The cruel romanticism of baseball.......

I had never seen a minor league game until me and my guy headed down the road to that mystical place called Geneva Illinois.  Geneva Illinois, the home of Fifth Third Bank Ballpark and the Kane County Cougars.  Having observed the flawed and oddly romantic baseball aura of single A baseball, I came away with the following thoughts.  On a hot summer day in Geneva Illinois, there was veteran hurler Scott Baker toeing the rubber.  Baker, signed to a deal by the parent team of the Cougars, the Chicago Cubs, was making his case to be added to the major league roster at some point.  The first pitch was seventy one and the next few pitches topped out at around 75 and 77 miles per hour respectively.  Pitch four was subsequently crushed as were pitches nine and ten and eleven and twelve.  Amidst the carnival like atmosphere that only minor league baseball can bring and amidst the kid friendly activities and the bells and whistles there was the painful reality of a career in its twilight.  And for every Scott Baker and every career seemingly reaching its twilight, there is that player who you can’t help but keep your eyes on.   On this night this, that player was Albert Almora, the Cubs number two pick in last year’s draft.  Almora is still a pup but he possesses the instincts both defensively and offensively that had me and my friend nodding in agreement that he wouldn’t be in Geneva for very long.  And for every Albert Almora, there’s a center fielder hitting just above his weight.  A center fielder who takes routes to fly balls that make him look like he’s on skates.   Then there’s the tweeners.  The guys like Dan Vogelbach; a Bambino looking first baseman with a Kirby Puckett like frame.  There are guys like Rock Shoulders; full of potential but not quite enough to add up to anything but a journeyman like career in the back roads of places like Geneva and Beloit and so on.  But what of the ones like that center field with the slow bat and the collective fielding instincts of a scared rabbit?  When does the day come when realizes his particular athletic station in life?  Does he improve or does he simply chase a dream while remaining stagnant at the beginning stages of pro baseball?  Does he become one of those Crash Davis like hero’s; the ones bouncing about in the independent leagues in hopes of milking a few more days in that glorious orb of sunshine known as baseball.  Watching Scott Baker leave the mound after two and two thirds innings and six runs allowed, I had to wonder what was going through his mind.  Had he seen his baseball mortality before him?  It’s that sad and tragically romantic aspect of baseball that I was talking about before.  Pitchers burst onto the scene like comets and we think they can do anything; we think they are superhuman somehow.  And suddenly, on a hot night in a place called Geneva, we’re watching them trying to will their arms to recapture the glory of their baseball beginnings.  It’s funny.  In Wrigley, I would’ve booed Scott Baker.  In that little hamlet known as Geneva, in the parallel baseball universe of single A baseball, I mourn the passing of time and the sunset of an MLB career.