Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for the New York Times magazine, leaves no doubt in a Sunday profile about how much he admires Miguel Cabrera.
He is the reigning American League M.V.P. and quite possibly the best hitter of his generation.
Miguel Cabrera "has forced himself into the conversation about the best hitters to play the game," a Sunday magazine profile says. (AP photo)
The 2,800-word article, which includes interview comments by the third-baseman at Comerica Park last month, casts him as the Tigers' "most feared hitter."
He has forced himself into the conversation about the best hitters to play the game. “I’m not going to put him in the Ted Williams class,” Al Kaline, a Hall of Famer and the Tigers’ divinity in residence, told me. “Yet.” Kaline then shook his head. “But in the last two years. . . .”
The profile's main theme is what separates the Detroit power hitter from Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and teammate Jhonny Peralta. "Hero of the Post-Steroid Era" is part of the headline.
Cabrera, 30, has never been linked in any way to P.E.D.’s. (His beer-league physique is one obvious defense.) . . . Cabrera is now positioned to redeem the modern slugger.
Leibovich, who also quotes Jim Leyland and Torii Hunter, writes that the manager "and his Tiger coaches speak with awe of Cabrera’s ability to see a pitcher’s hand movements and finger positions and the ball’s spin, and integrate and react to it all in a split second."
The worshipful writer/fan tips his cap to this strategic sophistication by the Venezuelan:
Cabrera will occasionally miss terribly at a pitch only to coax the pitcher into a lull and, later in the at-bat, a mistake — a game of chicken, sometimes attributed to Willie Mays, that only the greatest possible hitters would ever try.
Other name-checks in the piece include Babe Ruth, Pete Rose and Manny Ramirez -- as befits a slugger in their league.
