Phil Mickelson Takes BP at Fenway Park

This is cross-posted at Ballpark Banter.

I don’t know about you, but I like to root for the underdog. The fact that I’m a diehard Nationals fan should give that away. But it also explains why I have always been a Phil Mickelson fan. I know he can’t be that big of an underdog when he was ranked number two in the world for awhile, but everyone was an underdog compared to Tiger Woods when he was in his prime. It just happened to be that Phil was the underdog with the best chance of actually catching Tiger. Plus, I always thought he came across as an extremely likeable guy and therefore found it fairly easy to rally behind him when he had a chance to win on Sunday afternoons.

With that being said, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I was excited when I turned on the MLB Network this afternoon and saw that he was actually in the batting cage taking BP with a big goofy grin on his face at Fenway Park. Apparently it was Duncan Webb, who works in the front office for the Red Sox, that was throwing for Mickelson and the 41 year old golfer hit one out to the warning track. He then was on Intentional Talk with Kevin Millar and Chris Rose where he was talking about how excited to be at Fenway.

"I grew up playing [baseball] like most people did," Mickelson said after saying he was “very appreciative” of the opportunity “to be at Fenway Park and take BP.” He then added that "it's fun for us when the Tour is in town here and the Sox are in the pennant race to come to a ballgame here at Fenway. There's nothing more exciting than when the Sox are having a great year and getting ready for the playoffs."

What was real interesting about the whole event was that Mickelson ended up throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to Tim Wakefield. It was a decent pitch, but the part that caught my eye was that he threw it right handed. Apparently he does most things right handed, but learned to play golf left handed because he was mirroring everything he saw his dad did (for what it’s worth, he also swings a baseball bat left handed).

It’s also worth noting that he appeared to be genuinely enjoying the entire experience. For a guy who’s been near the top of his sport as a professional, he almost looked like a little kid with the pure excitement of being able to take some BP and throw out the first pitch at Fenway. I think this goes to show how baseball truly is a game that allows the inner child to come out in all of us -- something I imagine we’ll see even more of as the excitement of postseason baseball is rapidly approaching.