Sizing Things Up

I watch basketball or football, and I pretty much feel like an alien, or I’m watching aliens.  The players are big beyond belief and, in many instances, too big for their own good.

Not that baseball is immune.  Randy Johnson and Dave Winfield look to be what many organizations are looking for size-wise when they draft players.  Consider that the White Sox recently called up reliever Michael Ynoa, at 6’7” a very tall pitcher.  The only correlation between size and talent would appear to be power—he can throw it through a wall or hit it through one.  Throwing strikes consistently or hitting for average are another matter.  All of which makes last week’s draft selections by the Sox so interesting.

Six of the top twenty draft choices are six-foot on the head with another coming in at 5’11”; hey, that last one is ½” shorter than me even, and he was the #3 pick.  Fingers crossed, some of these guys may even make it to the bigs.

I certainly hope that #3 pick, outfielder Alex Call, does.  Call is from Wisconsin and a product of Ball State.  He ended up in Indiana because the state of Wisconsin has no D-1 baseball programs (U of W Madison dropped baseball after the 1991 season, a scandal that).  The switch in states also caused a switch in majors.  Call wanted to be an engineer, but Ball State doesn’t have an engineering program, so entrepreneurial management it is.  Wow, somebody I can actually relate to.  And he got his degree in three years, no less.

Can I also relate to new Sox shortstop Tim Anderson, recently called up from Charlotte?  Oh, most definitely, even though Anderson can go from home to third in less time it takes me to get up off the couch.  I mean, he’s not even two inches taller.  At 6’1” I’d be that fast, too.  Maybe.