Memories of Summers Past

Clare and I had a rather nostalgia-tinged phone conversation yesterday; it commenced with me telling her that ex-White Sox players Gordon Beckham and Carlos Quentin both signed minor league contracts with invitations to spring training.  Beckham will be fighting to make the Giants, Quentin the Red Sox.

Clare was always a little sweet on Beckham, with his Georgia charm and all.  But my daughter was/is at heart a hitter, and Beckham’s loopy swing led her to yell at the TV screen as much as it did her father.  With Quentin, it was more about the intensity, and that would be Clare, too.  By the time she made it to the on-deck circle, the world’s population had been reduced to her and the pitcher, and I’m not so sure about the pitcher.  But Quentin turned out to be brittle in ways my daughter never was.  I swear he could injure himself looking down at his cleats.

Beckham and Quentin were also characters in our summer travels.  After a tournament or practice, I’d have the ballgame on the radio in the car, with those two inevitably frustrating us two.  And now we have MLB offering another part of our summers past, with rookie teams employing a tie-breaker for extra innings.  Just what I always wanted, a runner dropped out of the sky at the start of every half inning to be put in scoring position at second base.

“So, in other words, baseball wants to take a bad idea from travel ball?” Clare asked in fair disbelief.  Unlike the folks in the commissioner’s office (and ex-player Mike Lowell, who said on the MLB Network that this could be a real teaching moment for young players), my daughter knows right from dumb.