At the moment, Michael Young remains a member of the Texas Rangers. No one knows how long that will last, but earlier in the week it appeared that a Michael Young trade looked like a slam dunk (we know how those types of things turn out, right?). At some point during that time frame, the mother of a Michael Young fan tried to explain the situation to her three-year-old son:
First, the kid just thinks Young will have a new number, but eventually he realizes that Young won't be on the team any longer. Like a manager who has seen enough, the kid, Gavin, takes his Texas Rangers cap off and lowers his head. But he doesn't cry, he doesn't even really shout. He just tries to make sense of it all.
As Gavin says of Michael Young, "He [is] my team." Sometimes the youngest of us all can see the truth easier than adults. Michael Young has been the player connected to Rangers for most of the last decade, and the kids who will eventually be spending their money at the ballpark may be out of the player they most associate with the Rangers.
At three-years-old, I don't think I had a favorite baseball player. But if I did it would have been Don Mattingly. I wonder how I would have reacted had Donnie Baseball been traded in 1988.
Oh, well. I guess Gavin has an "embarrassing" video his mother can break out years from now.