When you go into the locker room of the Valencia Stars, you see a lot of players’ lockers filled with pictures of the kids, beach vacations with the wife/girlfriend or a baseball card of their childhood idol. Sometimes you may even see a souvenir or some sort of good luck charm – no live chickens though. But when you come across the locker of number 37 you see a locker that is void of all of those types of items. Instead you see newspaper articles talking about why did they bring him into Valencia instead of re-signing their team captain, headlines, BBA tweets and commentaries containing the terms “Overrated” or “Overpaid”. That locker belongs to newly acquired first baseman Zenobius Kazantziakis.
Zenobius or ‘Zeno’ as the fans are now calling him uses those articles as is fuel before workouts and practices. He shows up an hour before anyone else, hits the weight room and views videos of the pitcher(s) that he is scheduled to face in the next series. The 34 year-old has some wear on the tires as you look at the lines on his face and the ice packs on his knees after the game.
Going into the second game of the series against San Fernando, Zeno was hitting .400 with an on-base percentage of .429. Numbers that are worthy of a $6M salary especially when you consider the defense he brings to the infield.
In front of the home crowd, he leads off in the bottom of the first and strokes a single only to get doubled up by Miller Shed in the next at bat. In the bottom of the third inning he grounds out to his counterpart at first base. As he comes up in the sixth inning with two outs and the score still sitting at 0 to 0, Zeno slices a double into the deep left-center field gap for a double. Unfortunately, second base is where he was left as the next batter grounded out to second.
In the top of the 9th inning, the leadoff batter for the Bears hits a would-be blooper into shallow right field only to have Zeno make an over-the-shoulder catch to get the batter out. As we go into the bottom of the 9th, the score is still 0 to 0. After the lead-off batter gets an out, it is Zeno’s turn for his 4th at bat. The jumbotron in centerfield has a message in all caps “GET ON THE BUS”. He takes a ball on the first pitch and then swings and misses on the second pitch. He digs his right foot into the dirt as he waits on the delivery. The pitch looks good so Zeno takes a hefty swing. As the ball leaves the bat, the crowd of almost 43,000 who are already on their feet start to roar. The ball lands in the left-center field bleachers about 378 feet from the plate. Zeno hits a solo homer of the walk-off variety to give Valencia a 1 to 0 victory.
The stat line shows Zeno going 3 for 4 with a single, double and a homer. His season average is now .458.
GM Greathouse was caught coming out of the owner’s box after the game and was asked about the Zeno signing. Greathouse responded, “Well it is too early in the season to make overall statements, but we do like what we have seem over the first couple of weeks.”
