Julian Edelman Is Crushing Homers And Flawlessly Fielding Grounders At Fenway Right Now
Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman had surgery number two on his left foot back in May to replace a screw that was already in there from when he broke his foot last season. Well, if there was any concern over whether or not he’d be ready for training camp, it’s gone now, much like the baseballs that he smoked over the Green Monster during BP. It’s not really that big of a surprise that he can hammer baseballs like that either, because he did this about four years ago for the Toronto Blue Jays. Edelman is boys with former Blue Jays catcher JP Arencibia, so he went up to Toronto to take BP before a Blue Jays game, and hit five bombs at the Rogers Centre.
Current Red Sox third base coach and native of Maine, Brian Butterfield, who watched Edelman take BP today, was also with the Blue Jays back in 2012 when he took BP and fielded grounders in Toronto. This is what he said back then.
“The two in the middle deck were absolute bombs,” Butterfield reportedly said. “When he hit them, the guys were just screaming and yelling and telling each other, ‘Look at that!’ He just wowed all of our guys. I’m a huge fan of his to begin with, and he was just even better than I thought. A great athlete.”
Butterfield said that while the Blue Jays have had various celebrities and athletes from other sports work out with the team in the past, Edelman was “far and away” the best, even saying that “you could certainly project him as a professional baseball player.”
If only Edelman enjoyed admiring his home runs as much as he enjoys admiring Tom Brady, then we might be able to see him in the MLB some day. But alas, we’ll have to settle for BP home runs and infield drills.