Not only is Jesus Montero one of the slowest runners in baseball, he runs ... well, let’s say oddly. Jeff Sullivan of the Mariners blog Lookout Landing once described Montero’s running style as like “stepping on creaky floorboards and you’re trying not to wake up a baby.”
And as Greg Johns of MLB.com reports, Montero spent the offseason trying not to run so slowly and oddly:“I spent a lot of time running and working on my techniques about running,” he said. “That’s what I did. I ran a lot and I learned how to run. Because last year ... you know I’m slow, but I want to run a little better and gain a little more speed and all that. So that’s what I did, just run.”
Montero said he worked with a running specialist from Venezuela, as well as an instructor the Mariners sent to help him after observing his upright, awkward style in his first year in Seattle.
So does he feel faster now? “I feel good,” Montero said with a smile. “I’m learning how to run a little more beautiful, a little better, you know?”I was going to make a joke about the absurdity of a 23-year-old professional athlete not knowing how to run, but then I remembered I’m a 30-year-old man who never learned how to shave with a non-electric razor and has instead spent the past decade with a constant five o’clock shadow like some sort of Jewish Don Johnson. Maybe I should go to Venezuela in search of a shaving expert, is the moral of this post basically.
