Great defensive ballplayers are almost always described as graceful. Their movements are said to be smooth, liquid, balletic. They glide over the grass as if on roller skates.
Ceddanne Rafaela is nothing if not a great defensive ballplayer. But I don’t think of his game as graceful; I think of his game as violent. He swings the bat like he’s trying to rescue someone on the other side of a locked door. He tears up the basepaths like he’s trying to outrun an earthquake. When I watch him in the field, I don’t see a ballet dancer; I see a kid catapulting himself off the walls of a bouncy house at the neighbor’s birthday party.