More:GALLERY: Cincinnati Reds pitcher Amir Garrett
It’s a question that circulates through the clubhouse from time to time throughout spring training and the regular season.
Amir Garrett is obviously the best basketball player on the Cincinnati Reds roster. He was a high-profile recruit in high school and played two seasons at St. John’s before he turned his full attention to baseball. But who is the second-best basketball player on the roster?
One name that comes up as a “sneaky good” player: Joey Votto.
“He can shoot the rock,” Garrett said of Votto when he was on MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” show. “He can shoot it a little bit and he can jump, too. He can dunk. That’s what is crazy. I tell everybody that he can dunk and they’re like, ‘What?’ I’m telling you, he’s got some game, man.”
So, how does the 6-foot-2 Votto match up against the 6-foot-5 Garrett when they play one-on-one against each other?
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“You know, it’s funny,” Votto said in an interview last week with host Mike Ferrin on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM. “I’m fine at basketball. I can ride the pine with the best of them. This past year, a few of us snuck to a local gym. We shouldn’t be doing it, but all of us got away uninjured, so knock on wood this never happens. I talked mess to Amir for months, months, months. I mean this is a full scholarship guy to St. John’s, a Division I basketball recruit, right? A big man, fantastic athlete and I kept telling him I was going to beat him one-on-one.
“So, finally – finally – he and I get to play against each other. I think if I’m not mistaken, I may have scored. He may have checked the ball and I may have made a really long three and been up 1-0 or something like that. I think we decided to play to three. Then all of a sudden, after I scored the first one, he was literally, like, nose-to-nose with me. Not only could I not score on him, but I couldn’t put the ball down on the ground and I couldn’t even take a step, so the idea that I could beat him one-on-one is completely ridiculous.”
How would Votto describe his own game? Is he a shooter? A slasher? An above-the-rim guy?
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“I’m nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said. “I’m just happy to be out there. Basketball is my favorite sport. Baseball has been very good to me, but baseball has evolved into a hybrid of work and passion. Basketball, I’ve always, always loved.”
There have been a couple of decent basketball players on the Reds’ roster in recent years. Billy Hamilton was an all-state basketball player at his Mississippi high school.
But Garrett, as expected, is on a different level compared to everybody else.
“He’s a college basketball player,” said Votto, a big Toronto Raptors fan. “I have dreams of post-career walk-on Canadian college varsity stardom. That’s my big goal. Go to school after I’m done, walk-on and make the varsity team, not on scholarship.”
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