There's performing "in the zone," but Chris Shelton existed in an even higher stratosphere during the baseball season's opening days. There's no describing the sensation when a hitter believes he can do no wrong. Pitches, in his eyes, grew to the size of cantaloupes. A 36-ounce bat whipped through the contact zone with the ease of a toothpick.
If only he could handle the attention his season-opening brilliance brought as comfortably.
"Red Pop's" eyes almost popped out of his head when a herd of cameras and notepads descended upon his Comerica Park cubicle Monday following the Tigers' home opener.
"Man, this is crazy," Shelton said.
But this is the consequence of years of baseball irrelevance in Detroit. One exceptional week and simple appreciation crosses the line to crazed overreaction. It has been a nice start for Shelton and the Tigers, and it's certainly more entertaining when any national acknowledgment of the Tigers isn't exclusive to punch lines.
But as Shelton described a start that earned him American League player of the week honors, he kept coming back to one word -- overwhelming.
The endless congratulatory phone calls from family and friends and a crush of media attention spun the 25-year-old's head to the point of dizziness. But the strangest call came one morning in Texas from ESPN. A "Baseball Tonight" producer desperately wanted him for that evening's broadcast.
"And my first reaction was 'Me? Why?' " Shelton said. "And I wasn't thinking about the home runs. I was thinking that I'm not the kind of guy that people normally pay attention to, so all that fuss didn't make sense to me.
"It's only one week into the season, but then I see my name up there with some of the other players who hit five home runs in their first four games and I think to myself of how my name doesn't belong there with those guys."
Does he shake his head in amazement at the degree of his newly discovered celebrity?
"Every minute," he said.
Shelton's discomfort is amusing because if he had hit .100 in the season's first week instead of nearly .600, he would be free to come and go as he chooses without fear of media stalking. The price of success is greater expectations and Jim Leyland will watch this closely, waiting to see how Shelton responds to the inevitable return to mortality.
That'll serve as the true barometer of this young man's capabilities.
"He's just a solid, hard-working player who quietly goes about his business," Brandon Inge said. "I'm sure all of this has caught him off a guard a little, but he's the type of guy who can keep all of this in perspective. He knows there are still, what, 155 games or so left."
Shelton is a so-called "professional hitter," possessing the plate discipline necessary for rarely getting cheated in an at-bat. The Tigers have been looking for such a presence for years. Little did they realize they would fill that void via the Rule 5 list, baseball's redheaded stepchild of player procurement.
Shelton embodies the mysteries of player development in baseball, demanding as much luck as ingenuity. Pittsburgh selected him in the 33rd round of the 2001 amateur draft, but the Pirates stupidly branded him as exclusively a designated hitter, thereby offering Shelton no room on the team's 40-man roster in December 2003 -- rendering him eligible for the Rule 5 draft.
The Tigers got him for $50,000. There should be warrants for Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski's arrest for grand larceny charges in Pittsburgh as well as criminal stupidity charges against the Pirates' front office.
The Bucs were nuts. Considering how fundamentally sound hitters are worth their weight in season ticket sales, did they ever consider working with Shelton a little more with a defensive instructor?
"I'm just happy for the opportunity to play ball every day," said Shelton, who's hitting .536 with five homers and 10 RBIs. "I would rather just get in, do my job and get out without dealing with all of the questions. But I guess it comes with the territory. If we weren't winning, nobody would want to talk to me then. And that's the most important thing."
The young man hasn't seen anything yet. Just imagine how it insane it'll get here should the Tigers have a winning record at the 30-game marker?
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Originally Posted by love_that_reefer
