The team flew in the face of many established naysayers, and assigned the teenager directly to their AAA franchise, where he hit .279 with 10 homers and 54 RBI in his 539 plate appearances. In addition, he quickly picked up the glove at third base, and is now considered among the best defenders at the position that the organization has. “He was a breath of fresh air,” said manager Alejandro Peralvo. “He was everything he was advertised to be—a guy who stood by to and for his teammates. The guys loved him from the first day when he brought a box of Baby Ruth candy bars to the clubhouse.”
“The guy is literally everything you want in a kid,” said Sal Lemaster, the Sports Editor at the Flagstaff Gazette. “He speaks well, and he takes all the blame when things go wrong—like one day he legged out a double, and apologized to the club later because he thought he didn’t cut the path sharp enough so he had to slide rather than go in standing up.”
Many league insiders gagged a bit at the team’s use of such a high draft pick for a guy with skills that even McQuade himself consider to be only solid “I’m halfway to okay,” McQuade said shortly after the draft. “And with a little luck, I guess I might get there.” But team insiders bubbled with enthusiasm after the selection, calling him the best clubhouse pick ever made, and saying that the kid was going to remake the entire organization merely by showing up. To these scouts, baseball people, and Myers-Briggs enthusiasts, the results and reports from the clubhouse are not a surprise at all.
“The guy is like Captain America, Roy Hobbs, and Forrest Gump all rolled together.”
McQuade didn’t have anything to say about all this from his home in El Paso, Texas when we called him, except to note that he appreciated all his teammates saying such great things about him, that he hoped that he might get better so that he could help the big league club out, soon, and that he had to ring of pretty quickly because he didn’t want to be late to his workout. After doing a little footwork, this reported has found that his “workout” consists of riding his bike throughout the city each day, delivering hot meals and good cheer to the elderly around his home.
“We love it when little J.J. comes by,” said 89-year-old Mary Lodesworth. “He calls all us gals ‘dearie’ and all the guys ‘sport.’ Last week he brought us all a letter from one of our relatives—even that asshole Del Miller. Which is an amazing thing, because I woulda bet you everything I had that Del wouldn’t have a person willing to write him anywhere on the face of the Earth—but J.J, found him. Bless his heart.”
This past week, McQuade published a letter to the editor in the Gazette to suggest that the local AAA team consider changing its nickname from the Apache to the Arrows—a missive that was so perfectly worded, that even hardcore Freedom of Speech idiots have softened their stand and have come out to agree to hold a community meeting with an agenda based on deciding if that idea had legs enough to be voted in.
What’s in the kid’s future?
Who can say?
But we note that the club left their option to Boys Altena drop, and now has a position open as the platoon partner to Juan Arevalo. Paired with the fact that the hard-cold-baseball scouts say that McQuade made serious progression on his skills last season, we’re guessing that the off-season plans have an expectation that McQuade will be wearing red and black come April.