The Peraza factor

 

(Photo: New York Yankees)

It's currently Oswald Peraza's world and we're living in it.

The young shortstop has been wowing fans with five home runs this week. He's hitting .349 entering today's game.

His home runs -- he previously hit five in 622 career at-bats -- are being shared all over social media.

So far, I'm glad to say all of the chatter has been about Peraza. Nothing (to my knowledge) has been said about the camera production or -- blech -- the broadcaster.

That's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh, uh-huh).

Attention beast. Sure. That's me. Not.

I'm perfectly content to have it all fly under the radar.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate a kind word. It's humbling and often embarrasses me but it is appreciated. But, with the good must go the bad, so I'm just as content to generally hear nothing.

I don't crave feedback. Again, I'm so grateful for kind words and my world has been very supportive this week.

I especially appreciated the note I received about how I was doing when I said was distracted.

"I couldn't tell," they said.

And I got a quiet text last night with a quick word of encouragement. It struck the right chord.

Yet I'm just as content to have the focus be on Peraza and the game, as it should be.

The calls have been shared in stories by The New York Post and Pinstripe Alley and in tweets by MLB Pipeline among others.

To be honest, at this point, I just keep waiting for someone to tell me they saw or heard something on the YES Network.

Keep in mind, even if they only show the video without the audio, that will include the work of Sean and I'll be incredibly proud of that. It's about Sean and the rest of our great broadcast team, led by director "Singin'" Sam Eisenbaum.

I told Sean about the attention this is all receiving and he was pretty blown away. Last night's home run in the bottom of the first has been viewed over 21,000 times.

Earth-shattering? Not really. But it's a different level of attention for my own work. It's happened before, sure (2015 girls state hockey championship in CT, for instance).

This is different though.

So I'm just content to be a vocal witness to the efforts of Oswald Peraza as he continues to light the Hudson Valley up.

By the way, thanks to Rascal (the raccoon, not the cat) eating through the wires at Dutchess Stadium (that's our story and we're sticking with it), my pregame segment will be live again today. So if you're at Dutchess Stadium, watch out for "Rob's Roundup" featuring my special guest Sean Adams.

Yes. You've read that correctly. Zach Neubauer thought it would be fun to touch on the father/son angle of the Gades' broadcasting duo.

Look for it around 4:00 this afternoon.