The weird thing is that my opinion about Mike Jacobs as a baseball player has not changed at all. As a baseball evaluator, I still see all his weaknesses outweighing his strengths. As a GM, I would not have traded for him. But as a baseball fan … I just enjoy the heck out of watching him step to the plate, kill or be killed. The other day, he faced Cleveland’s Jensen Lewis, and he took a high fastball for a ball, and then watched a 90-mph fastball go by that was right in his wheelhouse, I mean the perfect Mike Jacobs pitch — 90 mph, just above the knees, outside but caught too much of the plate. That’s the sort of pitch you only get once, and you could see Jacobs grimace for a second as if to say, "Man, that was it." ....Two pitches later, stunningly, Jensen Lewis threw that exact pitch again. This time it was 87 mph. And this time Jacobs did swing. He jumped out of his shoes to swing. And he hit it 700 miles to center field. It clanked off the railing out there, bounced behind a wall, an absolute mammoth shot. Will he do that enough to make himself a valuable player? Maybe not. But, yeah, it will be fun every time he does it.
