Miguel Cabrera's 11-Year-Old Son Is Good Enough To Hit 3rd For The Tigers Right Now
I'm sorry to do this to Chris Castellani. I really am. He deserves better from the Tigers and by "better" I mean literally any material signs of life this year that don't entirely revolve around Miguel Cabrera's retirement tour.
On the subject of which, it would be nice if he got the heroes treatment he deserves from across the league. I meant Cabrera but go ahead and lump Castellani into that one too. Even though he probably hated the original Cabrera trade in 07 that sent Cameron Maybin to Florida. Let's dig up those HS tapes Chris. Go into the archives and give us the December 07 reaction video. "If we get 20 good starts from Kenny Rogers and Bonderman bounces back..." The mere thought of this warms my soul much to the same effect that clip of Miguel Cabrera's kid scares the shit out of me.
Raising kids has to be impossible. Your young son wants to play baseball. He wants to be like dad and you want him to have a good experience. You come home from work early a few times a week to make sure you play catch. You buy him a nice glove and hope he appreciates the quality and that drives him to work harder. You instill values like hustle and fair play. There's weekend trips to professional games - mostly the local independent team because it's expensive and you had to make sacrifices to pay for the new equipment that comes with the travel team you signed him up for. 8 years old seems a little young to you, but it's the standard across the sport now. So you pony up the couple grand and buy in. You tell yourself it's worth it for so many reasons. The bonding and the experience and all that bullshit. But it's also important you give your kid the chances and advantages you never got. So you make the requisite sacrifices and commit to your son's experiences.
YEARS LATER. He's in his 4th season on the travel team, progressing enough each year to justify the increasing costs. 11u is when you start traveling to Florida, a fellow dad warns. So you save and you plan and you make the sacrifice again. Johnny's starting in right field and batting 8th on a team that's ranked in the top-25 in its regional age bracket by a youth baseball subscription service website of no tangible much less derivative value.
It's a huge year for your son.
So you go to Florida and you're sitting there with the parents talking about mortgage rates or whatever a group of parents who all secretly hate each other talk about. You guys flew down from Minnesota. The weird kid's family drove. Point is everyone's so committed to this journey of youth baseball that you have to imagine the collective OH FUCK when you see an 11 year old Miguel Cabrera Junior.
Not because you're about to get slaughter ruled. Not because you're about to lose in the quarter-finals in the Cooperstown tournament.
No because in that exact split second, you realize your kid sucks. He'll never be good enough to justify how much time and money you've spent on this experience. You guys could have been fishing this whole time. But instead you paid another man named Jeff or Gene or Steve a casual $18,000 over the last couple seasons to orchestrate the farce that he just needs the chance you never got yourself.
So now you're sitting there in a lawn chair, hiding a seltzer in a coozie and trying to keep it together. HE'S GOT A GROWTH SPURT COMING FROM HIS MOTHERS SIDE OF THE FAMILY is playing on repeat in your head while you suck the triple-bagged Zyn dry.
That's what I think of when I see Miguel Cabrera's son perfectly mash to dead center. All those poor dads out there embracing their own genetic mediocrity.
Maybe that's dramatic. I don't have kids so I'm just spitballing.
Either way, it's a nice fuckin swing. Kid's got a bright future.
PS - how nice is 11u baseball when you have two umpires? We got a guy signaling HR from the infield? That's so goddamn fancy.
PPS - I brought up Chris at the start of the blog. I will close with him. Go follow his content because he's very talented and doing a lot more baseball stuff this year