Welcome back to Routine Moments in Baseball History, a running weekday feature that looks back at plays that have been ignored by the history books because history books only talk about things that are important or interesting. Today's installment is "John Olerud Is Boring." On August 13, 2000, in the third inning of a game against the Cleveland Indians in Seattle, Mariners first baseball John Olerud caught a foul ball hit by Manny Ramirez for a third out. He stood under the ball as it fell, kept his eyes on it, cradled it in his glove as it landed, and jogged to the dugout—Olerud was a man who excelled at routine, who did the simplest tasks with a steady work ethic that would have made his Scandinavian ancestors proud.
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He was boring, in other words. He was either the best boring man ever to play baseball, or the most boring man ever to be really, really good at baseball. Either way, his career is impressive to look back upon: over 2,200 hits, exactly 500 doubles, 255 home runs, three Golden Gloves, two All-Star Game appearances, a pair of World Series rings earned with the Toronto Blue Jays in the early 90s, and an insane 1993 season when he hit .363, won a batting title and had an on-base percentage of .473. (That's just his professional career. In college, he was so good that today there's an award named after him.) The Jays traded him after the 1996 partly because manager Cito Gaston thought he was too passive a hitter, which seems insane in the post-Moneyball era, but that was Olerud—not many players of his caliber could piss people off by being patient.Olerud was tall and stoic and looked like a man doing his job when he was out on the field. You can imagine him as a clean-cut candidate for some local political office, or a Norwegian farmer waking up at dawn, or an accountant going over spreadsheets for five hours straight without saying a word. He wore a batting helmet at all times, ever cautious after getting a brain aneurysm in college. After he retired, he made the paper in Seattle for getting into a mind-numbingly dull conflict with a neighbor over the placement of a tree that blocked the view from his house. (Eventually, he and his wife won the argument and the tree was removed.)I've never heard anyone say Olerud was their favorite player. His game wasn't flashy, he rarely made highlight reel-worthy plays; mostly, he just stood there, either at first base or in the batter's box, and no one goes to baseball games to watch a man stand still, even if it's some exceptional standing. The (fairly slim, I think) case for putting him in the Hall of Fame is centered around his on-base percentage, the most boring of all statistics. Liking Olerud means liking someone who is really good at doing his job and doesn't make a big deal out of it, and underrated, day-in, day-out competence just isn't cool.Sometimes I think the older you get the more that sort of thing appeals to you—you can talk unironically about the workmanship that went into a coffee table or bathroom tile, you notice when floors are dirty, you appreciate the countless minor tasks that go into making something look clean and efficient. Going to the same job and performing your duties admirably for 17 years and starts not to sound lame, but like a mark of pride. Olerud played the game like an adult, he played it with care and precision and to the best of his abilities, and if he looked like a high school principal while doing it, so what? Olerud was a player for the measure-twice-cut-once crowd, the quiet men who stand in the background while others win awards and believe it when they say that it's the journey, not the destination. If he goes mostly forgotten in the pages of baseball history, I'm sure that's fine with him: He's got his memories, the satisfaction of a job well done, and a house with a view now pleasantly unobstructed by trees.This has been Routine Moments in Baseball History. Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.