WHY WE LOVE: J.J. PUTZ

Hello, friends. My name is Ted, and I primarily write over at A Price Above Bip Roberts. On Sundays, though, I do a little feature for Out of Left Field called "Why We Love."

The premise is pretty simple: basically, we all love baseball (especially with the NBA over, the NHL over, and football seemingly years away again). But ingrained within baseball are characters and stories unlike that of seemingly any other sport. Every Sunday, we try to introduce you to one of these characters, and convey to you why you should (in fact) love this person. The L-Word is a big thing to drop, and we realize that, but c'mon. It's Father's Day, so your heart should be open wide anyway.

Today: reasons to love Seattle Mariners closer J.J. Putz, aside from the fact that he has 10 saves and 1 ER across the past week as the Mariners streak back towards relevance again:

- Love him because he's from Trenton, Michigan, the home of the first A&W Root Beer Stand in the world.

- Love him because as a Michigan boy, he went to U of M; but as a guy who stands 6-5 and weighs 250, he played baseball instead of for Mr. Carr. We love it when people fly in the face of convention.

- Love him because he debuted on August 11, 2003, which was exactly one week before the author of this little post began teaching in an inner city elementary school in Texas, and thus roughly when the second-guessing and pants-urinating officially began.

- Love him because he's a beast. He struck out 104 dudes in only 78.1 innings of work last year.

- Love him because he embraces the 1980s. His entrance music is AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," which, while no "Hell's Bells," isn't a half-bad song to come out to. The song replays on loop for a bit after he K's someone, and finally ends with an emphatic "You've been thunderstruck." Indeed, we have. Right through our heart.

- Love him because his favorite player growing up was Lance Parrish. We can respect that. If TIVO existed when Parrish made that appearance on Different Strokes, you can bet your sweet arse we would have digitally recorded it.

- Love him because he classifies himself as "intense out there," including telling The Sporting News, "It's a release of emotion to let that big roar out." Indeed. We're pretty sure Jenna Jameson might have said that in an interview to a different magazine at one point in her professional existence.

- Love him because he took his job right out from under a guy nicknamed "Steady Eddie." How's that for comeuppance?

- Love him because his last name, "Putz," is a common 1970s throwback for "dork" or "nerd" or "wallflower" or basically, "anyone you probably are but have no self-esteem to admit, so you call other people names to inherently buoy yourself up." But J.J. wears it like a true champion.