Marcus Semien, Paul Toboni and the unbreakable bond of a college clubhouse – The Athletic

WASHINGTON — There were times when Marcus Semien would watch Paul Toboni during batting practice with the Cal Golden Bears — and just laugh. “He’d be out there on the left-field line, doing the Kevin Mitchell thing, just trying to barehand balls,” Semien said. “That’s a real thing,” Toboni said, more than a little sheepishly. “I mean, we were from the Bay Area. We’d have posters of Giants players in the clubhouse. And you know how it is: College seasons can be long, and you kind of need to mess around in the outfield during BP, and we all remembered the barehanded play Kevin Mitchell made running down the left-field line.”
He paused a second. “A lot of awesome memories,” Toboni said. In the hours ahead at Nationals Park, Semien’s job was to play second base for a New York Mets team that is trying to overcome an abysmal start to the season. He is 35, a father of five, a three-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner in the fifth year of a seven-year, $175 million contract he originally signed with Texas. In his 14th big-league season, after nearly 1,700 major-league games, he’s still trying to lay off breaking pitches
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