Keeping it simple: that's just Buehrle
Mark Buehrle isn't complicated, so let's try to make him so through amateur analysis.
To me it looks like the White Sox pitcher views everything he does on the baseball field as an out-of-body experience.
Like the club record Buehrle set for season-opening starts. Like the no-hitter he threw in 2007 and the perfect game he threw in 2009.
Like the remarkable fielding play he made Monday in the Sox' season-opening 6-0 victory over Cleveland in Comiskey Park.
This was Buehrle's 136th career victory, one day into his 11th major-league season.
At the risk of getting overly psychological - or maybe psycho - my guess is that Buehrle enjoys those numbers as if he were watching somebody else play him in a fantasy feature film titled "The Left-hander's Magical Mystery Tour."
Not many 38th-round draft picks are supposed to, or expect to, accomplish what Buehrle has for this long.
First-rounders are supposed to pitch perfect games. Big, strong guys are supposed to last into a second decade in the majors. Really athletic athletes are supposed to do what Buehrle did in the fifth inning against the Indians.
You know, kick-save a smash back at him, chase after it beyond the first-base line, fall while clutching it in his glove and flip it through his legs to beat the runner.
First baseman Paul Konerko caught Buehrle's softball bare handed and later complimented the play as "unique." Sox manager Ozzie Guillen watched it from the dugout and called it "pretty amazing."
Most important is what Buehrle said: "I don't expect to make a great play like that - it surprised me."
Didn't expect it? Surprised by it? Buehrle must still be trying to process that he won a Gold Glove for fielding last season, has made four all-star teams and won a World Series ring in 2005.
I'm thinking that Buehrle is like the wimp who beats up the bully, the nerd who dates the homecoming queen, the regular guy who is making millions of dollars as a big-league pitcher.
Humility is what has made Mark Buehrle such a special addition to the Chicago sports scene since he arrived in 2000: He doesn't carry himself like he's anything special.
Maybe not expecting to do amazing is why he does amazing.
"He doesn't care if he doesn't," Konerko said, "so he doesn't grip it too tight."
That certainly isn't meant to mean that Buehrle doesn't care whether the Sox win or lose. It likely means that he approaches the game as less than life or death.
Loose is how Buehrle grips the ball, grips the season, grips his career, grips life. There's always another day, another game, another inning.
"He's very relaxed, very relaxed," said Billy Pierce, whose record for Sox opening-day starts Buehrle broke.
Ask Buehrle's teammates about him and the word that keeps coming up is fun. He has had fun, is having fun and will have more fun until he retires.
Then he'll have fun at something else.
How great it must be to at once be the star of a movie and in the theater watching it.
mimrem@dailyherald.com
<div class="infoBox">
<h1>More Coverage</h1>
<div class="infoBoxContent">
<div class="infoArea">
<h2>Stories</h2>
<ul class="links">
<li><a href="/story/?id=370969">For openers, White Sox had everything working <span class="date"> [4/5/10]</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div