ARLINGTON -- Rookie Marc Church said it felt like Christmas when he walked into the Rangers¡¯ clubhouse at Globe Life Field on the morning of Opening Day.
That¡¯s exactly what Josh Jung had in mind.
Prior to Thursday's 5-2 loss to the Red Sox, the Rangers' third baseman gifted every one of his teammates a gift bag of various items, including a Solo Stove fire pit, a Yeti cooler, three Yeti tumblers and a Yeti jug, Bose headphones and airbuds, a Saddlebags wallet and toiletry kit and Meta Quest 35 virtual reality glasses.
¡°It all started around Christmas time when I saw the [NFL] quarterbacks and running backs gifting their offensive lines and stuff,¡± Jung said. ¡°That's where it started. For me, I was sitting there like ¡®Why don¡¯t we make this something in baseball? Why not?¡¯ Opening Day is basically our Christmas. So I wanted to do that. I truly believe you're going to develop and create an unselfish culture, you got to be unselfish. That was truly all I was thinking about.¡±
Jung said it ¡°fills his cup¡± to be able to do something like this for his teammates. He wanted to give them things that they and their families could actually use, not something that would lay around the house and collect dust.
¡°This tells you a lot about Josh,¡± manager Bruce Bochy said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t a cheap day, I'm sure. It¡¯s a special, special move by him. It was about caring about your teammates. It's a great message. He's one of our younger guys to do that too. That's what's impressive to think of. I've never seen it. It's my first time I've seen a gesture like this. It¡¯s just a very amazing move on this part.¡±
Jung remarked on his desire to be a more vocal leader back in Spring Training. He wants to be the guy that picks his teammates up and puts them first. This is just one tangible step towards that.
It was something that even Kevin Pillar -- a 12-year MLB veteran -- took notice of.
¡°It was definitely a cool surprise to me,¡± Pillar said. ¡°Coming from JJ, that's obviously a very unexpected thing, especially for a younger guy. I can't speak about what it was like here in years past, but regardless of why or how he did it, it's a really cool gesture. Like I said, leadership comes in a lot of different ways. Whether he paid for all that stuff or got it gifted, that's beside the point. The thought is that all of us have the ability to do that here, for him to go out of his way and think about that is a really cool thing.¡±