I have seen the future of the Chicago Cubs, and his name is Corey Patterson.
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The Lugnuts (they play in Lansing, Michigan, home of the Oldsmobile, thus the silly auto-assembly-line nickname) arrived in Geneva two weeks ago Monday, and every paper in town sent a sports columnist out to cover Patterson, the Cubs’ top draft pick last year and the third player chosen overall. Unfortunately it rained and none of the writers got to see him play, though that didn’t keep them from bringing back glowing reports about what a fine-looking ballplayer and young man he is. Rain threatened again the following night, though the teams got the game in, and even the night after that, as the Cougars and Lugnuts rushed through the two seven-inning games of a makeup doubleheader. Thursday the skies finally cleared. I drove under puffy clouds through the dappled sun and shade of the western suburbs, past the cornfields and the occasional horse paddock that break up the tract housing out there, and arrived early, just as Patterson and Choi were about to take batting practice. I sat in one of the front-row seats of the lovely little ball yard and sized them up.
Patterson also is a left-handed hitter, but with a much more compact swing. He’s comparatively short, listed at 5-foot-10, but solidly built. He appears to have broad but not imposing shoulders hidden under his jersey, which tapers to a whippet-thin waist. He has been compared in build to the Philadelphia Phillies’ Ron Gant, but when hitting he’s more reminiscent of the Saint Louis Cardinals’ Ray Lankford in that he’s almost unbelievably quick. He has a fairly traditional batting stance–erect, feet shoulders’ width apart, hands held close to the body just above the waist–but he turns on the ball like a mousetrap springing shut.
Of course, Lansing being a Cubs farm team, it was fitting that it didn’t matter. The Cougars rallied for three runs in the eighth, going ahead on a two-run triple by number-eight hitter David Callahan. Lugnuts reliever Elvis Polanco got ahead of him 0-2 on a curve, then threw another that Callahan hit down the right-field line. Polanco looked like he might beat his head against the pitching rubber. Kane County’s long-limbed Nelson Lara came on in the ninth to retire the Lugnuts before Patterson could come to the plate again. The Cougars won 6-5.
