Tulo and Me

A mancrush; if you follow sports long enough, follow it with enough devotion, you will eventually—whether or not you fight it—develop one.

If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain. Like most infatuations, a mancrush begins innocently enough. Mine did.

Last year, I played fantasy baseball for the first time. The shortstop I drafted, Khalil Greene of the Padres, was adequate but nothing more. Sure, he had plenty of power for a shortstop, but he couldn’t hit for average and wouldn’t know how to take a walk if a pitch hit him. I needed someone more promising, so I picked up rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.

I was derided for picking him up. I was told that he was a waste of a roster spot, a prospect more likely to be fool’s gold than the real thing.

Then, a strange thing started to happen: he started to hit. I mean hit. He had never flashed any real power during his minor league career, but suddenly, during his first year in the show, baseballs began to fly high into the Denver night with regularity. Writers raved about his defense, his range and great throwing arm. He was praised for his field leadership, even at the young age of twenty-two. People were labeling him the next great shortstop, the next Cal Ripken. By October, he had hit twenty-nine home runs (a record for rookie shortstops) and led his team to a Cinderella run, winning the National League pennant. By then, he was no longer Troy Tulowitzki, shortstop for the Colorado Rockies. By then, he was simply “Tulo” to me. Every home run, every stolen base was more than a few more points for my fantasy team, it was like a personal victory.

I first realized I had a mancrush on Tulo during the World Series. I wasn’t watching the series because it promised to be particularly exciting. The Red Sox are a juggernaught, the best team in baseball, and everyone expected them to easily push past the insurgent Rockies. I was also loath to watch the Sox be the first team to repeat in the new millennium, especially since they had swept past my Angels in the first round. I was watching because I was excited that Tulo was playing in his first World Series.

At this point you may be wondering why Tulo was not merely one of my favorite players, why I had to use the rather extravagant term “mancrush.” The two are similar, I admit, but having a mancrush is much more than having a favorite player—the former is the logical end of the latter. It goes far beyond simply thinking that a player is “awesome” or “cool.” While the interest in a favorite player extends only to that player alone, the affection for a mancrush can spread to anything or everything connected to that player.

Before this past season, I could have cared less about the Rockies. My preferred team is in the American League West. I had, perhaps, a lingering interest in the Dodgers because they are LA’s other team, and because of their exciting core of young players. But after I found Tulo, I was actively rooting for the Rockies to win their one-game playoff against the Padres, for them to push past the Phillies and Diamondbacks. I’ve become interested in the team, and have become familiarized with it to the point where I could talk about them with almost as much fluency as I can the Angels. I know that the Rocks have a good offense (despite holes at catcher and second base), a logjam at third base with Garrett Atkins blocking Ian Stewart, and a need for better starters beyond Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook.

My friend Phil is another example; he has it pretty bad for Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat. His second favorite team—after the Lakers, of course—is the Heat, mostly because of D-Wade. In 2006, he desperately hoped that the Heat would win the NBA championship (which they eventually did). He had been trying to get a Wade jersey for years before his brother finally got him one as a graduation gift. This may all seem quite normal except for the fact that Phil has virtually no connection to Miami. I don’t think he’s even ever been there, but that won’t matter so long as the Flash still plays for the Heat.

I’m not sure if mancrushes are as gender-specific as the name implies. I once read someone on an Angels blog wonder aloud if women were susceptible to something similar—if they could ever go so far as to wear shirts or jerseys that have another woman’s name (and uniform number) on them. Wouldn’t that be strange: little girls wearing Miley Cyrus or Vanessa Hudgins shirts instead of “Hannah Montana” or High School Musical. I’m not sure if this “mancrush gap” is due to the fact that men are generally more interested in sports than women, or that men’s sports (unfortunately) get more than their due share of attention than their female alternatives. Whatever the reason, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wearing a Mia Hamm or Lisa Sparks jersey.

And what ever happened to Tulo? Unfortunately, the Rockies’ fairytale lacked a happy ending, as they ran into the Red Sox buzzsaw like the Angels and Indians before them. Tulo had a less-than-stellar World Series, hitting for a line of 231/333/385. That didn’t matter to the Rockies, though. A week ago they signed Tulo to a six–year, thirty-one million dollar contract—the most ever for a player with only two years of service time. It certainly didn’t matter to me either. As I sit here, at a Starbucks in Laguna Beach with Michael Uy, I am (untentionally and coincidentally, I assure you) sitting here wearing my purple-and-black Troy Tulowitzki shirt. Thanks to the Rockies and the generosity they’ve shown their budding shortstop, I’ll be able to show off my mancrush for years to come.