurity. Pitcher Frank Tanana compiled an absurd 240-236 record and accrued 57.1 WAR over twenty-one seasons, mostly in the 1970s and 80s. Future hall-of-famer Justin Verlander is the only active pitcher with more wins than Tanana, and Castellanos has just a quarter of his career WAR total, yet I only became aware of Tanana last week after reading a forty-year-old essay by Roger Angell. For better or worse, Brennaman launched Castellanos into baseball immortality.
I will remember Castellanos differently: he’s the most relatable player I’ve ever watched.
Journeymen usually have one tool that gets them to and keeps them in the big leagues. The extinct LOOGY—left-handed one out guy—was the embodiment of this, and so are the versalite and light-hitting defensive specialist and the backup catcher whose main job is vibes. I am not in awe of these players. I am jealous of them. I could be out there if only I was left-handed, or was born and raised in Florida or California rather than New Jersey, or if I didn’t partially tear my U.C.L. my junior year in high school. I may not be as handsome as San Diego native Garrett Stubbs, but I am bigger than he is and also know how to work an aux cord.
On the other hand, superstar players make no sense. Mookie Betts’ athleticism is from another planet and Shohei Ohtani was created in a lab. Bryce Harper’s violence and intensity at the plate scare the shit out of me. There is not a universe in which I could have been them. The Athletic’s Matt Gelb asked Harper to give a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of his already-legendary 2022 NLCS Game 5 home run. His words are in English, but the skills required to send his team to the World Series with a single swing are incomprehensible. He’s an idol because he’s worth idolizing.
In the middle of the bell curve are good players like Nick Castellanos. “I don’t have a college degree. I hit baseballs,” he said at his introductory press conference with the Phillies. Nothing gets Philly sports fans going more than self-deprecation and class consciousness, but the comment belies a thoughtfulness and vulnerability that’s revealed too rarely by professional athletes. Trying to both protect against and reveal himself to a bunch of strangers, he tried explaining his intensity without leaning on cliches. His aversion to platitudes carried into last year’s playoffs.
“I think that a lot of times I have trouble keeping attention during the regular season every day for nine innings,” Castellanos said after Game 1 of the 2022 World Series against the Houston Astros. “But with the postseason, this kind of baseball is incredible, you don’t have a choice but to be locked in, watching swings, watching balls come off the bat, I think that’s just kind of why I’m playing better.”
Six months later, Castellanos made the catch of his career against those very Astros and he still seemed pissed about the Phillies’ World Series defeat. “To say that we all don't understand what happened here last year would be a lie,” Castellanos said. “We just had their mascot stick their World Series ring in our face on the Jumbotron. I don't know about everybody else, but I pay attention to that stuff.”
They are refreshing admissions. We expect professional athletes to be maniacal in plying their trade and to be as angry as we are after losses, and then we get angry when those athletes say non-things like, “We just have to flush this one and move on. Every game is a new game.” At the same time, we judge other professionals who are as intense as we want our favorite athletes to be. In an infamous profile, the New Yorker’s Michael Schulman used thousands of words to describe how weird Succession actor Jeremy Strong is for caring about his craft so much. While we sort out if it’s cool to care or not, I am comforted knowing that there’s a human being playing right field for the Phillies and not a standard-issue baseball cyborg.
No one has the ability to pay attention at work 100% of the time, but very few of us have tens of thousands of people watching us as we produce at below-average rates after signing a $100 million contract. Mercifully, Castellanos finished the first month of his second year with the Phillies with a .878 OPS and leads the league in outfield assists. His bounce-back had pundits and reporters pointing to his quote in Houston as an indication of a renewed confidence and edge. One day, hopefully soon, men expressing normal emotions will not be noteworthy, but there is something to be said about his comfort this year, which has come up over and over and over again.
In a spring training interview, Castellanos pulled back the curtain and revealed how the birth of his second child in May last year impacted him at his day job. That seismic life change shows up in his statistics: after a fine start in March and April when he batted .300 with a few homers, his production plummeted and never really recovered. Two months later in July, he sparred with Jim Salisbury, a popular Phillies beat writer, who asked if he heard the boos. (Castellanos responded deadpan, “No, man, I lost my hearing.”) Two months after that, he was sidelined with an oblique injury. He wasn’t plugged back in until the intensity of the playoffs forced him to do so.
Familiarity and good health are certainly contributing to his improved production this year, but I’m frustrated that the case for “Is Castellanos back?” rests on the single adjective of ‘comfortable.’ It skips past the complexities of being a baseball player and neglects the person who clearly and deeply feels. Castellanos tries not to use cliches in interviews and I wish those who cover him did the same. Honoring the vulnerability he offers can help us understand how people withstand playing close to 200 games a year of the highest quality baseball on earth.
“In a perfect world, I’d want him with me all the time,” Castellanos said at the beginning of this year, referring to his first son Liam. “Just because when he’s not with me, sometimes I’ll be stressed out, or I’ll want him with me. When he’s with me, my mind is definitely more at ease.” And during last year’s NLDS, a reporter unwittingly ran into Castellanos’ grandfather, whose pride for his grandson makes me tear up.
I have no idea if Nick Castellanos is a good person. I hope he is. What I do know is he makes me feel more connected to the Phillies by humanizing a sport dominated by otherworldly superstars and controlled by cynical billionaires. Since he’s neither of those things, the world will remember him for his “drive to deep left field.” I will remember him as the guy willing to admit to one of sports’ toughest fan bases that “I’m doing the best I can.”