March 3, 200422 yr Just saw on my ESPN Insider preview of ESPN magazine that Miguel Cabrera will be on the front cover. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads up. :thumbup
March 3, 200422 yr and for you cheapskates who wont buy the mag.... The Keeper by Buster Olney Miguel Cabrera looks ready to hop on the bus to summer camp. Red swim trunks, red shirt, red Nikes. White socks. And that face: ice-cream cone cheeks and Pixy Stix smile, the ears set wide like they're straining to flee. He's 20 years old, but he seems so young that you wonder if he knows how to double-knot his laces. At the moment, on a perfect February afternoon in Santo Domingo, he stands stiffly in the back corner of the Hotel Dominican Fiesta lobby. He's being nudged and turned by a tailor, Scott Torrellas, who's taking measurements for a suit. Torrellas moves Cabrera this way and that, stretching a tape down his legs and across his chest. The tailor has come here from Southern California because he makes suits for stars, and Miguel Cabrera is a prospective client. Cabrera, for his part, is here to play for Venezuela in the Caribbean World Series. Torrellas talks about fabrics and the difference between loungewear and formalwear; Cabrera nods, a little bored. Torrellas, holding the tape measure, reports that the left arm of the prize Marlin is two inches longer than his right, a gift of nature that must help when he reaches for an outside pitch. "Full extension," Cabrera says later, miming a swing. Cabrera prefers French cuffs, monogrammed. A friend reminds Torrellas that Cabrera's given name is Jose, his initials JMC. He goes by Miguel; everybody in the baseball world, and everybody in Venezuela, knows him by that name. Miguel Cabrera is trying stardom on for size, and at first glance, it fits him nicely. He is a player every team would love to suit up, from the majors to your fantasy league. Nurtured as a shortstop, he shifted to third base, broke into the majors as a leftfielder, made his first-ever appearance in right during the NLCS. Where he'll wind up is anybody's guess. The Marlins like him best in the batter's box. In his first 87 big league games last season, Cabrera had 62 RBIs. But that's just a number. His swing is fluid, his body is never off-balance. He sprays line drives to all fields, the way All-Stars do after years of experience. And in the heat of October, he displayed an inner calm rarely seen in a rookie. Watching Cabrera, many scouts immediately think of Albert Pujols, the Cardinals' offensive machine. Teammate Jeff Conine sees a lot of Manny Ramirez in Cabrera, because of his opposite-field power. When Gene Michael, the Yankees' superscout, analyzes Cabrera, images of A-Rod flash in his head. "He moves better than Pujols," Michael says. "This guy was a shortstop. This guy can move." And Cabrera is moving quickly. "Really fast," he admits. "I try to stay focused, because an opportunity like this presents itself just once in your life." JACK McKEON first saw Cabrera during spring training in 2003, when the old baseball man dropped in at Marlins camp. McKeon took note of Cabrera, saw how at ease he looked, how comfortable he seemed in the infield. Struck by Cabrera's composure, McKeon contacted his son, Kasey, a front-office exec for the Rockies. "If you're looking for somebody," Jack McKeon told him, "then you ought to see this kid the Marlins have." "Oh, we're aware of him," Kasey McKeon replied. "We've been aware of him for years." Cabrera was only 15 when Marlins scout Louie Eljaua trekked to his hometown of Maracay, Venezuela, in the fall of 1998. Eljaua was traveling with another scout, Miguel Garcia, who had seen Cabrera play and sent up a flare. A workout was arranged in David Torres Stadium, a dusty, pebbled field surrounded by a chipped concrete fence seven feet high. The boy was late, and his mother, Gregoria Torres Cabrera, came by. Miguel was just getting home from school, she told the scouts. He'd be over in a few minutes. They waited some more, expecting the boy to wander through the front gate. Suddenly, beyond first base, a youngster scaled the wall and jumped down onto the field. He walked over and stuck out his hand. "Looked me right in the eye," Eljaua recalls. The tryout began. Right away, Eljaua saw that Cabrera had a cannon; every throw was chest-high. Fielding grounders at short, he easily adapted to the many bad hops. "How's his bat?" Eljaua asked Garcia. "That's the best thing," Garcia responded. Almost all amateur prospects use aluminum bats, leaving scouts to guess how they'd fare in the pros. Not Cabrera. He brought his own wooden bat. "Right away, you could see that he knew what he was doing," Eljaua says. "He was hitting the ball the other way, all over the place. Then he hit out eight or nine in a row, and I shut him down. We were losing all our balls." Cabrera didn't turn 16 until the following spring, so the Marlins had to wait months before signing him. "From that point," Eljaua says, "we made it our No. 1 priority to know him as best we could." It turned out the Cabreras lived on the other side of the stadium, named for his late uncle, who played in the Venezuelan League. Miguel's father played baseball too, but it was Gregoria, a shortstop for Venezuela's national women's softball team for more than a decade, who taught him the game. "Just the most essential basic things," she says. "He's been a natural since birth." Young Miguel's favorite player was Alex Gonzalez, then a Marlins rookie shortstop. Eljaua used this as a selling point, talking up the team's philosophy of developing players from Latin America. As Eljaua came to know Cabrera and watched him play, he became convinced the kid was going to be extraordinary. "When he played, it was like a man against boys," says Eljaua. "He was absolutely a no-brainer for us, because of his ability, his instincts, his family. It was the total package." In July 1999, Cabrera agreed to join the Marlins for $1.8 million, a record signing bonus for Venezuelan prospects. Turns out he was worth every cent. BY THE spring of 2003, Cabrera was busy wrecking Double-A pitching, playing third for the Carolina Mudcats. The Marlins, desperately hoping to stay in the wild-card race, were looking for offense. Florida didn't need a third baseman; Mike Lowell was having the best season of his career. But leftfielder Todd Hollandsworth was struggling. Marlins executives started weighing the pros and cons of asking Cabrera to learn to play the outfield in the big leagues. They remembered how comfortable he was in spring training. He'll be fine, GM Admin Beinfest recalls thinking. He can handle it. Cabrera began auditioning in left for the Mudcats, first shagging some flies, then taking over the position for brief intervals. During the third night of the experiment, Beinfest's cell phone started chirping back in Miami. Tracy Woodson, the Carolina manager, was calling during the middle of a game to report that Cabrera had just made a spectacular catch. "Okay," Beinfest said. "Shut him down." After a total of 22 innings in leftfield, Cabrera was on his way to The Show, much to the delight of the new Marlins manager, Jack McKeon. The kid played his first big league game against Tampa Bay in Miami on June 20. He looked terrible in his first at-bats, striking out, hitting into a double play and grounding out with the winning run on base in the ninth. "He seemed a little overmatched," recalls catcher Mike Redmond. But the game lingered into extra innings. Cabrera came to bat in the bottom of the 11th against journeyman middle reliever Al Levine, extended his arms and stroked a 419-foot homer to straightaway center. It was only the third time in history that a player had hit a walk-off homer in his debut. Cabrera was a hit right away with his teammates, too. Even when he thrives, he's deferential, respectful. "He's a lot smarter than his age, a lot more mature," says Lowell. "A lot more mature. He's confident in his own abilities. He makes adjustments." Take the date of his wedding, for example. Cabrera and his high school sweetheart, Ros?ngel, had long planned a church wedding in Maracay for Oct. 16. Miguel forced a postponement, hitting .333 with three homers as the Marlins beat the Cubs to advance to the World Series. Cabrera wasn't intimidated by the ultimate spotlight. When the Series shifted to Florida tied 1-1, McKeon benched rightfielder Juan Encarnacion, who had driven in 94 runs during the regular season. Cabrera, batting cleanup, shifted to right. McKeon had simply decided nothing would faze the kid. Encouraged by injured pitcher A.J. Burnett, Cabrera was wearing taped wristbands with the Spanish word sangre (blood) written on them in capital letters. "You need to tell them what you play for," Burnett had said. Cabrera rapped a couple of hits in Game 3, and with a runner on base in the first inning of Game 4, he faced Roger Clemens. True to form, The Rocket whizzed a fastball by the rookie's chin. Cabrera stared out to the mound. "I knew I was facing a great pitcher, but I wanted to put the ball in play," Cabrera says. When he was very young, and bigger than the other kids, nobody would pitch inside to him for fear he would pull the ball. So he started driving it the other way. Now, with Clemens in his face, that's what he wanted to do. From the Marlins dugout, teammates could see him working back into the at-bat. He attacked Clemens' seventh pitch, an outside fastball, driving it over the rightfield wall in a park where righthanded hitters almost never do that. Most young players would be "staining their pants" after getting knocked down by Clemens, says Jeff Conine. "And he steps up and hits an opposite-field home run. I challenge you to find someone in history who has done that before, in that kind of situation." ALREADY CABRERA now shares the same renown as Venezuela's other prominent baseball sons, Andres Galarraga, Melvin Mora and Magglio Ordo?ez. And there is the promise of much more to come. He and Ros?ngel finally had their church wedding, on an off-day during the Venezuelan League playoffs. His body is filling out, notes Buddy Bailey, the manager for Venezuela's team in the Caribbean Series. "He's losing his baby fat," Bailey says. "With the progress that he's made, and the education he got in the World Series, I'll be curious to see where he is three or four years from now." Baseball men naturally temper their forecasts for Cabrera. He's already made millions of dollars, and the world is catering to him. The discipline for which he is admired will be tested. "The question is whether he'll build off what he learned last year," says Michael. "If you see him improving a little bit this year, then you know he'll be great the rest of his time in the majors." It's all in front of him now, all for the taking. Cabrera seems perfectly suited for success -- and the tailor to the stars just wants to make sure. He gauges Cabrera's posture, checks his calves, asks his shoe size. Now Torrellas wants to measure his waist, and Cabrera, who has already batted cleanup in the World Series and hit a home run off a future Hall of Famer, lifts his shirt. The baggy waistband of Cabrera's blue-and-gray boxers sticks out, unpretentiously, above the red swim trunks. Then you remember: he's only 20 years old. c/o espn the mag
March 3, 200422 yr That is fantastic. I hope my issue comes Friday and not next week but I am thrilled to see that.
March 3, 200422 yr Author Yeah hopefully I get my ESPN the magazine too. I didnt get the last issue for some reason.
March 3, 200422 yr awesome. I'm going to take the Dontrelle ESPN and the Cabs ESPN mags to the april 4th game in Albuquerque and make my wife get me autographs on them.
March 4, 200422 yr Isn't Cabs married? Yea Isn't kind of funny he is posing with two women in bikinis. Before you say 'not really', ask yourself what does that have to do with anything. I mean, couldn't they put him next to the trophy or something?
August 11, 200422 yr Thnx RAMP for that bigger post of the pic. I've seen it on another website b4 but it was soooo tiny i couldnt really see it. I've been lookin everywhere for a better post of it. Great pic!!!
August 11, 200422 yr didnt he come out last year in the cover or was that pudge?.... i know dontrelle did but i thought i saw him after the World Series in one or was it pudge?
August 11, 200422 yr dood im not a dood first off and no i didnt go bak four months i just became a member yesterday and i was lookin for some cabrera pics and i found this one and just wanted to say thnx my gosh it'll be the last time you'll hear a thank you from me.....
August 11, 200422 yr dood im not a dood first off and no i didnt go bak four months i just became a member yesterday and i was lookin for some cabrera pics and i found this one and just wanted to say thnx my gosh it'll be the last time yuo'll hear a thank you from me..... 505893[/snapback] oh no! please dont go :plain
August 11, 200422 yr go where exactly? omg all this just cuz i said thank you for a picture 505902[/snapback] chill... im just messin with ya
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