Johnson And Yasiel Puig Comparison

On the surface baseball and football do not really seem that similar. Baseball is a game played between two teams of nine on a diamond shaped circuit of four bases where football is a game of two teams of eleven on a field marked out as a gridiron. However, the players in these sports are actually quite similar in some ways and different in others. Players like Calvin Johnson, an NFL wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, and Yasiel Puig, an MLB outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers have many differences like their early lives, positional value, and overall success. Both Johnson and Puig are excellent athletes in their respected sports and are similar by their teamwork and leadership, physicality and athleticism, and statistical value. These two athletes grew up in very different backgrounds. Johnson was born on September 29, 1985, in Newnan, Georgia. Puig was born on December 7, 1990, and grew up in a coastal town of Cuba named Cienfuegos (JockBio). Johnson’s dad, Calvin Johnson Sr., was a freight-train conductor, and his mother, Arica
Johnson, was a project manager for the Atlanta public school system (Biography.com Editors). Johnson grew up in a very well educated family out of Tyrone, Georgia. When growing up Johnson developed a knack for baseball and also football, but he developed into a football player. Johnson was later drafted into the NFL from college at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Puig never went to college and was drafted due to his ability on Cuba’s junior national baseball team. Johnson and Puig are very similar athletes in their ability to lead a team. Being a leader does not just mean being able to talk the talk and push people to be their best. Being a leader entails that, but also, in a player being a team’s leader standpoint, that player must also be able to walk the walk, and back up what they say in order to keep people liking them and not questioning their leadership ability. So even though neither of these two athletes is a captain of their own team they both tend to lead by example. Their ability to make a big catch at a clutch time late in a game to give their team a win shows this leadership by example. Johnson has been known to make many game-winning catches in his career. His most recent being a catch in overtime against the Bears a few weeks ago “In a sloppy game between two bad teams, Calvin Johnson showed he is still a great leader (NBC Sports).” Johnson showed this by catching a fifty-seven yard pass from Matthew Stafford with twenty-one seconds on the clock to seal a 37-34 lead over the bears. Puig is also well known for making big plays and catches to give an example of what a true leader does. When Puig made a layout catch at the wall in deep left center on an Anthony Rizzo fly ball to win the game. This play dazzled the media by showing Puig’s willingness to put his body on the line and step up as a leader. That is how Johnson and Puig show leadership of their teams through example. The position of Calvin Johnson is different than that of Yasiel Puig in a few ways.
One way is how much they run on average. Football players like Johnson run about one and a half miles per game where a baseball player like Puig will barely run about a quarter of a mile per game. Another thing that is different position wise between these two players is how they catch the ball. Johnson starts even with the ball and then takes off trying to receive it. Puig will start with the ball in front of him and then he will have to track it down to catch it. The third thing that separates these players by position is what their intentions are when trying to catch the ball. When Johnson is trying to catch the ball, he is on offense and trying to score. When Puig is attempting to catch the ball, he is on defense and is trying to prevent the other team from scoring. That is how the positions of Johnson and Puig are
different. Physicality is a quality portrayed by all athletes. There are many traits the portray physicality. These are power, agility, speed, strength, endurance, hand-eye coordination, durability, and analytical aptitude (Top End Sports). The physicality that is comparable between Johnson and Puig is shown in a few ways. One way is through their stamina. Even though Puig’s season is 162 games long and Johnson’s is only 17 both must be able to play and practice day after day for months at a time. Another quality they both portray is depth perception. Depth perception is the ability to know how far away something is. This is something that they both need in order to know how far away the ball is and how hard they must push themselves to get to where it’s about to be. A third physical ability they both have is athleticism. Athleticism involves all of the traits necessary to be an elite athlete. Both of these athletes are strong, powerful, and quick reacting athletes due to their high amounts of training. That is how the physicality of Johnson and Puig is similar.