Curve Your Enthusiasm

Editor's Note: This is an extended article. The abbreviated piece was in the print edition of the June 9 Herald.

Minor-league baseball players are some of the most dedicated athletes in sports: seven-day workweeks involving practice, conditioning, batting practice, travel, and games, without the promise of even getting close to a major-league roster.

There is a dichotomy of players in Double-A ball: players with potential of being something great, and some who will toil in the minors before fizzling out. Two players who are well on their way to avoiding that aforementioned fate of fading away...