There are hundreds of baseball players who have served as the face of a franchise. A team always has to have one, even if that face is nontraditional, a rookie or a midseason acquisition or a fifth starter, that says as much about the state of the club as anything else possibly could. The face of the franchise does not have to be of the franchise so much as he simply has to be in it—which separates those from the players who have defined a franchise. These serve as not so much its face as its soul.
Ryan Zimmerman Among Precious Few Franchise-Defining Players
