Chris Young, Baseball All-Star
How cool is it that Chris Young was voted to the MLB All-Star Game? Not only does it demonstrate the power of the fan’s voice (MLB received about a million votes an hour down the home stretch), but it shows how the right mix of real world (in-ballpark prompts to vote for hometown favorites) and electronic (votes cast over mobile phones) experiences can capture the sense of a particular point in time. Young pitched outstandingly well on the day voting closed, and he launched himself up the coast for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
I’ve been following his career for a while — since he played center for the Princeton University basketball team, was drafted by the Pirates (who cut short his roundball career as a contractual condition), played for a San Francisco Giants farm team in Hagerstown, Maryland, made his debut with the Texas Rangers, beat the Yankees for his first “big” win and then settled into current stardom in San Diego. Along the way ESPN Magazine gave him props as “The Bigger Unit” (around 2004) and he married the granddaughter of Lester Patrick, he of Patrick Division fame (ooh, a hockey-tie in!)
He does the work, every day, and I’m thrilled to see him get the recognition he deserves. And it puts him in some outstanding company. Young is the first Tiger (of Princeton stripes) to appear in the baseball All-Star game, and only the sixth Ivy graduate to achieve that distinction. The first — Lou Gehrig, Columbia graduate — not a bad pairing for the answer to a trivia question in the future.