FWIW---This may have come up but I never saw it on this site. Steve Lyons was filling in doing color on Red Sox broadcast. They were discussing the LaRoche /Kenny Williams debacle. Lyons said Navarro is not considered a clubhouse contributor mainly because he has bounced around a lot. But he said he is given the credit for rallying the team together after the incident. Navarro brings a soccer ball with him to the clubhouse and he got all the players to join an informal soccer game during a workout and that seemed to help form team chemistry.

Interesting, as the only non-Sale related LaRoche drama I heard of was Rollins complaining about Drake.

FWIW---This may have come up but I never saw it on this site. Steve Lyons was filling in doing color on Red Sox broadcast. They were discussing the LaRoche /Kenny Williams debacle. Lyons said Navarro is not considered a clubhouse contributor mainly because he has bounced around a lot. But he said he is given the credit for rallying the team together after the incident. Navarro brings a soccer ball with him to the clubhouse and he got all the players to join an informal soccer game during a workout and that seemed to help form team chemistry.

From blowup dolls to soccer balls.

From blowup dolls to soccer balls.

 

I approve of this switch.

I think the media and fans focus too much on "roles" in the clubhouse, i.e., leader, contributor, cancer, etc. To me, team chemistry is about players being themselves and fitting together naturally, like pieces of a puzzle, and not trying to fill a role by being something they are not. In this case, it sounds like there was a problem, and Navarro, doing what he naturally does, brought out his soccer ball, and it was the right thing to do at the time to diffuse the problem -- chemistry. This team appears to have chemistry, and that's something special, which is exciting. It should make for a nice summer for the fans.

That sounds like a made up story the media would use as fodder because it's digestible. The world is not a cameron crowe movie.

That sounds like a made up story the media would use as fodder because it's digestible. The world is not a cameron crowe movie.

 

Joe Maddon thinks it is.

That sounds like a made up story the media would use as fodder because it's digestible. The world is not a cameron crowe movie.

 

 

But Lyons is a former player including White Sox and I think his source was Kenny Williams.