The news breaks in the middle of a Friday afternoon — Carlos Beltran hired to manage the Mets! — and all at once a collage of snapshots rolls past the mind’s eye …
HAINES CITY, Fla., March 26, 1998 — Under a brutal Florida sun, an old baseball lifer named Tony Muser, the manager of the Kansas City Royals, has walked to a back field with a reporter and is watching a young player take live batting practice. The kid’s a switch hitter. He hits bombs from both sides. He is 21 years old.
“You see that bleepin’ kid?