Fansided

Troy Tulowitzki One of the Last Bastions of Loyalty in MLB?

By Josh Sippie |

Most people will tell you that loyalty is dead in sports. I am one of those people. But unlike the carrier pigeon, dead in sports is not the same as extinct in the wild, it is more like endangered – so the white rhino.

Animal analogies aside, it really is nearly impossible to find an instance of extreme loyalty in sports, whether that be baseball, football, soccer or even cricket (that is speculation, cricket players may be incredibly loyal, I wouldn’t know).

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There are a lot of reasons players may leave their team. The most despicable of the reasons is for money. All too often we see players jumping ship on their team to join up with a team for a contract full of big numbers and dollar signs. For awhile, the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates had a hard time holding onto players because they had very little success and other teams had higher paying options. The Royals were known as the Yankees farm team for quite some time.

Winning is another reason why players will leave their team. LeBron James did it in glorious fashion, shamelessly broadcasting himself on ESPN choosing between the team that raised him, his home town club, and the deep coffers of the Miami Heat.

But then there are players like Craig Biggio. Biggio stayed with the Houston Astros for 20 years. Not once did he even come near an exit, despite interest from other, potentially more successful teams. He stuck with the Astros through the best and the worst and ended up not winning any World Series titles because of it.

Troy Tulowitzki is on a Colorado Rockies team that has been at or near the bottom of the NL West for quite some time. Yet he remains. He even signed an extension with them and he recently told MLB.com: “I didn’t sign my contract because I wanted to be somewhere else.” Tulo has made it clear what his desires are.

However, another of the reasons why loyalty is dying in sports is because sometimes players’ wishes are not honored. Troy Tulowitzki has no say in whether he gets traded or not. If the Rockies want to trade him and they get a deal to their liking, he will be shipped off, giving him no opportunity to be remembered as one of the few guys that spent his entire career at one team.

I had spoken in favor of trading Tulo not long ago, mainly because it has become such a defining milestone to win a Wold Series, but something also has to be said of a guy that will spend years upon years at a team, particularly one that is not even in playoff races very often.

That is almost more admirable than a guy that jumps to a contending team just to grab a title.

Next: Nolan Arenado Peaking on the Road

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