All star. Starter.

The lamb and the goat have fused as one

It is not hyperbole to suggest that Vladimir Guerrero Jr is a big star in the world of baseball. He was that the moment he first stepped onto a big league field, given his name, pedigree and performance climbing the ladder to the majors.

Now that his performance has caught — and perhaps even surpassed — his persona on the international baseball stage, he has been rewarded with his first all star appearance and start in the midseason classic, the top vote getter in all the land. A well-deserved honour for a season quickly becoming one of the best in franchise history.

The performance part is one (very large) piece of the superstar puzzle that’s relatively easy to quantify. But the ineffable qualities that make one a “superstar” in the nebulous “you know it when you see it” sense are different. There are plenty of signifiers that suggest a player is becoming a capital-S Star in the league and the way his peers speak about him is a strong one. MLB releases this HIGHLY entertaining video from a recent game between the Blue Jays and the Mariners, where Chief Vibes Officer Teoscar Hernández and A Mariner were mic’d up for the game.

Teoscar is the main attraction but Vlad Jr is the scene stealer, whether he’s onscreen or otherwise. Mariners first baseman and mic-wearer Ty France asks/marvels with Bo Bichette about Vlad Jr’s exploits and later gets a prophetic explanation of how the inning the will unfold.

The “how does he do the things he does?” conversations are surely much longer and louder around the batting cages of the American League, or at least will be once the fraternization rules are loosened.

Vlad Jr and Teoscar engage is the usual type of dugout grab-assery that makes baseball great, from urging Randal Grichuck to tag on a shallow fly to left (my heart!) and suggesting Guerrero might go off for eight RBI in the game/inning/moment.

But the thing that stands out to me, a quiet thing that puts a different part of Vlad Jr’s personality, and stature within the game, into the spotlight.

Teoscar, the Vibe Aligner, goes to the plate for his first at bat of the day. He greats the umpire and catcher, both in English. When Mariners catcher Luis Torrens responds in Spanish, Hernández is surprised (and delighted!)

He returns to the dugout to explain the situation to Vlad Jr but the Blue Jays’ first baseman already knows all about the Seattle’s backup catcher, noting that he’s Venezuelan, from the city of Valencia (not the one in Spain, to Teoscar’s additional surprise.)

How did Vlad Jr know this? They didn’t play winter league together that I can see and they hadn’t faced off in the big leagues until this series. Perhaps the got to chatting the night before after Torrens’ drew an eighth inning walk off Jacob Barnes while Vlad Jr patrolled first base., though it’s unlikely that they had too much time to chat as there was a runner on second and Guerrero didn’t hold on the opposing catcher in a 9-3 ballgame.

That’s a logical explanation, but my idea is simple: Vlad Jr is nice to the other players. Maybe there’s some “grew up around the game” bias here but it seems like, on top of being one of its best players, Guerrero could well be a terrific ambassador within the game. Being a good person to your professional peers costs nothing, no matter how famous your dad was and how big a signing bonus you earned.

This is likely my own baggage but I like to read it this way. We don’t know these players and a story that reveals them as monsters is just one tweet away. But to see, with rose coloured glasses or otherwise, a glimmer of humanity is something I’m happy to cling to.

And if makes the stories told about Vlad Jr ten, twenty or thirty years from now a little bit more colourful because of some added fondness from the players who watched him from the other side of the diamond, that’s okay, too. Legends are made in a variety of ways.