Dallas sports knows from big distractions.
There's Terrell Owens, of course, and myriad other Cowboys over the years who have placed their own agendas ahead of the team. Jason Kidd is a sage, old soul these days, but he and Jimmy Jackson once tore apart a promising Mavericks team because they couldn't find more than one woman in the entire world worthy of dating.
Michael Young is nothing like any of those guys. He hasn't made a spectacle of himself since asking for a trade before the start of spring training and has mostly gone about his business without fanfare. That's a good thing because constantly complaining about being paid $16 million to play a super-utility role instead of just one position is about as unsympathetic as a man can get.
So Young's taking a slightly different tack. He's not moaning about being mistreated by the Rangers directly and choosing to do it more abstractly by discussing his inability to get into a rhythm.
"It's definitely tough to get in a rhythm, without a doubt," Young said. "If I was playing second every day, it'd be easier to get locked in. If I was playing third, it'd be easier to get locked in. It's definitely tough to bounce around, but I've had to kind of get accustomed to it this spring."
That does sound kinda tough, or it would if Young wasn't having such a splendid spring. He's hitting .355 with a sparkling 1010 OPS over his 31 at-bats since the start of the exhibition season. This is obviously a small sample size but it is one that should look a lot worse if Young's comfort level were as low as he claims.
The numbers are not only well above anything Young has done in the regular season, but they are just about equal to what he did in 2010's scorching spring session. There was nobody claiming Young wasn't locked-in back then, so why would his complaints this year be worth worrying about?
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It's obviously a difficult transition to go from starter to backup and it's hard to begrudge Young too much for saying so while otherwise going about his business. At some point, though, he'll just have to accept it and stop trafficking in excuses that aren't evident to anyone else.
