Crush Of The Week.

We Think You're A Catch, Trent Williams.

Dear Trent Williams,

How are you feeling this morning? As fellow sports enthusiasts, we think we'd still be pretty amped up after directly impacting a major league game Saturday night and then having your face splashed up on the front page of Yahoo!'s news feed, as you did.

That's just us, though. You, of course, are no stranger to national publicity, what with all the attention you've gotten the past couple of baseball seasons for your ballhawking ability.

So yeah, this letter has been a long time coming. And, really, we're sorry it's taken us this long to come out and tell you that we think you're great.

It's not even just because we're a little jealous of the fact that you've caught a major league home run before and we haven't — or even the fact that you always seem to catch them on the fly.

If we had to pinpoint it, we'd say the thing we admire most is the way you've turned the routine act of scrambling for balls that have left the park into something of an art form. So much so that folks around town have taken to calling you the “Greene Hill Kid.”

In the roughly dozen balls we've seen you snagging, we've witnessed some pretty athletic feats from you, too. You've caught balls on the run, and you even broke out The Worm across Greene's Hill that one time. Man, that was cool. Plus, the way you effortlessly hit the cutoff man when throwing opposing team's home runs back makes us think of you as some sort of latter-day Henry Rowengartner from Rookie of the Year.

This season, though, you've somehow managed to grow even bolder, to the point that you even had an effect on the outcome of last Saturday's game when a potential home run ball off the bat of AJ Pierzynski's was on the verge of being robbed by Mariner's center fielder Franklin Gutierrez. Your gloves even touched as you eventually wrestled the ball away from Gutierrez, helping Pierzynski notch his third homer of the young season.

The real impressive thing is that you were smart about it: You waited until the ball was clearly over the fence before you made a play for it. That was truly special. Your awareness of the Ballpark's ground rules and the play on the field just has a way of putting us at ease. Seriously: We're not even the slightest bit worried about you interfering at the wrong time or becoming the next Steve Bartman. Not in the least.

We can't overstate this enough: The way you waited until the ball had already cleared the wall before touching it was brilliant, as was the fact that your play aided the home team. Not even the umpires or Mariners manager Eric Wedge could argue that you did anything wrong.

High five on that one, man. Way to give us the ultimate home field advantage on that one.

But you didn't even stop there. Knowing that you were in the right and that you had helped out the Rangers in a big way, you busted into the “Gangnam Style” dance right in that whining Gutierrez's face.

While we might not always condone that kind of kicking-them-when-they're-down type of behavior, we'll gladly look the other way when it comes against a division opponent. We have to hand it to you: No matter how outdated the dance move you pull out in celebration of one of your glorious feats, it never seems lame — not even that one time you whipped out The Sprinkler. You didn't even care that you were likely being shown on television at the moment. That takes some real guts.

And, though it's long overdue, we couldn't really go any longer without letting you know how we really feel.

So, thanks again. Not just for the part you played in helping the Rangers pull off a sweep over the weekend, but for making grown men everywhere feel somehow less lame when bringing our gloves to the park.

Love,
Cory and the Central Track Staff.