Regardless of where your loyalties lie as a baseball fan, we each have to appreciate a player like Vladimir Guerrero.

    Big Daddy, as they call him, should be no surprise Derby champion as this simply is what Vladdy does every single season. Seeing him showcase his ability on the national stage tonight was special because his existence on the West Coast keeps him from the national spotlight day in and day out. Most of the country misses him hitting a bullet every single time he makes contact and sometimes hitting a baseball so hard it may go into orbit. I know in Vlad's case the perceived lack of recognition is far from intentional, it's just unfortunate. He caught my eye in Montreal and I've been following him closely ever since.

    The thing that makes Vlad so special isn't that he is a home run hitter, it's the way that he does it.

    Vlad never saw a pitch he couldn't hit in his entire life. His strike zone begins the moment he gets out of bed. If he had a bat that was long enough, he would take swings at pitches when he is intentionally walked (which happens relatively often). He swings at pitches barely off the ground, he swings at pitches a foot out of the zone, he swings at pitches chin-high, and he swings at pitches knee-high and inside. Now, there's plenty of hitters who swing at bad balls constantly and end up playing themselves to the bench or back to the minors. Not Vladdy, of course. Vlad is such a perfect storm of power and bat speed and plate coverage that he has turned the strike zone into his personal batting tee. If he can reach it, he will hit it.

    Vlad hits the ball where it's pitched, simple as that. And he gets plenty of hits, about 198 per season with a career batting average of .325. Normally, free-swinging and slugger-type hitters like Guerrero have plenty of strikeouts and hit in the .270's or below, but Vladdy is the exception to the rule. Averaging only 74 K's per season, even less than Barry Bonds, Vlad religiously puts the ball in play when he comes to the plate. He has the plate coverage of an Ichiro with unmerciful power. Along with that, his free-swinging nature may be the reason he doesn't actually hit more home runs since he reaches for so many balls out of the zone. Sometimes he even swings at pitches so far inside he nearly misses his own knee while offering at the ball. While he hits many of them out of the ball park (over the wall in either right or left field mind you) the physics of it alone keep the ball in the park most of the time. He also has never been on extremely productive offensive teams, starting in Montreal and now with the Angels, where Mike Scioscia plays a more National-League style and RBI-production has relied heavily on Guerrero. With more reliable hitters ahead and behind him in the lineup, Vlad would see more pitches he could drive and would surely be a perennial 140+ RBI man, a feat he has yet to accomplish.

    Guerrero is also a sole reason to get the baseball package if you are out of market. Every game you see pitcher after pitcher attempt to throw the ball where he has the least chance of hitting it, and constantly he defies their logic and puts it in play. He comes up to the plate and you get the same thing every time: Violent swings at pitches with all his might, rarely getting cheated. And it's controlled chaos; he knows exactly what he's doing when he goes up there and he's been doing it for 12 seasons. If that weren't enough, he does it every time without batting gloves (old school Jerry, old school). Combine all that with a rocket arm and the absolute dirtiest helmet in the dugout (I still can't figure that part of the equation out) and you have Vladimir Guerrero.

    Hopefully with Vlad's win in the Derby he managed to get recognition from fans who had no idea what they were missing. In the 3 weeks since I added HD to my cable service, I don't think I've been more thankful for having it than after Vlad's 503ft bomb, and that's coming from a Yankees fan. For those of you that were enlightened by Big Daddy on July 9, 2007, I salute and welcome you to bask among the rest of us in the madness. Whether you are an Angels fan, a Yankees fan, Rockies, Brewers, Tigers, Giants, Braves, A's, etc., this guy should be appreciated because there haven't been and won't ever be many like him.