Lore Guy comeback
There are many genres of baseball star. One of them is the record-breaker who goes against all received wisdom and changes history. One of them is the person who has a clutch moment in October that gets replayed over and over again, even if they don’t win it all.
And then there is the Lore Guy. Usually it’s one game, middle of the season, and something unbelievable happens. My team had one Lore Guy in the mid-aughts, and then he got injured a lot and didn’t really do anything else. Then we got another, and his name is David Bote.
David Bote is not going to end up in the hall of fame. He doesn’t even have a ring with us. But he played one at-bat in one game during the middle of the 2018 season, with the city still in 2016 afterglow, that made him a Lore Guy.
But first, look at his career before that moment. He was drafted six years prior in 2012, and then played for seven different teams in the minor leagues. He was called up and was… fine. Average player. Whatever. He was humble, grateful like they all are.
And then, on August 12, 2018, after a masterful pitching performance by one of the best starters of all time, 3 down, bases loaded, 2 outs, pinch hit, down to his final strike and dude hits a walk-off grand slam for the second time in MLB history. It is worth watching the whole video. Wrigley is packed, and nobody is sitting. Bill Murray is there for some reason. It is worth watching the whole at-bat because of the way in which he works it, which… isn’t great. Bote is a slugger, but he is also not an at-bat worker. Right before the grand slam, he takes a painted-by-millimeters second strike that any reasonable person wouldn’t swing at. This very much could not have been a thing.
And then it happens. Watch every moment of his reaction. Him dropping his bat in stunned shock. Him throwing his arms out like he’s eight years old, flying an airplane. Him whipping his helmet straight upward at nothing. Getting his jersey ripped off like he’s reborn. Imagine working that hard, for that many years, across that many teams, not knowing if there will ever be a payoff, and then that happens. The grind is always there. The whole stadium knew it, too. This wasn’t one of our All-Stars or famous 2016 players. This was David Bote, just a guy, doing the thing that every kid wishes they could do in little league.
And so Bote becomes a Lore Guy, which probably buys him a few more years with the Cubs, and then at the end of 2022 he’s sent back to the minors. Fine. You got a long contract, made some money, and can live pretty comfortably. But that’s not why this text is here. This text is here because after 606 days, David Bote is back at Wrigley.
Nobody on the planet is going to assume that David Bote is going to notch MLB’s third ultimate slam. It’s not even realistic to assume that Bote v2 is going to be great. But he is here, he never really went anywhere, and he will always have the lore.