The guy who pushed himself so far that his leg quite literally gave out under the stress of his effort was sorry.
It’s not something he’d ever wish on anyone else — Morton is legendarily earnest, as his apologies illustrate — but he’s here now, still playing baseball at 37 years old, because of what he learned in the first half of his career, when all he seemed to know was what it felt like for his body to betray him.
He wanted to do it against the team with which he won a ring in 2017 and for the team to which he returned this year after nearly a decade and a half away.
Atlanta signed Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal last November because his wizened arm could still whip 97 mph fastballs and feather 80 mph curveballs, sure.
“Everyone knows his résumé, and his humility is something you wouldn’t expect from someone with that kind of résumé.
He was when he arrived in Atlanta as a 24-year-old after spending seven years in the minors, and he was when Tommy John surgery and hip surgery and shoulder injuries derailed his career, and he is now that he has finally stayed healthy for a few years in a row — culminating this season, in which he tied for the National League lead with 33 starts and was characteristically dominant in most.
At first, Morton didn’t look particularly wounded by the 96 mph fastball that Yuli Gurriel, the American League batting champion, ricocheted off Morton, bouncing to Freeman for an easy out.
Even though Atlanta thinks so much of Morton it already signed him to a $20 million extension for 2022, nobody can predict what’s to come.
“It’s incredible that he even thought of going out there, and I bet you it was so A.J.
In the middle of the year, it lost Ronald Acuña Jr., one of the best players in baseball, to a torn ACL — and got better.
Not for anything he actively did, of course, but because Gurriel’s bat happened to hit his pitch at a negative-6-degree angle and the cut of the grass and swing of his leg conspired such that the latter ended up in a boot.
There was no bloody sock to memorialize Game 1, nothing tangible beyond Morton becoming quite literally a Sorry Charlie.