Did you know that J.D. Drew is 34 years old?
The former uber-prospect/perennial tease has been tantalizing major league GMs and fantasy owners alike for 12 season now, and only once has he seemingly performed up to the level that was expected of him (a .305, 31 HR, 93 RBI campaign for the Braves in 2004).
Luckily for Atlanta, they got out while the going was good.
12 seasons of MLB service, one season of potential attained.
And yet, despite never playing a full 162 games, eclipsing 100 RBI only once, and typically displaying the amount of energy and enthusiasm similar to most coma patients, Drew continues to reel us in.
Drew is like a booty call who you text after eight beers and a shot on a Thursday night.
You never really think about her up until that moment, but she's always available and, amazingly, always horny.
Since you're drunk and have nothing better to do, you keep going back to her, over and over. Until she moves away or finally finds a man of substance to make her happy.
That's Drew in a nutshell.
A late night booty call.
Nobody in a Red Sox uniform has been criticized, ridiculed, and heckled to the extent that Drew is.
He has, sometimes deservingly so, endured the wrath of a disappointed Red Sox fan base for the past three seasons that coincidentally and conflictingly expect grand things from him, but at the same time, expect nothing at all.
The problem with Drew is, he doesn't know how to pick his spots.
He'll mash when it doesn't matter. A-Rod syndrome pre-2009. He'll deliver a three-hit performance during a blowout in a mid-May afternoon game, but can typically be found staring at strike three with two outs and runners on the corners in a win-or-go-home divisional series.
That being said, Drew is still the second highest paid player on a floundering baseball team in desperate need of a spark.
And ironically enough, he holds the key to the Red Sox success in 2010.
No longer can Drew sit in background and play second or third fiddle to Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, or even Jason Bay.
Bay and Manny have skipped town, and Papi would have trouble catching up to a Little League fastball at this point.
That leaves Drew as one of the only real power sources on a team being sapped of its power by a GM who's building his team around a flavor-of-the-week "defense first" philosophy that values UZR over the ability to competently put the bat on the ball.
Excluding the decomposing shell of David Ortiz, the fact remains the Drew trails only Adrian Beltre as the current team leader for career home runs.
And with nearly all the pundits seemingly locking in the Rays and Yankees as 1 and 1a atop the AL East, it's clear the Sox will need Drew to produce to the level of his current contract (in other words, ways never conceived possible before) in order for his team to remain competitive.
Maybe at age 34, lightning could strike twice.
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