August 4 The Savior

White Sox fans already know this is a picture of Gordon Beckham. Most baseball fans already know he will probably be rookie of the year in the American League. When the White Sox promoted him from the minor leagues in May this year, their season was going down in flames. Manager Ozzie Guillen sarcastically said that everything will be alright now because our savior has arrived. It turns out Ozzie was right. Beckham, a shortstop his whole baseball career, was brought up to play 3rd base. He got off to a terrible start, but real fans could tell this kid was a real player. I was at the game against the Cubs when he made two errors to allow the Cubs back into the game. The guy behind me kept yelling send him back to the minors. At the time he was batting about .200. He came up in the ninth inning with the winning run on second base. I told Patty that great baseball players want to bat in this situation. A chance to redeem himself with the game on the line. The kid smoked a double to the right field gap to win the game. He's been on fire ever since, currently batting about .310. In my mind, Beckham is the best baseball player to come through the White Sox farm system since Frank Thomas. And for the first 8 years of his career, Frank was the best hitter I had ever seen in baseball.