Retired

Clare texted the other day with the kind of news that makes a fan reflective. Gordon Beckham, one of her favorite players, had decided to retire after an eleven-year big-league career. I think Beckham was to Clare what Walt Williams was to me, a slightly older player you could identify with. Beckham was 22 when the White Sox called him up in 2009, or five years older than my hot-hitting high school junior. And that first year everything looked so promising, with Beckham hitting .270 with 14 homeruns and 63 RBIs in just 378 at-bats. While Beckham’s power stayed the same, the rest of his offensive numbers suffered a steady decline during the next 4-1/2 seasons, until he was traded in late 2014 to the Angels. What kept Beckham in the majors as a starter was his glove. He came up with the Sox as a slick-fielding third baseman, only to be shifted in his second year to second base, where he played a Gold Glove caliber defense. Ironically, Beckham was drafted out of Georgia as a shortstop. Maybe the switch(es) proved harder than he let on. I read an online interview where Beckham admits to being his own worst critic, a tendency he says was fed by the Chicago media. All the questions he heard seemed to fall into one of two categories, “Have you figured it out?” and “Are you ever going to figure it out?” Even out of the game, Beckham is still too hard on himself. If he failed the Sox, they replied in kind. You’d figure an organization would want to take care with the eighth player selected in the 2008 draft, but that’s not necessarily the South Side way. At the time, GM Kenny Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen were consumed by their tug-of-war over the loyalty of owner Jerry Reinsdorf. It appears no one was paying attention to young Mr. Beckham. I can’t imagine this happening had Rick Renteria and Rick Hahn been around then. That’s what you call bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. A broken hamate bone Beckham suffered in his left hand during the 2013 season was another bit of bad luck. So it goes. You lose an early hero, who has to get on with his life just as you do. In the interview, Beckham mentioned his one-year old son. My daughter is having a kid of her own. Maybe she’ll show him the picture she had me take of her with Beckham at SoxFest in 2013. Or maybe one day my grandson will find himself playing on the same field with Gordon Beckham’s kid. That would be cool.