Colby Rasmus opens up about, well, everything

This is a pretty interesting interview of Colby Rasmus by TSN’s Scott MacArthur. He talks about his struggles and adjustments, of which there have been many given how erratic Rasmus’ career has been. He also talks about his time in St. Louis which, as was widely noted at the time, did not go particularly well for him.

Rasmus says that he had always approached baseball with joy and as a fun thing, but that the Cardinals took all of the fun out of it:

I would sign a lot of autographs and just enjoyed, just loved being a part of playing in the big leagues and getting all the cool stuff, getting Nike stuff sent to me because when I was little I got like, one Christmas I think I got a baseball glove and an apple or something for Christmas. To be able to get that stuff man it was the greatest thing but I turned into not liking that because I put my name on my glove in spring training one year and they hung it up in the locker room making fun of me in St. Louis and just a number of things over my time there made me not like it, made me real emotionless because times when I did try to have fun Tony (La Russa) was telling me not to do that and just be quiet and don’t do anything. I couldn’t talk. I’d just go to the locker room and sit there and look at my clothes and put my headphones on. It was a crazy time in my life because at that time before that I enjoyed playing the game, I enjoyed working out to get better but after that I really didn’t because they made it so unenjoyable that I had trouble wanting to come to the yard everyday and enjoy it.

It was a pretty tough situation. On the one hand, yeah, it does kind of suck when you’re told not to be the person you want to be.

On the other hand, dude, it was the St. Louis Cardinals, which was a serious veteran team at the time with a clubhouse filled with people who had more than made their bones already and who, right or wrong, were entitled to set the tone in that clubhouse. It’s understandable if Rasmus didn’t care for that, but he also didn’t respond well to all of that either. I mean, we can all roll our eyes at Tony La Russa to some extent, but he was the boss then, had forgotten more about baseball that morning than Rasmus would probably ever know and maybe, just maybe, Rasmus could’ve learned more from him than he appeared to have done. Ultimately not everyone fits in everywhere. Rasmus has seemed to have a harder time fitting in than most.

All of that said, it’s a revealing interview of a pretty complicated dude.