Jeff McNeil and the need for simpler times

In 2013, the New York Mets selected Jeff McNeil in the 12th round. He had just finished his junior year in college when drafted and had amassed a measly 20 extra base hits in 600 college plate appearances. He had some speed and positional versatility and was considered by scouts to have a future as a “slap hitter” and a “quadruple A” player, the term given to those professional ballplayers that are expected to shuffle back and forth between Triple-A and the major leagues before retiring into obscurity.

Flash forward to the months leading up to the 2021 season and McNeil was ranked by MLB Network as the second best second baseman in the major leagues, ahead of the likes of Cavan Biggio (hall of fame second baseman Craig Biggio’s son) and former MVP Jose Altuve. He also has 30 career home runs and 100 extra base hits in over 1,000 plate appearances while posting an .884 OPS and a 9.7 WAR. No one is calling him a Quadruple-A, slap hitter any longer.

Why mention this? Well it’s a reflection of what makes Baseball so great and with opening day for the Mets still pending, is a reminder of why Baseball is truly America’s pastime.

This is not to diminish the other prominent American sports, but Baseball is the only one where someone like McNeil could so upend expectations. In Football an athlete has to have a certain stature and size to be able to notch out a career. Basketball has had its share of small players, a la Spud Webb or Nate Robinson, but true greatness and stardom comes with size and athleticism. Baseball is the league where the 5’6”, 170 pound David Eckstein can have over 5000 at bats, go to two all star games, win two world series rings and be the world series MVP. It’s the sport where the rotund Bartolo Colon could pitch until he was 45 years old and win nearly 250 games. It’s the place where a wunderkind like Rick Ankiel can look like a budding superstar pitcher one year, bottom out the next year, remake himself as an outfielder and go on to amass over 2000 plate appearances in that role. It’s also the world in which a light hitting college shortstop who pitched one year as a college junior and had Tommy John surgery after his first minor league season in which he posted a 5.19 ERA could wind up winning back to back Cy Young awards and be considered the best pitcher in baseball entering 2021. Thank you Jacob deGrom.

These are the stories that made us believe and made us want to go out and play ball. Some of us played little league or wiffle ball in the streets. Others played stick ball or threw tennis balls at brick walls in alley ways. Others may have played in high school, college or even had a whiff of some time in the pros. Many of us threw a ball as hard as we could and imagined, depending on the generation, that we were Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson or Justin Verlander. We all posed with our little wooden bats, making believe we hit the game winning home run. We all dove to make the stab at third base like Brooks Robinson, the over the shoulder catch like Willie Mays or the bare handed grab like David Wright.

Why did we do these things and love a sport so much that took up half the year and could be so plodding at times? Why did we gobble up baseball cards, score cards, year books and every real or fake jersey we could earn or talk our parents into buying for us? Because many of us believed, legitimately, that we could make it. Like McNeil, we didn’t have to be 6’5” or weigh 250 pounds, decked out with muscle. We didn’t have to run like a deer or jump over small cars. We could work hard, take batting practice, learn to track pitches or throw as hard as we could. That’s what made Baseball a symbol of what the United States is, a place where anyone can achieve what they want with hard work and dedication.

In these times, where parts of our society are still waiting to reopen, where unemployment is still a staggering 6% and over 8 million people are out of work, where the very fabric of our union has been frayed by racial tensions, partisanship and a staggering loss of basic decency and decorum, it feels good to have Baseball returning. It’s refreshing to see the McNeil’s of the world, who have worked hard and gotten every ounce of ability out of themselves, go onto a field every day and provide us all with the normalcy we’ve all so achingly desired, that sometimes feels like it can only come with a game each night a team to cheer on.

On opening day, when that first pitch settles into the catcher’s mitt and we watch McNeil and the other 25 men that make up the Mets roster hit the ball, run the bases, turn a double play, cross home plate and nibble the corner for a called strike three, we can forget the turbulent madness that almost crushed this country in its grip these past 13 months and lose ourselves in a simpler, more innocent past. The one we all had as youths when we played catch, traded baseball cards and looked at the posters of those ballplayers on our walls and actually thought, that could be me.