Look Out, Tyson Beckford

Ladies, start your engines. Jacoby Ellsbury shot an editorial spread for Men’s Vogue back in Bend, Oregon in January for the March issue – which should be hitting newsstands tomorrow. The Globe has a tiny preview– but I spoke with Mark Fristad, the producer of the shoot, and got a few more details.

The the article is a story about Jacoby and illustrates him working out at Hillsboro’s Velocity gym. He has a personal trainer that lives here in Oregon. He is solo in some of the shots and also has some local athletes (extras) working out with him. I haven’t seen the finished article yet, but the photographs were shot by known New York photographer Richard Phibbs. His images are known for fashion advertising for clients such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren.

Little Jacoby is all grown up!

The Globe article also had a few tasty details, including perhaps a few sports delusions of grandeur for a guy who’s just a hair over 6 feet tall:

Ellsbury and his girl-friend, 23-year-old Kelsey Hawkins, have allowed a few trappings of success. He drives a new blue Escalade, uses an iPhone, and has a closet packed with new sneakers. As for what he would be doing if he wasn’t gearing up for baseball: “The NFL,” he says. “Wide receiver.” Seriously? “Or the NBA.”

I don’t think Randy Moss or Kevin Garnett need worry about their jobs anytime soon.

Thanks to Mark Fristad for taking the time to speak with me!

EDIT: You can find the full text of the article online- but here’s another photo from the shoot plus a few of my favorite quotes from the article.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that Red Sox Nation realized their rookie Jacoby Ellsbury was the Baby Jesus in cleats.

Regardless of when it happened, Ellsbury has become the latest vessel for great expectations in Boston–a place that puts the “cult” in sports subculture–and his life will never be the same. “Going to the mall, normally I could just cruise through,” he recalls. “Now, it’s totally different. Girls will be shaking to meet me. It’s unbelievable.”

“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to come to Boston when you’re a young kid and you’ve never been through it before,” Sox manager Terry Francona tells me. “We put him in some pretty important situations, and he competed, and he didn’t back down. Usually we live and die by the home run, but he brought a speed that we hadn’t seen. He can fly.”

He runs 60 yards in 6.27 seconds–just a hair slower than Carl Lewis–but even more impressive is his mental machinery, which blacks out the ballpark as soon as he bolts for second base. “I don’t hear anything. I’m just thinking, ‘Get there, get there, they don’t have a shot,’?” he says. “In the postseason, I ran faster than I’ve ever run before. I’m just”–he raises his arms and simulates a very powerful robot running–”choo-choo-choo-choo. And once I slide, that’s when I hear the crowd and know that I’ve made it, when you hear that roar.”

Even Ellsbury’s namesake connotes speed. His mother is full-blooded Navajo, and his middle name, McCabe, means “Antelope’s Feet” in Navajo dialect.

Along for the whole wild ride has been his girlfriend of one and a half years, Kelsey Hawkins, a 23-year-old Pendleton, Oregon, native who works in New York for the charter educational company Edison Schools. The two were friends at Oregon State, but it wasn’t until she was nannying on a trip to Maine, where he was playing Double A, that Ellsbury tried to get to first base. “We went to dinner, started talking, having a good time,” he recalls. “If I had started using any corny lines on her, we’d still be friends.” I ask him how she feels about the thousands of women in Boston who held up signs during the victory parade, offering their services as babymama. “After about 20 minutes into it, I don’t think she thought it was funny anymore,” he replies.