Reznet

Jacoby Ellsbury, the Bench-Warmer

By Dalton Walker

A second ring will have to wait for the young Navajo baseball player.

Jacoby Ellsbury ran circles around the Colorado Rockies in last year's World Series. If he was named series MVP, nobody would have blinked.

This year? Not so much.

Ellsbury, 25, didn't get off the Boston Red Sox bench when it mattered most. The Sox came up a game short of the World Series. The Tampa Bay Rays beat Boston in the deciding game 7.

Ellsbury was on a 0-20 hitless streak and didn't play in games 5-7 against the Rays.

"It's definitely not a good feeling, but you can't dwell on it," Ellsbury wrote in his wrote in his blog about losing Game 7. "Just get better because of it and make another run at it next year."

Still, kudos to Ellsbury for having a solid rookie season. (He was ineligible last year for not playing in enough games) And thanks to technology, Ellsbury had the opportunity to share in great detail his perspective on professional baseball, especially playoff baseball, in form of a blog.

"Last year was such a whirlwind for me and it ended so well," Ellsbury wrote in his blog. "Now I know what it takes to go through a full season and go through the ups and downs. As a team, we played very well all year, even with all the injuries we had. Hopefully we can build on this for next year."

Ellsbury led the team with 50 stolen bases. He batted a healthy .280 average. His 150 hits were third on the team.

With these numbers Ellsbury has a legitimate shot to win rookie of the year. The award will be announced soon.

He is only just one of three Native professional baseball players. Pitchers Kyle Lohse, 30, and Joba Chamberlain, 23, are the others. Lohse pitches for the St. Louis Cardinals while Chamberlain throws for the New York Yankees.

Like Chamberlain, Ellsbury has unlimited potential. His speed and eye for getting base hits will lead him to a number of all-star appearances and probably many more post-season bats.

Dalton Walker, Red Lake Anishinabe, is a reporter at the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, S.D. Walker is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and the American Indian Journalism Institute. A longtime reznet staff writer and a Chips Quinn Scholar, Walker had reporting internships at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The New York Times.

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