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Look: MLB pitcher Yu Darvish treats 2 entire minor league teams to steak dinner

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It is common practice for Major League Baseball teams to use their minor league affiliates as pit stops for players returning from injury.

Players get a chance to pitch or swing the bat in a relatively low-pressure environment, focused entirely on making sure their mechanics are sound, more like a car being driven a few laps on a test track to make sure a rebuilt engine will work on the road than something like pitching Game 7 of the World Series with the whole world hanging on every pitch.

It’s also a great marketing opportunity; minor league teams in the small cities of Main Street America get a big boost in fan interest as the star player from the bigs plays in a stadium where the average price is often something like 10 bucks a ticket, compared with the $200 or more it takes to take a family of four out to a major league game.

But for the South Bend Cubs and West Michigan Whitecaps, it wasn’t just a chance to play a game with Yu Darvish pitching Monday night.

Darvish, who makes more for one start in Chicago than these minor league guys make in a year, took the opportunity to have an entire Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse meal catered in the clubhouse, which — when the entrees, sides and desserts were tallied up for the players, coaches and clubhouse staff — had to have run Darvish something on the order of ten grand or more.

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Max Green of the visiting Whitecaps posted a picture of the sweet spread, and he also pointed out that while it is common practice for big league players to treat the minor leaguers to dinner on their own teams, to do it for the opponents as well went above and beyond the call of duty.

And we’re not sure if the guy who tweeted this is a still-angry Dodgers fan after last year’s World Series, but it’s a great joke all the same:

Yes, Darvish serves meatballs. Made from real gophers.

Will Darvish be able to regain his prior form after the injury?

Darvish is working his way back from a triceps injury in the Class A assignment in hopes that his repaired arm won’t serve up batting practice on the game’s biggest stage again.

As to the cost of the meal itself, it’s worth considering that Darvish just inked a $126 million contract with the Cubs; a steak dinner, even one for 50 or more of his closest friends, isn’t going to break him.

Minor leaguers, meanwhile, make $45,000 a year at most, and while 45 large in the parts of America that have cost of living as low as most Midwestern minor league cities is a pretty good living, that’s still a salary at which eating steak and salmon from a high-end steakhouse is to be reserved for stuff like anniversary dinners with the wife or celebrating a promotion, not playing a low-end-of-the-ladder minor league baseball game.

South Bend lost the contest, but Darvish pitched well, striking out five and giving up just three hits in his five innings pitched.

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Which, in turn, had to be a boost to those three guys who got the hits off a major leaguer when they’re still three promotions away from “The Show” themselves. They now know, and demonstrated with their own bats, that they can hit major league pitching.

And that might just be even better than a great steak.

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Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Birthplace
Boston, Massachusetts
Education
Bachelor of Science in Accounting from University of Nevada-Reno
Location
Seattle, Washington
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Sports




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