Comings and Goings

Sports at any level is about comings and goings.  Players make their debut, which means somebody sits or somebody leaves.  I saw as much with my daughter.

Twice in travel ball, coaches waited until just before the season started to add a player.  Nobody left, but people who would have played suddenly found themselves spending more time on the bench.  Clare was neither an instigator in that regard or a victim, but she probably did send someone else packing when she made teams at tryout.  It’s the nature of the beast.

So, another June means another MLB draft, with teams certain this pitcher or that hitter will be making his—but never her—debut soon.  I wonder how this affects players from last year’s draft, and the one before that, and so on.  Right about now, they may be hearing an unpleasant message along the lines of, “You used to be a prospect, now you’re suspect.”

With their #1 pick, the White Sox chose infielder Nick Madrigal (at 5’7”, a whopping one inch taller than Clare, and with less power from what I can tell).  What do Tim Anderson and Yuan Moncada think about that, or Yolmer Sanchez?  There are a whole bunch of middle infielders in the White Sox system, a number of them posting pretty decent numbers so far this season.  What does Mitch Roman think of his chances of making the Sox?  Maybe he should ask Jake Peter, once a Sox farmhand now toiling away in the Dodgers’ system.

An ocean of ink has been spilled extolling the joys of what may or may not be our national pastime.  As for the struggle, the doubt, the Darwinian element that comes with success and failure on the baseball diamond, that’s something that doesn’t get much notice, least of all that week in June when a new bunch of ballplayers is picked to enter the arena.