Jason Bay takes step to legitimize himself as a baseball player....

By becoming a US citizen. He was quoted as saying "it's a pretty proud day for me." He said his wife and daughters are Americans. While this makes a nice story of wanting to be American along with the rest of his family, here at the sporting nerd we are too smart to buy that excuse.

You see, Bay is a native of British Colombia, meaning that he is vastly underrated as a ball player due to the fact that he is or was Canadian. Being in his contract year there was a strong motivation for him to get more respect on the field. His stat line so far this year is a solid .262BA, 19HR, 69RBI(leading the Sox in HR and RBI). He's a career .280 hitter with 168 homers and 590 RBIs, with greater than 20 HR and 80 RBI in every season since 2003 and greater than 30 HR and 100 RBI in 3 of the last 4 seasons, and on pace for his best season so far.

But has anyone ever heard of him? Not really. It's because when people heard he was from Canada it perplexed them and they just mumbled "must have sucked at hockey." It was even more confusing when he told people he went to Gonzaga and was continually asked "so you must have been a great 3-pt shooter, eh? " Or they asked him how cool it was to make it to the final four with a team full of unathletic white guys.

His story is similar to fellow Canadien Steve Nash who got very little respect from the basketball world (only one D-1 scholarship offer, mid first round pick, traded for Martin Muursepp, Bubba Wells, Pat Garrity and a draft pick) until finally overcoming the fact that he was from the tundra, and becoming an All-star in his 5th season.

Bay obviously did not have the patience to wait until he could overcome this anchor that had been weighing him down, and obviously did not have the desire to try-out for the Bruins, where some would say he obviously belonged. But no longer, now that he is an American he will finally get the baseball respect that he deserves, and just in time for his journey into free agency this winter....