IS IT THE LAST HURRAH FOR FAB FOUR?
Chuck, Cargo, DJ and Nolan ready for possible last hurrah
The foursome of Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Carlos Gonzalez and DJ Lemahieu have combined to play in 3,389 games with the Rockies. They have strode to the plate 13,920 times and swatted 404 home runs with the C/R on their batting helmets.
They have created memories that will last a lifetime and bonds that will never break, no matter which uniform they wear.
“Cargo, Charlie and DJ, they’re some of my best friends,” said Arenado, an all-star third baseman. “I have been very fortunate to play with those guys.”
But this likely is their last season together. The four don’t want to talk about that, but it’s clear they want to do something special this season, which for the Rockies begins Thursday night when they play the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix.
“I don’t think anybody is looking at this as the last hurrah,” said Blackmon, the gnarly-bearded center fielder, leadoff slugger and defending National League batting champion. “We’re doing a really good job of staying in the moment. I don’t think anybody is looking beyond this year and peeking at what might happen next year.”
Maybe that’s because it’s too painful to talk about.
This quartet has shared a lot together, including climbing the ladder from the minors to the big leagues, years of losing once they got to Denver and, finally, a trip to the postseason last year, the first playoff berth for the Rockies since 2009.
These four are so tight, Cargo refers to them as
“my brothers.”
Blackmon, now engaged to Ashley, was a roommate of Lemahieu’s until Lemahieu married Jordan in 2014. Even then, Blackmon was kind of, sort of, still a roomie. He started leaving clothes at the Lemahieu home in Atlanta, and stockpiling stuff in the bathroom.
“A lot of times I would go home with DJ after working out and we’d have a video game sleepover, and Jordan would make us chicken enchiladas,” Blackmon recalled with a grin. “So I guess I’m going to have to consider myself the official third wheel of that marriage. I should get a T-shirt that says that.”
Blackmon, 31, and Lemahieu, 29, became full-time Rockies in 2013 and are scheduled to become free agents for the first time at the end of this season. Gonzalez, a 32year-old right fielder whom Arenado calls “my mentor,” was a free agent until he recently signed an $8 million contract to return to Colorado. But the contract is only for one year, so Cargo will be back on the open market next winter.
Arenado, meanwhile, is slated to become a free agent after the 2019 season. It will take the biggest deal in Colorado sports history for the Rockies to retain the 26year-old star. Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve recently signed a seven-year, $163.5 million deal, but Arenado’s next contract could dwarf that.
Like Blackmon, Arenado deflects the conversation away from what is likely to happen to the Fab Four.
“Hey, I’m aware that this could be my last chance to play with Charlie and DJ and Cargo,” Arenado said. “But we have six months of baseball ahead of us, and it’s a long grind. I’m going to enjoy every moment I have with them and try not to think about those things. I do think about what our goal is, try to accomplish that and just go out and win baseball games.”
Gonzalez, who’s been with the Rockies since 2009, thinks the 2018 team can go beyond the oneand-done, wild-card playoff loss to Arizona last fall. He wants to experience a “real” playoff run.
“Man, my first year here, we made the playoffs and we should have beaten Philadelphia in the division series,” he said. “I thought that was going to be the case every year. I thought, ‘Man, this is fun, this is a great, great group.’ But that just shows you how hard it is to compete every year. Guys get hurt or move on. Things happen.
“Now we have another group with a lot of talent. We have an open window, we have a chance. We worked our way into the postseason last year, but we didn’t finish our business. So we just have to keep proving people wrong.”
Lemahieu the instigator
From the giddy days of spring training to the dog days of late summer through the chilly nights of September — baseball players spend more time with their teammates than they do with their families. That makes for interesting dynamics and gives birth to stories that will resonate for years to come.
Lemahieu, a two-time Gold Glove second baseman, is quiet to the point of being stoic. He’s the rock of the Rockies.
“He’s does everything right,” Blackmon said. “Whenever I have doubts about what I should be doing, I look to DJ. DJ is my litmus test. If I’m doing what DJ is doing, I’m doing the right thing. There is a lot to be said for someone who goes out there with the right attitude every day. The same mentality — always locked in. He doesn’t cash in a whole week if he’s not feeling it.”
But, believe it or not, Lemahieu has a dark side.
“He’s an instigator,” Arenado said.
Case in point: It was Lemahieu who rescued Blackmon from the side of an Atlanta freeway on a brisk January morning in 2016, then took a photo of the moment and posted it on Twitter, much to Blackmon’s everlasting chagrin.
“My gas light was on in my Jeep when I left to go work out that morning,” Blackmon said, referring to the beat-up 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo that he drove in high school and that now has more than 160,000 miles on it. “I knew it was almost empty, but I like to push it.”
He didn’t make it.
“It was crazy cold that day and I was on the side of the freeway,” Blackmon said. “It wasn’t safe. So I called up DJ, ’cause I knew he was probably behind me. He was.”
As Blackmon poured gas into his Jeep, Lemahieu sat in the warmth of his car and snapped a picture with his iphone.
“It was too good to pass up,” Lemahieu said with an impish grin. “It was the perfect picture at the perfect time. I thought, ‘I have to share this with everybody.’ ”
Blackmon’s and Arenado’s relationship is a curious one. They have known each other since Arenado was 17, but they have, as Arenado puts it, “absolutely nothing in common except baseball.”
“I surf and hit the beach and all of that,” said Arenado, who was born and raised in Southern California. “Chuck’s from the South (born in Dallas, raised in Georgia) and he likes to fish and hunt.
“I’ll say, ‘Dude, let’s go to San Diego and just chill and hang out on the beach.’ He’ll say, ‘Man, I don’t want to do any of that!’ Then, we’ll be somewhere and he’ll be like, ‘Hey, let’s go fishing!’ And I’ll be like, ‘Dude, I don’t want to go fishing!’ ”
So how does the Rockies’ dynamic duo spend time together?
“We never end up doing anything,” Arenado said. “We end up going to dinner and talking baseball. He’s always telling me, ‘Man, you’ve got to stop thinking about baseball all the time.’ But then we’ll be at dinner and I’ll bring up baseball and Chuck can’t help himself. So we end up talking about baseball.”
An obsession with baseball
Arenado is obsessed with the game. Blackmon sees it as his mission to lighten up Arenado and expose him to a world beyond the diamond.
“I know how to press his buttons and I know what bugs him, so I’ll say something to get under his skin,” Blackmon said. “I will have my fun with him and them leave him alone and let him stew over it for the rest of the day.
“But other times, Nolan just needs a hug. I mean, sometimes he can’t walk down the hallway without stopping three times to take a dry swing with his bat.”
Arenado pleads guilty as charged, but he said Blackmon sometimes takes the needling to the extreme.
“This one time, I wasn’t hitting,” Arenado recalled. “He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Nolan, you know what your problem is? You know why you’re not hitting right now?’ I said, ‘Why, Chuck?’ So he said, ‘Nolan, you’re not ready to hear it yet.’ ”
As Arenado told the story, he became more agitated.
“I was like, ‘Really dude?! You’re going to stand there and say that and then not tell me why I’m struggling?!’ I was so mad. I was like, ‘Dude I’m never talking to you again.’ Then I talked to him the very next day. But he never told me. He just likes to irritate me. He’s such a jerk. We argue all of the time. He’s like one of my brothers.”
Then Arenado looked around his corner of the Rockies’ clubhouse at Salt River Fields. Just a few feet away were the lockers of Blackmon, Lemahieu and Cargo.
“These guys mean a lot to me,” he said. “I love them. I love them a lot.”