Somewhere in North Carolina in 1990, a child was born William Bradford Myers. His parents could have called him Bradford. (Some would call it a missed opportunity.) They could have called him Brad, or Will, but they didn’t. They called him Wil.
"That's always been the case," he once told the Tampa Bay Times. "My parents started spelling my name that way, and that's the way it's been."
I think is what we’re hearing there is that Wil Myers’ parents can’t spell. But that’s okay. The name Wil suits Wil. He doesn’t need another L on there, taking up his time. He’s got a lot on his mind.
Not all of it is hair.
That absolute banger of a baseball meme is old, obviously, but it’s not like he’s chopped it all off since then.
Wil’s been memeable since he’s been in the league. He’s up. He’s down. He’s frustrating. He’s loveable. You love to love him. You hate to hate him.
Sometimes he’s so memeable because he looks so thoughtful. Some would say so stoned. Is he actually stoned? It doesn’t matter. Stoned is a mindset.
There’s a reddit bot called wilmyersfact that’ll tell you one of hundreds of (probably) fictional Paul Bunyan-type stories about Wil. When he was a rookie, there was a Twitter account called wilmyershair. When Fernando Tatis posed with his new mural on Twitter, Myers commented on Tatis’ Crocs and Padre fans went bananas. He goes viral for making his teammates crack up in the dugout. He goes viral for staring off into space for what seems like hours.
But sometimes he goes viral because, for example, the Dodgers are getting their World Series rings before the game and Wil Myers, and only Wil Myers, comes out to watch, drenched with longing.
That picture up there of Wil and his family is a Wil Myers microcosm. Is he the adult in the room? Is he a big kid? He’s having the time of his life, but his parents seem grumpy. Is he taking any of this seriously? But if he hadn’t taken this so seriously, he wouldn’t be in the majors, right?
And that, imagined or not, is the way Wil Myers plays ball. He starts every year PUMPED FOR THE SEASON, loaded with natural talent that oozes so hard it flows out his skull, I mean probably when he cuts his hair it grows back immediately like Harry Potter’s. But by the end of the season his mind drifts off baseball a bit.
His stats so far this year are remarkably similar to his career averages:
And that’s probably what his numbers will be at the end of the season. Or maybe not.
Last year was his most consistent season, but a lot of guys had their most consistent seasons in 2020, in that 60-game mindset. But if we travel to Wil’s last seasons:
2019: Starts hot, hitting .300 through 24 games. So atrocious the next few weeks he temporarily loses his spot in the lineup. Goes on an 11-game hitting streak in early September to end the season with average numbers.
2018: Starts hot, hitting .306 through 30 games. Once .976, his OPS dips to .763 by the end of the season.
2017: Starts hot, hitting .301 and an .893 OPS through 35 games. By season’s end those numbers drifted to .243 and .792.
And so on.
——
There’s another theory, which is that when he was the Padres’ best player for so long and the team was terrible, he kept losing focus after a while—which would explain the 2019 hitting streak pick-me-up to end the year, and the solid 2020. Baseball, the theory goes, keeps his interest now because he believes his team can win, and because he’s not the team’s Luke Skywalker, their only hope.
And yet. Here he is again, starting 2021 with a .350 BA and 1.110 OPS after 11 games. It’s June 8th, and those numbers are .248/.730.
The rest of 2021 is the fork in the road, then: is Wil Myers just a memeable folk hero who starts hot but is too stoned to be great, year after year? Or will the west wind of winning blow him to the shores of greatness at last, as we saw possible in 2020 and the 2020 playoffs?
——
Wil was once asked if he’d heard that he looks like the legendary Dale Murphy.
"I've heard that one for a while," he said. "No, I've never met him. But he was obviously really good."
I think, under the mop and metaphorical secondhand, Wil also wants to be remembered for being very good. Let’s see if he’s got it in him.