Daric Barton was born in Springfield, Vermont, a piece of fortune that might have doomed him to a life of numb fingers and few opportunities to play baseball. But he didn't last long in Vermont. "Two weeks," he said the other day.
Shortly after birth, he explained, Barton's family left Vermont and eventually landed in California, where he learned how to tell the difference between balls and strikes better than most young hitters in his sport. Barton, now 22, has 1,729 at-bats in his career, and has more walks (323) than strikeouts (277), as well as a career on-base percentage over .400. He is expected to be the Oakland first baseman this year, after hitting .347 in a 72 at-bat audition for the Athletics last year.
"There are things you look for in a young left-handed hitter, in the way pitchers work to them," said manager
Bob Geren, before running through some of those things -- a left-handed pitcher's breaking ball over the outside corner, a fastball in, fastballs up. "You give yourself a quick mental checklist to see how does against those, and he handled everything. He showed everything in a month."
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Buster Olney
