Every team needs the guy in the clubhouse to keep things loose. It’s an a essential part to any championship winning team. Not only for games, but for everyday monotonous practices, bullpen sessions, random team events. Baseball is such a long and perpetual sport, you need guys to keep things fresh. When the teams hits slumps, can’t seem to string hits together, or just has a heavy dose of bad luck, there needs to be a personality in the locker room that will naturally boost the team’s spirit and keep stuff light. For the 04’ Red Sox, it was Kevin Millar. For the 08’ Phillies, Shane Victorino filled that role. For the 2011 Kettleers, Daniel Stallsmith is that guy.Let’s put it this way, more than half of all professional athletes will give about the same answer to every question.

“Um, excuse me, Player X. How do you feel about the game today?”

“Oh you know, I feel real good. Just went out there, played hard, coach had a good game plan, just had fun with my teammates. Really gave us something to build on.”

Blah blah blah. You know the drill; you’ve heard it countless times. Athletes usually don’t offer much more than that. Perhaps it’s because when they do, they usually get burned in the media for it (Roberto Luongo and LeBron James being exhibits A and B). But Daniel has too much personality for that, too much spunk. His interview was so conversational and so fun that I forgot I had a mini HD camera in my hand. It was like talking to a bro.

He made a splash with the Kettleer community at the welcome picnic, in which he had the whole place rolling with an off the cuff stand up comedy performance. Off the cuff as in, never done stand up comedy before. Not once.

“No man, that was totally out of nowhere, coach handed me the microphone, and it was a dream come true. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, an audience for fifteen minutes and fair game on anything.”

He made the place die in laughter with brownie jokes. He was basically taking requests on what to kid about.

But anyway, his beginnings are rather humble. He was born in Milwaukee, and then moved to Charlotte, spending ten years in both cities. His brother played baseball at Furman, which sparked the young Daniel’s love of the game.

“I remember from infancy my brother encouraging me to be a left hander; bought me a glove for my right hand, and just, I remember going to games my whole life growing up, and it was always just something I wanted to do because of what he had done. And I slowly just began to love baseball.”

After he walked on at Furman (a small school in South Carolina) he worked his way into the starting rotation and earned wins over SEC powerhouses South Carolina and Georgia.
He describes his style as a soft throwing leftie who gets hitter off balance and worries more about precision and accuracy then overpowering hitters. So I asked, “oh, so like Cliff Lee?”

“Let me clarify,” Daniel corrected. “I’m a soft, soft throwing leftie. Maybe even three soft’s. More like Jamie Moyer.” (Jamie Moyer is a 47 year old pitcher who won a world series with the Phillies in 2008. His fastball may have hit 82 once his whole career.)

But don’t let the free spirited jokester fool you. When he steps on the mound, the smile morphs into a glare. His eyes focus intently on his spots and the catcher’s signals. He knows what attitude to bring when it’s time to go to work.

Now, Stallsmith is a temp player, which mean his time on the Cape may be short lived. When asked about it, naturally he had a typical positive Daniel answer.

His opening line of jest was “I mean, after I vomit three times a morning I’m fine.”

I contained a good amount of laughter. Only someone with the most amount of comfort in there own skin would say that.

“Really, I just wake up every day and I’m like ‘this is amazing, what a cool opportunity to be in the Cape for a summer,’ however long that is. So I’m just thankful for every day. I work really hard, and you know, that’s coach’s decision, that’s not something I can control. I just work as hard as I can, I really enjoy it, and that’s my job.”

Daniel and I talked right after the double header against D-Y. It was about, oh, 53 degrees at Lowell Park that day. If you watch the interview, you will notice his trademark earmuffs. It completes not only his uniform, but also his persona. And they were evidently an object of banter and envy.

“The guys at first; well, we had a double header today, so a lot of crap in the first game, and then in the second game, a lot of jealousy. So it all evened out.”

Again, he always finds a way to keep things free and entertaining.

Like Daniel said, he has no control over how long he will be with Cotuit. He can only make the most of every day. Like the great UCLA head basketball coach John Wooden said, “the more concerned we become over the things we can’t control, the less we will do with the things we can control.”

I obviously have no say, but I hope he makes the cut. The Cotuit Kettleers need their glue if they are going to stick together.