Is there nothing Jacoby Ellsbury can’t do? Dude can push over tires, torment his roommate, replace Coco in centerfield (perhaps). And now we learn that he can go all Barry Allen on your ass at will. As the Boston Herald explains, young Jacoby once outran a deer:
According to Ellsbury, it happened one summer in the mid-1990s, when he was 11 or 12. Having deer wander through the sagebrush and juniper trees in his family’s backyard was commonplace, but one day Ellsbury and three of his younger brothers decided it was a good idea to have the former try to catch one.
“There was this little deer there one day that we saw, and we went outside,” Ellsbury said. “My brothers got around it with me and kind of tucked (it) behind a sagebrush nearby.”
The brothers startled the deer, making sure it ran in the direction of their older brother.
“I got close enough to throw the rope around its neck,” Ellsbury said. “I had to run 10, 15 yards to get to it. I was running pretty hard, as fast as I could at that age.”
In other news, count me among those who believe that Beckett’s back spasms are part of an elaborate ploy to lull opposing teams into a state of complacency. In fact, I’m certain that the ploy came down to either back spasms or some story about how he’d vowed not to pitch a single game until he saw the new Indiana Jones movie, until someone pointed out that the latter would involve failure to honor his contract. So he went with back spasms. Also, please count me among those who like to think that part of his alleged back problem is just the residual effects of dating Leeann Tweeden. Because in my mind, she’s a one-woman wrecking crew.
