We may not always express it, but at the back of our minds we know we use baseball as a way to stay connected to our youth. As a collective society, we use baseball to mark the passage of time. A link to our past.

When we look into the past we see players who played with boundless passion, a joy many feel is lost in the era of millionaire athletes and social media. We see men who knew they were privileged to remain boys in profession, and in the eternity of our memories. Men whose achievements feel like our modern tall tales, unachievable feats in an era before camera phones and the Internet.

This is where Michael Nelson Trout comes in. Trout is a rarity in a time when sports are discussed 24/7 on cable news, message boards, and Twitter: Trout is a unifying force. And he's a link between baseball's past, present, and future.

The Mike Trout of Baseball's Past is like seeing a ghost. He's soft-spoken for a star, a family-friendly aw shucks personality made for cereal boxes. Trout, a wholesome, private personality in an era of airing dirty laundry in public, is refreshing, despite MLB itself insinuating Trout needs to market himself more.

In classic baseball fashion, Trout even has a classic baseball nickname. The Millville Meteor, like the Commerce Comet before him, evokes as much an image of tracking down fly balls as it does outracing a speeding steam locomotive. Much like our heroes of days past, Trout carries with him the mythological as much as the recreational.


In Baseball's Present, Mike Trout is a unifying force of stardom. You simply never hear Trout bashed for outbursts, lack of hustle, or chippy play. Opposing fans admit he's a joy to watch . Old school baseball fans chat excitedly over his batting average, home runs, and RBIs, while the burgeoning masses of sabremetric-driven fans have marveled over the first superstar of the WAR era.

The most jaded old salt in the scouting profession would agree with a Stanford MBA on the fact Mike Trout is absolutely special. As the way teams value players completely changes to ways that don't show up on a traditional baseball card, Trout is seen as the dominant player of this time, for front offices and card collectors alike.

Mike Trout is seen by some as less marketable than fellow superstar Bryce Harper. Could they team up in Philadelphia in 2021?

As we wind down the 2019 Free Agent Melodrama, putting to rest for a time the business side of baseball, we do so realizing, either by extension or free agency, Trout, along with Mookie Betts, will completely reset the market for players in 2021, and Bryce Harper's unusually team-friendly Phillies deal leaves the door wide open for him to team up with Trout on the New Jersey native's hometown Phillies. Whatever happens then, Trout will reshape baseball's future .

Today marks the beginning of March, and even the last of free agents will begin reporting to Spring Training. The hot stove grows cold as we head outside into the Sun to again respark the joy we feel for the game itself. We remember that for all the fun we have discussing dollars, controllable years, and opt-outs, we do so for a game we watch with the yearning to resurrect a time ninety feet seemed impossibly far, our heroes were titans of Bunyanesque stature, and if we were so lucky, we could have a catch of our own, or even get a game organized.

As the heavenly chorus of bats cracking, gloves popping, and crowds buzzing returns to our ears and fills our souls, on a field in Tempe, Arizona, stands the Millville Meteor. A resplendent link to the tall tales and overgrown boys of our pastime's own past, the changing tide of how we analyze the game today, and the uncertain future of a broken free agent system, Mike Trout remains a Los Angeles Angel for the time being.

A red cap with the distinctive halo-adorned A on his head, Trout moves with graceful purpose, as always, making the impossible look easy. He strikes an image one could easily pictures in the flannel uniforms of days gone by, just as much as the modern fabrics and custom Nike cleats of today. He's a throwback, and a prototype. Like the game itself, he is timeless.

In the Arizona sun, we are reminded why we love this game. We are reconnected to our heroes. We are kids again.