Many baseball fans still remember the summer of 2012. They watched a flickering television screen as a 20-year-old kid from Vineland, New Jersey, practically flew across the screen in the Los Angeles vs. Baltimore Orioles game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
He tracked a fly ball to deep center field, leaped with gravity-defying grace and brought back what should have been a surefire home run for Orioles shortstop J. J. Hardy. That kid was Mike Trout, and his smile after the robbery could’ve lit up all of Orange County.
Trout’s baseball career in the next decade felt like reading Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” a masterclass in pure excellence. However, the analogy shifted from a literary masterpiece to a tragedy of isolation as the years rolled on.
