We Don't Want Nobody from Around Here

Nicky Lopez is a 24-year old rookie middle infielder with the Royals.  Nick Solak is a 24-year old middle infielder with the Rangers.  Lopez attended Naperville Central, about a 45-minute drive from us, while Solak went to Naperville North, roughly the same distance.  Gosh, do you think it was too hard for the Sox and Cubs to send scouts out to DuPage County to look at these two?

According to Baseball Almanac, Illinois has the fourth-most number of native-born players who’ve appeared in the major leagues this year, behind only California, Texas and Georgia.  Yet only two, Charlie Tilson and Ben Zobrist, are what you might call hometown heroes.  Curtis Granderson and Jason Kipnis?  Both played high school locally, and Granderson even attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, for heaven’s sakes.  But it was other teams that drafted them.  Don’t even get me started on Kirby Puckett.

If I were to wake up one morning and find myself owning the White Sox, I’d have my scouts combing the Midwest for talent; I think the heartland has a ton of players with major-league talent.  Next, I’d move all my minor league affiliates to the Midwest.  This way you’d have youngsters growing up playing baseball and dreaming (somewhat) realistic dreams of playing for their home teams, and you’d have fans who could make day trips to check on the farm teams, where some of those local kids could be playing.

But what do I know?  It’s Jerry’s team and Rick’s rebuild.