Jensen LewisIndians’ Reliever Talks All Things Christmas (Including Mariah Carey)

In case you missed it, the Cleveland Indians’ website featured a brief yet entertaining Q and A session with relief pitcher Jensen Lewis this week, in which he discussed his favorite Christmas artifacts.

Some of the highlights included Jensen professing his love for the greatest Christmas movie of all time (with all due respect to Christmas Vacation), “A Christmas Story”, as well as Jensen talking about his favorite Christmas song, which somehow turns out to be a Mariah Carey song. I don’t know, you try to figure that one out.

Anyway, it’s fun to also read about how Jensen is now able to be a better Santa now that he’s making real MLB money. Here are some highlights from the article:

“MLB.com:What’s your favorite Christmas movie?

Lewis: “A Christmas Story.” I’m a huge, huge fan of that. You’ve got to watch it on Christmas Eve. It makes going to bed a little easier, knowing everybody’s happy in the end. And it was filmed in Cleveland, so there’s a little hometown flavor.

MLB.com: How about your favorite Christmas song?

Lewis: Actually, a good one — and this is going to be embarrassing — is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

MLB.com: I don’t know what to do with that information. What’s the best present you ever received?

Lewis: Probably Sega. The first year it came out, my brother and I played the original “Sonic the Hedgehog” game in the story, and we said we’d give up the rest of our Christmas presents for that. But my dad didn’t like video games, so he said, “I don’t think we’re going to do this.” We were praying to God, “Please, please bring a Sega for us.”

We were opening all our gifts and getting down to the end, and there were no big boxes left, and we were like, “All right, Santa, we don’t believe in you anymore.” But leave it to my mom to hide something. She brought it out from under the kitchen counter or somewhere. We opened it up and played the rest of the day for 12 hours straight. I think we beat the game in one day.

MLB.com: That’s very reminiscent of the Red Rider BB Gun gift from “A Christmas Story.” Now that you’ve got some of that big league money in your pocket, what kind of gift-giver will you be this year?

Lewis: I think I’ll be able to be more flexible. I won’t be as strapped. It gives you a little more calmness. You go into the offseason knowing you’re not going to be under the gun on a Minor League salary. It will be nice. I’ll be a good Santa this Christmas.”