Keeping Tabs

Clare and I have been keeping tabs on players going up and down.  In the former category is White Sox minor-league relief pitcher Will Kincanon, who’s looked quite good so far this spring.  Kincanon is on our radar for the simple fact we may have run into him shopping or out to eat or waiting in line at the Polar Bear (for ice cream).  In other words, Kincanon is a local kid, a few years younger than my daughter and a graduate of Riverside-Brookfield High School, one Clare’s archenemies from softball.

 

We’re also watching ex-Sox Gordon Beckham, in camp with the Padres on a minor-league deal.  Beckham is now 33, eleven years removed from his rookie season on the South Side, and what a season it was.  Beckham hit .270 with 14 homeruns and 63 RBIs in just 378 at-bats.  I can still remember a game from September 2009, two out and nobody on in the top of the ninth at Minnesota with the Twins leading 2-0, Joe Nathan about pick up the save.  But lo and behold, Beckham and Paul Konerko went back-to-back against Nathan to start a Sox comeback.  The future looked ever so bright for that young man.

 

I think it was the next spring, with Clare and her Morton teammates at the batting cages; Coach Euks asked me what I thought about the rumored trade of Beckham to San Diego for Adrian Gonzales.  “No way,” I said.  “We’d be giving up five years on that deal.”  Little did I know that Beckham had already peaked, offensively.  The league caught up with the right-hand hitting Beckham, and a broken hamate bone in 2013 didn’t exactly help.

 

Oh, but could that boy field.  Yolmer may have been a little better at second base, but not by much, and Beckham had more range, I think.  If anything, it’s been the glove that’s kept him in the big leagues.  Clare tweeted a picture yesterday of Beckham airborne, parallel to the ground, going after a ball.

 

It’s never too late to make an impression, Gordon.