Life

My daughter and I have a running competition to see who’s the better evaluator of major-league talent.  Our current player of interest is White Sox rookie third baseman Matt Davidson, who spent three long years in AAA after being acquired from the Diamondbacks.

Last night against the Royals, Davidson had himself a very good game, starting with an opposite-field home run against lefty starter Jason Vargas, who entered the game with a 3-0 record and 0.44 ERA.  Clare called wanting to know if I’d seen the homer, at which point I started talking about Elmhurst softball.

At the start of every season, the Elmhurst coach would look to see if any of the bench players had developed from last spring.  Usually, what happened was one or two players would start off very hot, but not in a way that impressed me.  Someone would get three hits in a game to the opposite field against a second-string pitcher.  Sure enough, before long the player in question was showing she couldn’t get up to faster pitching.

Now, back to Davidson—the homer was to right, as was an rbi double (although that came against a sidearming righty, the kind of pitcher Sox hitters usually hide from in the dugout lest they be made to face him).  When Davidson lined a pitch from lefty reliever Travis Wood off the fence in left for another two rbi’s, I called Clare to say, “That’s a good sign to me.” 

Clare called again at 7:30 this morning, to say that the person she and her fiancé Chris were going to use had died suddenly.  He was six years older than Matt Davidson.