“I never would have thought the White Sox and the Padres would be the most active teams come baseball’s offseason,” said Baseball Tonight anchor Adnan Virk. We recently sat down with Virk, and I found the ESPN personality is just as high on White Sox slugger Jose Abreu as we are.
Virk: “He’s a super star and after just one year in the major leagues, it’s staggering!”
Indeed, as spring training opens today we’re reminded how Jose Abreu will likely be the most exciting and special player to watch in Chicago baseball this season.
The interview (podcast) discussion of the Sox and Abreu begins around the 9 minute mark)
Virk mentioned some conversations he had with Manny Acta, Alex Cora and others who know the Cuban league pretty well. They all articulated that Cuba is not like the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico.
“It’s not like the Cuban League is loaded. There’s about five guys and the rest are just pretty average, so for Jose Abreu to come in and have that kind of season against major league pitching- that’s extraordinary.
(Virk also had a great conversation with Joe Buck, in which Buck said something incredibly self-aware about why he’s so polarizing.) More from Virk on the White Sox here. See, ESPN does talk about Midwestern baseball teams, it’s not all “Eastern Seaboard Programming Network.” And Virk answered my questions about the ESPN East Coast bias in a frank and honest manner here.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone.
Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)