Boston Red Sox Killer B’s

From the time Diana Collins formed a team just to give her five-year-old son a chance to play, Mookie Betts has performed as if the very game of baseball was created just for him. He can do it all and do it with style and a smile. In fact, the only thing that might exceed his winning attitude on the field is his winning personality off it.

Markus Lynn Betts was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 7, 1992. His mother finished her weekly league bowling session at 9:30 that evening and went into labor an hour and a half later. Mookie’s father, Willie Mark Betts, inspired his first name and Lynn is his mother’s middle name. Diana admits that the order of the names was not entirely random. She had assumed her son would be an athlete when he was still in the womb and once she realized that the names they were considering also represented Major League Baseball, she knew she was onto something. “I figured we should just go with it and see how it goes,” she said. Did the initials MLB predetermine his occupation? Who knows, but it would be hard to imagine a player who better represents the grand old game.

The nickname “Mookie” also had a sports connection. His parents loved basketball and enjoyed watching Mookie Blaylock, a former NBA guard with their beloved Atlanta Hawks (he also played for the New Jersey Nets and Golden State Warriors). They decided it would be the perfect nickname for Markus and would keep the MLB sequence intact.

Mookie’s uncle is Terry Shumpert, former major-league journeyman second baseman and outfielder who appeared in 854 games over 14 seasons with the KC Royals, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies, LA Dodgers, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. With the Red Sox in 1995, he hit .252 (.315 OBP) and his career numbers included 49 homers and 223 RBIs. His last year in professional baseball was the 2004 season he spent playing second base (and a few games at shortstop) with the Nashville Sounds. Playing in Mookie’s hometown, Shumpert brought him into the clubhouse a lot that year. “He was in the locker room after batting practice, see how the guys act, see how the guys work. He was old enough to be able to pick it up and see how those guys and myself come to work every day and prepare.” Shumpert added, “I was able to teach him and talk to him about some of the pitfalls that I believe were obstacles to my career.”⁸⁷

Mookie Betts is a superhero now, but one with a few twists. Like Superman or Spiderman or perhaps a combination of the two, he performs heroic deeds only after changing from street clothes into a flashy uniform. Unlike Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent, the action hero Mookie remains mild-mannered and inconspicuous when he emerges from the dugout to perform amazing feats for his adoring public. Oh, there’s no doubt that he can fly, or that he’s faster than a speeding fastball. Or that, like Spidey, he can scale walls with ease and capture things in his web.

Physically, Mookie Betts is a man of average stature. The muscles of his 5-foot-9, now 180-pound body don’t strain against his jersey, which in any case is loose-fitting, making him appear even less imposing than he is. His powers come from within, not from the outer reaches of the galaxy. As origin stories go, his seems pretty bland. Maybe that’s why everyone loves him, because he looks so ordinary, like most of us. We can identify with him. His alter ego and his ego are one and the same.

Even by baseball standards, he doesn’t fit the mold of the twenty-first century superstar athlete. Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton, and Aaron Judge are more representative of the new generation of ballplayers—tall and muscular with large upper bodies, their appearance openly announcing their power to everyone in the ballpark. Approaching the plate, Mookie looks underwhelming. There is no flourish, no flexing, no looming presence. His walk to the plate borders on the nonchalant, and his demeanor is mild and reserved. When the umpire or opposing catcher greets him, his smile becomes his most noticeable feature. It’s a great smile, a genuine smile.

Only when he digs in and stares out to the mound do you begin to see subtle changes in his body language. His elfish smile morphs into an Elvis sneer, the right side of his mouth curling upward as if he’s about to belt out an impromptu version of “Jailhouse Rock.” In fact, his focus is complete, his mind is working overtime. It is a baseball mind, a mind informed by pitcher probabilities, possibilities, and tendencies. He notes the positioning of the outfielders, he knows the game situation. If someone is on base, he knows the runner’s strengths and weaknesses. His pitch recognition is outstanding, his decision-making superb. His awareness is total.

This is not idle conjecture, nor is it hype. It’s not based solely on the opinions of scouts and other baseball gurus. Those human assessments are important, of course, but they have limitations and can be subjective. Mookie’s baseball intellect was documented with clinical precision when he was a high school senior. He was an early subject in a cutting-edge system known as neuroscouting, a tool developed to rate a player’s baseball mind, how fast and intuitive his baseball IQ is in real time. Among other things, neuroscouting reveals how well a player sees a pitch and how well he reads a pitch. Mookie was a star pupil, confirming, enhancing, and quantifying the observations of experienced scouts. So Betts not only ticks all the boxes with fans and scouts, he passes muster with science as well. More about that later.

Little wonder that whenever he enters the batter’s box, Red Sox fans’ expectations rise along with the blood pressure of the opposing pitcher. The first pitch goes by and he looks at it and you can almost see the wheels turning. If the next pitch is an inside fastball, the right-handed Betts can whip the bat around with lightning speed and propel the ball down the left-field line. Outside pitches are treated with distain, unless they can be poked to right field. At Fenway, he ignores the beckoning siren of the Green Monster unless he can visit it on his own terms.

His hand-eye coordination is off the charts. He can react at the last split-second and still power the ball into the outfield and beyond. He’s seldom fooled on a pitch, and if he is, it’s a lesson learned, filed away for later use. Should you think that Betts’s skills are robotic, you would be wrong. He has an intuition and an adaptability that artificial intelligence could never duplicate.

Descriptions of this man tend to the metaphorical. He’s a ballhawk in right field, a cheetah on the basepaths, and has cat-like reflexes at the plate. His arm is a cannon.

The human comparison that first comes to mind is Hank Aaron, especially considering his strong wrists and superior bat speed. But there’s some Willie Mays in the baseball DNA as well, especially when he takes the field. On the basepaths Mookie is shrewd and swift. He doesn’t steal bases in order to pad his stats. In fact, he may be one of the most unselfish players in a sport that heralds individual accomplishment. He takes a walk. He sacrifices, he does the little things that lead to the big inning. He’s eminently coachable. His teammates love him. He is such a cheerleader in the dugout that he threatens to make Wally the Green Monster redundant.

With all this talent, it’s easy to assume that the stars must have been perfectly aligned to make Betts a superstar. But that wasn’t the case. Without the intervention of his mother, he might never have had a chance to prove himself.

For those who have experienced it, “choosing up” sides is one of those childhood rites of passage that tends to linger in the memory. For some it represents validation and acceptance, while for others it’s the first hint that life isn’t always fair.

Playground rules differ slightly according to geography, but the process went something like this: A group of guys (and/or gals) met at the ball field to play baseball on a Saturday morning. By some unwritten and unspoken law, the two best players were automatically the captains and accorded the honor of choosing teams, the object being to create more or less balanced sides. One captain tossed the bat, handle up, to the other, who grasped it in his fist. Each would in turn put his fist above the other and they would alternate fist grips until there was no further room. This is where regional variations creep in. In some case that would be it; the last fist got first choice of players. Other rules allowed for a captain to put three fingers between the fist and the bat knob. A third alternative was for the last one gripping the bat to throw it backwards over his shoulders. If it went at least five bat lengths, he would get first choice.

This highly ritualized tradition triggered a range of emotions from the exhilarating to the excruciating, depending on your level of talent. Names were shouted out and teams began to form behind each captain. Each name that wasn’t yours cast judgement on your ability, your popularity. You studiously avoided eye contact with the captain, with your friends, with anyone, pretending that you could care less. Finally, if there were still spots available, your name would be called and the teams would be set. Sometimes there were no more spots. The experience either made you want to improve or take up another sport.

Mookie Betts, Gold Glove outfielder and reigning American League MVP, was that kid—the one who wasn’t chosen, whose name wasn’t called. The one left standing on the sidelines. In his case, the whole thing was somewhat more bureaucratic. There was no bat toss, no “three fingers” rule. The determination was made by Little League coaches—i.e. adults.

As a child, Markus Lynn Betts was so small that even his extra-small pair of baseball pants were in constant danger of falling down. His mom solved the problem by fitting him out in suspenders. He chose the ones with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them. And his mom bought him a matching Ninja Turtle glove to complete the ensemble. Some might say that this early exposure to Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael inspired him to become the fielding artist he is today. Certainly, many of the catches that he has made in Fenway’s right field canvas qualify as masterpieces.

But for Mookie’s mom, thoughts of future glory were the last thing on her mind. She just wanted her son to play some baseball. Diana Collins was and is a force of nature. She was introduced to baseball while growing up in Paducah, Kentucky, where her grandfather carved out a baseball diamond on the family farm. “There wasn’t much else to do,” she admits. “So we played baseball and softball all the time.” In high school, she became a star player on the softball team and also developed into a skilled bowler. Not surprisingly, her passion for sport and love of competition was passed on to her son. Family lore suggests that even as a toddler, Mookie had a disdain for walls, even the walls of his crib. “He’d always be saying, ‘Ball? Ball? Ball?’ that’s what he always wanted to do,” Collins MassLive.com’s told Jen McCaffrey in 2015. “He would run everywhere. He never walked,” added Willie Betts, Mookie’s father. “He figured it out, if you put him down, he’d start running. He would just run, run, run.”⁸⁸

From the time he was three years old, Markus played endless games of catch with his mother in the backyard and she saw steady improvement. He could catch and throw the ball better than much older kids. All that was lacking was some competition, some actual ballgames. When he was five years old, she took him to sign up for the Little League in their hometown of Murfreesboro. He was “small-framed and very underweight,” Collins admitted years later, but she still wasn’t prepared for such a quick rejection of her son.

As Diana told The Tennessean, the first coach that she approached was less than encouraging. “He said, ‘No, I don’t really think [so]. I really need some bigger kids. I’ve got enough small kids and I’m trying to balance my team out.’” She moved on to speak with other coaches, but each time they looked at Mookie the answer was the same. They wanted the big, athletic kids. Collins persisted. “I said, ‘Give him a chance, because he really can play.’”⁸⁹ Her pleas fell on deaf ears, which was disappointing to her and crushing for her little boy. “Mookie was getting kind of discouraged,” Collins told CNBC’s Make It. “You know how kids are when they see somebody say ‘No.’”⁹⁰

At this point, most parents would have accepted this decision, albeit reluctantly, and returned home to wait another year. Not Diana. She could read the disappointment on her son’s face. “Nobody wants to have me,” she recalls him saying. It was an accurate observation but one she refused to accept. “Oh no, you’re going to play,” she promised little Markus.

Only then did an idea began to take shape. She assessed the situation and noticed that a number of other children were similarly being rejected because of their size. She marched up to the Little League coordinator and made a request that would set her son on the road to the major leagues. She asked if she could add another team to the league. She was told that she could, but only if she could find a coach. Thus began the short but significant coaching career of Diana Collins.

During the historic 2018 Red Sox season, Mookie reminisced about playing for his mom. “For me, it was very enjoyable because my mom was competitive the same way I was,” he said. “She was into the games, trying to win. She instilled in me, ‘Hey, we’re trying to win the game even though we’re young.’”

The potential was there for a feel-good movie. The script practically writes itself. “It’s kind of a little sad story but we just gathered up everybody that nobody wanted and we just formed our own team,” Collins says. “It didn’t matter, I wanted my kid to play ball.” It would be nice to report that this team of rejects went on to show the Murfreesboro Little League that heart means more than size, that skill and determination always triumph. Unfortunately, that part of any future Mookie Betts Story won’t make it to the big screen. Despite Mookie’s obvious skills, the team was mediocre at best and finished in last place with only a handful of wins. One of the wins, however, came against the first coach who had passed on Betts in favor of larger players. And Markus Betts contributed to that win by quickly retrieving a ball hit to the outfield and running it back to the infield to tag the runner. At least that one part of the story should definitely not be condemned to the cutting-room floor.

As a rookie coach, Diana’s instruction wasn’t limited to skill development. She knew that the key to success in any sport was learning how to compete and how to win. That included taking advantage of Mookie’s speed in the infield. “I just remember there was one game where we couldn’t get an out,” Collins told Ian Browne of MLB.com in 2015. “All the kids had to bat. I said to Mookie, ‘We need to get an out.’ And his favorite words were, ‘OK, mama.’ The ball was hit to shortstop, and he caught it and ran to first and so he could be the guy, and he slid into first and tagged the base. It was funny.”⁹¹

Mookie still remembers the slightly unorthodox strategy years later. “We were four or five at the time, so they would hit a ground ball and instead of me throwing it to first, I was fast enough to just run over and tag ‘em.”

Early on, Diana and her husband Willie Betts taught their son about the concept of team play. In Little League there’s often a huge disparity in talent level on any given team. Diana drummed it into her charges that you “don’t criticize or critique your teammates if they’re having a hard time. You try to encourage them just like you hope that they’ll encourage you.” Mookie took the advice to heart, serving as a “mini-coach” and making it his mission to maintain team morale. He continues that mission with the Red Sox. Every time a teammate homers, he greets him at the top step of the dugout and ceremoniously removes the batter’s helmet.

Diana didn’t fit the cliché of the pushy parent who lives out her own baseball dreams through her son. Both parents could be tough, but they were always fair. “[Mom] was going to let me play any sport I wanted to play, but if I was going to play she wanted to make sure I would learn all the basics. We weren’t going to be bad at anything. If we were going to do it, we were going to be good at it.”⁹²

Her only stipulation was that once Mookie committed to something, he should see it through. Betts recalls, “One thing that stands out is when I was younger I wanted to quit football and I talked to her and she didn’t let me. I thank her for not letting me. It taught me a life lesson that once you start something, you’ve got to finish it. She’s taught me a lot of life lessons outside of sports.”

Collins’s first year of Little League coaching proved to be her last (although she later went on to coach women’s slow-pitch teams for many years). The following year she turned over the coaching reins to someone else. Ironically, Mookie was partly responsible for her short tenure at the helm and she almost became a victim of her own coaching success. He hit a frozen rope line drive straight at her in a practice session, causing her to hit the deck. “It was a rocket,” she told Ian Browne. “I said, ‘It’s time for me to get out of here.’ My reflexes are not what they used to be.”⁹³ But the path was set. She had persisted against bureaucratic indifference and Mookie was on his way to baseball stardom. All because she believed in him as only a mother can.

From that point forward, Diana and Willie, a Vietnam War veteran who worked as a mechanical superintendent for CSX Transportation for 30 years, supported their son at every level and in every sport. Although Diana and Willie separated when Mookie was eight years old, Willie routinely drove him to games and practices and stayed to watch him play.

Even today, when the Boston Red Sox boast one of the finest, most innovative coaching staffs in all of baseball, Mookie receives periodic advice, counsel, and even some constructive criticism from his first coach. On those occasions he sometimes tries to gently tell her that the major-league game differs considerably from the Little League version. That doesn’t stop Diana Collins from phoning after a game to discuss his performance. “I don’t care if it’s different or not—explain it to me,” Collins will insist. “He tells me all the time, ‘OK, Ma, I’ll call you later.’” But that line doesn’t work with mothers, especially mothers like Diana. “No, I wanna talk now—you just don’t want to hear it,” she tells him. “I commend Mookie and pat him on the back when he does well, but you also need to hear, ‘You need to work on this.’ You’ve got to hear the good and the bad. You can’t just praise kids all the time and then [they] never hear the other side of it.” And Mookie Betts, ever the good son, listens patiently as his mother and former coach critiques his game.

From the beginning, the two have had the kind of loving relationship that allows for growth and interdependence within a supportive environment. “She wanted whatever I wanted,” Mookie told Sporting News contributor Gary Phillips. “From me being a little kid, she always said that I would say that I wanted to be a professional baseball player. She did whatever it took to make that come true.”⁹⁴

Even with Diana in his corner, Mookie might never have fulfilled his childhood dream without the timely help of a guardian angel. In the spring of 2005, along with three teammates, the 12-year-old was on a road trip to a bowling tournament. His stepfather was driving the family’s SUV while his mother occupied the passenger seat and the boys snoozed in the back. Suddenly, the car struck a utility pole and careened across the busy interstate, finally coming to rest upside down next to the median.

Diana could see the other kids scramble through a window but Mookie, who had been seated behind the driver and not wearing a seat belt, had been thrown from the vehicle. Ignoring her badly broken shoulder, Diana tried frantically to open the door. Once outside, she looked around at the chaotic scene but couldn’t locate Mookie until finally she heard him screaming for his mother. She followed the voice and a few desperate moments later spotted him lying face down and stunned in the path of rush-hour traffic. For Diana, the sequence of events seemed to play out in slow motion. She knew that if the traffic wasn’t stopped, a car would roll over her son.

Like an answered prayer, a man seemed to appear out of nowhere, got out of his car, and carried Mookie to safety, away from the oncoming traffic. The man then halted the two-way traffic until emergency vehicles and paramedics arrived. The emergency workers quickly cut away Mookie’s clothing and checked him over for internal injuries. Years later he had only sporadic memories of the accident. “I don’t remember anything except them cutting my clothes off,” he told Jessica Camerato of Boston.com in 2014. “Those were some good clothes. That was a good pair of jeans and a bowling shirt.”⁹⁵ For once, Diana hadn’t been able to protect her boy. “To this day I don’t know who saved him,” she told Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci in 2015. “He was God’s little angel.”⁹⁶ As for Mookie, the sixth grader escaped with a broken jaw and an assortment of scrapes and bruises from head to foot, including a dislocated wrist and broken toes. Only his braces saved his teeth from snapping off. There were no fatalities, but Betts’s stepfather had to be airlifted to the hospital.

The traumatic incident left more than physical scars. After a week in hospital in Kansas City, Mookie was deemed well enough to go home, although his broken jaw required a liquid diet. When his stepfather went to get him, Mookie discovered that he had developed a fear of riding in cars. “Me and my mom were terrified of riding in the car at that point,” he told Camerato. Every bump in the road brought him back to the scene of the accident. “We tried to go to sleep and couldn’t.” Even a decade and a half later, certain situations will trigger his anxiety. “If you hit the little ridges on the side of the street, I’ll flip out and I won’t go back to sleep.”⁹⁷

Predictably, Mookie didn’t embrace the role of invalid. He wanted to get back to sports: baseball, bowling, basketball, track, it didn’t matter. Even the cumbersome cast he was forced to wear couldn’t stop him. He practiced playing basketball with his left hand. As for baseball, he had a strategy for that too. “My wrist took the longest. I couldn’t throw because it [the cast] was on my right hand, but I could hit . . . Then you had a DH [designated hitter] and an EH [extra hitter]—I was the EH. I put a batting glove on, had my bat, and I could kind of wrap my hand around it and I hit. I literally played in games with a cast on my wrist. I don’t know how I did it.”

The near-death experience wasn’t going to stop Mookie. He worked extra hard and was soon batting, fielding, and throwing as if nothing had happened. If anything, the accident made him stronger, gave him a new perspective on life. “You can’t take anything for granted,” he says. “Life can be taken from you at any time. Try to be happy. Anything can happen at any time.”

Even today, it’s clearly painful for Diana Collins to talk about the accident. “The worst part was him being ejected from the vehicle. That was pretty bad. It’s a memory that you don’t want to have but yeah, it happened and it was horrific. He was little and he does remember the accident, but there were things he doesn’t remember and that’s probably good. When you’re young, you can rebound from a lot of things. So maybe it was a blessing that he was so young.”

Mookie’s Mom: An Interview with Diana Collins

It was January of 2019 and Diana Collins already had things in perspective. Just two months earlier Diana’s son, Mookie Betts, had led the Boston Red Sox to the World Series, which they won in five games against the LA Dodgers. He had been named to the American League All-Star team and was among the league leaders in virtually every offensive and defensive category. After the season, the awards and accolades began to pour in. He captured his third Gold Glove for his spectacular play in right field. He won his second Silver Slugger award. And then he topped it off with his selection as American League MVP. The authors spoke with Diana about what it’s like to be Mookie Betts’s mother. It’s not hard to see where Mookie got his personality and his love of sport. Both parents were supportive of his athletic pursuits, although the passion for baseball stems mostly from the Collins side of the family.

Diana acknowledges her son’s skills and accomplishments, but you quickly get the impression that it’s the way he plays the game and lives his life that makes her most proud.

(Note: The day after our interview, Mookie Betts signed a one-year, $20 million contract with the Red Sox.)

Q: Which of Mookie’s on-field and off-field accomplishments are you proudest of?

A: I take pride in all aspects of Mookie’s life. I’d just like to see him keep going and doing what he’s doing. One of the things that you have to realize is that when it’s a team sport, team is not “I,” it’s “we.” Being part of a team means that you have to work together, and that’s something Mookie learned early on. If we’re going to play as a team, then we will win as a team or we’ll lose as a team. You always want your teammates to do well. That’s something I always emphasized when I coached his Little League team. I tried to impress it on all the kids. To me that’s one of the first things that coaches should teach kids—the concept of team. And the concept of sportsmanship and getting along with others. To be a good team player, you have to learn to get along with people and be a good listener. All those things come into play whatever the level of competition.

So I’m proud of everything Mookie does, on the field and off. It’s the complete person that he’s become in all aspects of his life. I wouldn’t single out any one thing that ranks over others. It depends on the time and situation. He loves people, he’s got a big heart. Sometimes you’re proud of this, sometimes of that. I just take pride in seeing him continue to move in the right direction, and now he’ll be instilling those qualities in his little girl as well.

Q: Mookie is part of an incredible Red Sox outfield. They work so well together and it looks like they have so much fun out there. What’s the key to that relationship?

A: The Red Sox outfielders absolutely have a special bond. They work so well together and complement one another. There’s a mutual respect between the three of them, no question. It’s a wonderful thing when you know that your teammates have your back. It’s really all about chemistry and that’s what they have. Mookie, Andrew, and Jackie hang around together off the field as well, after games and during their off time. It’s a tight bond. They do a lot of things together when they’re on road trips—going to movies, or whatever. You’ll find them eating together a lot. When you see them work together and play together, it’s obvious they enjoy each other’s company and the bond becomes even stronger.

Q: How well do you know Benintendi and Bradley Jr.?

A: I know Andrew and Jackie well. Their moms and dads and I have all connected as parents. In fact, you’ll often see us all go out for family dinners together before a game or between games. Our families really click. So the chemistry is definitely there and that’s such an important thing.

Benintendi is a relatively quiet guy but he has some humor in him, too. He knows what he’s doing out there. He’s poised and he wants to win. He’s just a really nice guy, a genuine guy who always gives 100 percent and let’s face it, those kinds of players are hard to find. His spirit is there for everyone to see.

Jackie and Mookie played together before they came up to the majors, so I’ve known Jackie for quite a long period, longer than any other Red Sox player. That makes a difference. I see him all the time and we talk all the time. And of course, he always greets me with, “Hi Mom, whatcha doin’?” or “Hey Mom, how’s it goin’?” Jackie is a very special kid.

Q: They always seem to support each other. It was obvious last year when Jackie was in the midst of his hitting slump.

A: Again, I think the team is always pulling for one another, so they were trying to figure it out together because with Jackie the talent is obviously there, the skill is definitely there—and so [the question is] what can we do to come out of this slump. It’s never a case of anyone ever thinking they’re going to give up on anyone, at any time. Jackie has the drive and he has the ability, so . . . it was just one of those droughts that we all wanted him to come out of.

Q: Who else is Mookie especially close to on the current team?

A: Mookie is very close to J. D. [Martinez] and he talks a lot with Xander [Bogaerts]. J. D. just joined the team last year, but he and Mookie just hit it off from the beginning. Same with Xander as well. J. D. is not a selfish player. He hits well and he wants you to hit well—if you’re on his team. He’s always willing to share a hitting tip. This is the kind of team that’s not afraid to step out and encourage one another and figure things out together. They easily give out tips on how to make your game better. It’s important. Some people wouldn’t do that; not all players would volunteer to help. Some just keep it to themselves. But I don’t see this Red Sox team ever being like that.

Q: It’s refreshing that there are no oversized egos in the group.

A: It’s not a matter of ego. It’s all about self-confidence, believing in yourself and your talent, and what you have the potential to do. And then you step forward. It’s not about being a braggart or having a big ego—just a healthy self-confidence about what you can do with your skill set.

Q: Most players have long-term goals. As a young player, Ted Williams said he wanted to become the greatest hitter who ever lived. Does Mookie think in those terms?

A: I think Mookie is living in the moment right now and he’ll worry about retirement when that time comes. Maybe then he’ll look down the road at what he’s accomplished when he nears that point. Because right now you’re just trying to do what you can do to reach your full value and let your spark be what it is. He wants to be in the now.

To be in the same realm or in the same conversation with some of the greats of the past is outstanding; I think he treasures that to the utmost. If it happens down the road that he lives up to that standard, then I think that’s outstanding. But I wouldn’t say that that’s what his goal is. His goal is to be the best Mookie he can be.

Q: Which of Mookie’s many incredible defensive gems has impressed you most?

A: He’s had a couple of catches that stand out, but one of my favorites was when the pitcher was going for a no-hitter and he pulled the ball back in from over the fence. That was one of my all-time favorites. [Author’s note: On September 25, 2015, Rich Hill was pitching a two-hitter. Baltimore’s Chris Davis hit a ball to the fence that Betts nabbed for the final out to preserve the 7–0 shutout.] He’s made several running catches that I loved because I played sports and people think it’s easy when you run and catch the ball but you have to judge the ball and time the ball. There’s a lot that goes into catching that ball. It’s not as easy as people think so . . . So he’s had several favorites, but to actually go over the fence and come back with the ball—that to me says a lot. You have to believe you can do it and then do it.

Q: It’s pretty well-known that you got Mookie started in baseball. Where did your love of the game come from?

A: Growing up, my grandfather was a sharecropper and we had acres and acres of land and when you grow up in the country, pretty much all you have to do is play sports. We didn’t have lots of money so we didn’t have a lot of other things we could do and sports was something we could do and that’s what we did. I grew up playing sports.

My grandfather made us our own ball diamond on the farm. There were enough of us grandkids to play games and we always had a couple of other close friends join in, so altogether we had enough to make two full teams. We could play against each other all the time and that’s how you learned to play the game. You never wanted to be the worst one out there, so you always tried to improve.

I was going to go to college on a softball scholarship but my momma didn’t want me to go that far from home so I quit after high school. But I played around here [Paducah] and I coached ladies’ slow-pitch for about 10 years.

Q: What about Mookie’s father [Willie Betts]?

A: Mookie’s dad ran track and played basketball and so he helped him with that. He also played some pickup ball but nothing close to my family.

Q: Does your son know how far Red Sox Nation extends and how closely fans follow his every move?

A: Mookie realizes that there are many true Boston fans and that they’re all over the country, all over the world. He hears about that and sees it when the team travels. Boston has been good to Mookie and to the Red Sox. He takes all the fuss in stride. Mookie just wants to play ball. He can adapt to any city.

Mookie was 10 years old when he and his mother moved from Murfreesboro to the Nashville suburb of Brentwood. Although he and Diana divorced, Willie Betts lived nearby and continued to be active in his son’s life, driving him to two or three sports events a month. Later, during baseball games at Nashville’s John Overton High School, the elder Betts manned the ticket gates while Diana Collins worked at the concession stand.⁹⁸ The retired railroad man punctuated every great play with a blast from a toy train whistle.

During those playing days at Overton, Mookie was a middle infielder alternating between second baseman and shortstop. He hit .548 in his junior year and stole 24 bases. In his senior year, he fell a bit short of that—.508, but upped his stolen base total to 30.

It was at Overton that his coach, Mike Morrison, took note of his amazing ability to absorb and analyze baseball instruction and immediately incorporate it into his game. Collins credits her former husband with passing that ability along to Mookie. “They both can pick up stuff. He can probably fix anything. They [can] just watch stuff and be able to fix a hole or repair something. It goes beyond sports.”

Like choosing a spouse, scouting young ballplayers is an inexact science. On the surface the prospect may look great, but not until you see them under pressure, on a bad day, over an extended period of time, do you know if you’ve made a good decision. By then it’s often too late. Danny Watkins was an area scout covering Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi for the Boston Red Sox. He first saw Mookie Betts in the early summer of 2010, watching him perform at a high school baseball showcase at Middle Tennessee State University. Betts didn’t stand out physically, but Watkins thought he saw something that many other observers missed. He saw his finesse around second base, easily handling a hard grounder and flipping it behind his back to the bag to force the runner. He also noted his explosive swing and ability to get the barrel of the bat on the ball.

Back when average-sized players were the norm, the Aarons and Mayses and Musials and Kalines and Yastrzemskis stood out as first among equals. We’re now in an era when size really does matter in the selection of ballplayers. Average-sized players are often overlooked in favor of the Aaron Judges, Giancarlo Stantons, and Mike Trouts. There are exceptions, of course, and talent often wins out, but put a player like Dustin Pedroia, José Altuve, or Jimmy Rollins in a group with the athletic giants and see who emerges with the higher draft position. The rule of thumb seems to be that the higher the player height-wise, the higher he is drafted.

It’s fair to say that Danny Watkins deserves the thanks of every Red Sox fan. Like the old prospector who lets it slip that he’s discovered a rather large gold nugget—or perhaps fool’s gold—Watkins had the attention of the Red Sox. A veritable rush of scouts made their way to Overton High School during Mookie’s senior year, each one generating more paperwork, more opinions. Cross-checker Mike Rikard (now Red Sox VP of Amateur Scouting) saw Mookie at another showcase just two months later. He was impressed and said so in his report, but reminded himself that this was a high school player batting against high school pitching.

Scouts spend their entire careers out on a limb and before sending in their scouting report, they want to be as sure as possible that they have a safety net beneath them. To that end, the scouting profession developed a phrase that mitigates their responsibility. On the one hand, the strategic phrase keeps expectations under control, and on the other it suggests that the scout might be conservative in his assessments. Some would call it covering your a**. Scouts say, “I might be light.”

Every Red Sox scout who saw the young Mookie echoed the line until it became a mantra, a chorus of cautions. They obviously loved what they saw, but it was as if they didn’t trust their own eyes. Was he really that good? Watkins watched him make those smooth defensive infield plays that fateful June day and his jaw dropped. “I looked around to see, ‘Did anybody see that?’” Watkins told Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal. No one did. Or at least no other scout dared to pass the word up the line to their major-league club.

It was then scouting director Amiel Sawdaye’s job (he is now Senior VP and Assistant Manager with the Arizona Diamondbacks) to not only read the scouting reports but to read between the lines of the scouting reports. “Almost every guy wrote, ‘I might be light here,’” he told MacPherson. Sawdaye saw though their cautions and felt their enthusiasm jumping from the pages. “Maybe you don’t see this guy against good pitching. Maybe you don’t have a ton of history. But you’re like, ‘Man, this guy does everything we like. Maybe I’m underestimating how good he is.’”⁹⁹

The Red Sox organization also hedged its bets by breaking out a revolutionary new approach to evaluating players called neuroscouting. Then Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, the man who engineered the end of the 86-year-old world championship drought known to some as the Curse of the Bambino, decided to add some completely impartial input to the scouting reports. Mookie was destined to be one of the pioneers.

Danny Watkins was a frequent visitor to Overton High School during Mookie’s senior year. He came to watch his discovery play basketball and run track in addition to monitoring his progress on the diamond. One day he showed up unannounced and took Mookie from class to explain the basics of neuroscouting to him. He asked if he would become part of the pilot project and Betts agreed to sacrifice his lunch period to the furtherance of science.

Watkins invited the young ballplayer to play a series of computer games, not a tough ask for a young teenager. These games were not your usual strategic quests, however. They were a battery of painstakingly developed, science-based, state-of-the-art baseball challenges designed to measure the previously unmeasurable.

Amateur scouting has been around since professional baseball began, but it’s always been subjective, with teams depending on the judgment and analytical skills of their scouts, often retired ballplayers. The most outstanding scouts have the ability to look at the flaws of raw youth and see beyond them to the player’s potential. Countless Hall of Famers have been discovered in this traditional way. Many will argue that attitude and desire and other so-called “intangibles” are best observed and assessed through personal relationships. Overall, the system worked well and there will always be a place for it in the game. On the skills side, it’s relatively easy for an experienced scout to assess a player’s swing. Such things as bat speed, technique, and mechanics are all tangible, or at least identifiable elements in a hitter’s skill set. But what about pitch recognition and decision-making?

Mookie was among the first to undergo the testing process, and no doubt the developers of the early neuroscouting models were forced to recalibrate the process after his performance that day at Overton. The highly sophisticated battery of computer exercises covered things that even the most seasoned, eagle-eyed scout couldn’t hope to capture through naked eye observation. Mookie was instructed to follow the commands and not worry about the results. “I did what I could,” he told Alex Speier of the Boston Globe in 2015. One element was designed to register a player’s ability to pick up the spin on the ball. Horizontal spins had to be differentiated from vertical spins, all in a split second. “It was just like, a ball popped up, tap space bar as fast as you could. If the seams were one way, you tapped it. If it was the other way, you weren’t supposed to tap it. I was getting some of them wrong. I wasn’t getting frustrated but I was like, ‘Dang, this is hard.’”¹⁰⁰

The pitch recognition aspect was multifaceted. One activity required the test subject to tap the space bar as soon as he determined that the pitch would be in the strike zone. Another featured a curveball that blinked red if it was going to be out of the zone. The challenge was to recognize this as a ball instantaneously.

The topper was an activity that allowed for every possible pitch: fastball, curve, changeup, and sinker. Not only was Mookie supposed to hit the ball but he was asked to hit it to all fields.

Very wisely, neuroscouting also attempts to assess the character of the player being tested. To that end, certain errors are built into the program. If a player is frustrated or makes excuses based on the irregularities, the theory is that he’s likely to be a complainer in the majors; if he ignores such errors and continues to perform, he’s more likely to handle the ups and downs of major-league seasons. Not surprisingly, Betts scored incredibly high in all aspects of the test—“ridiculously high,” according to one source.

This was one of many factors that led Theo Epstein to draft Betts in 2011. It was Epstein’s last season as Red Sox GM before moving over to the Chicago Cubs.

Mookie Betts was the perfect example of a player who had all the tools, ticked all the boxes, and met all the criteria but was still in danger of being passed over. Why? Even though his talent had been carefully measured by every available yardstick, he lacked the “wow” factor. Part of that was his size and power. He was 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds at the time, and understandably didn’t have all eyes turn to him when he came to the plate. He had the tools, but he didn’t have what Watkins has called “the sexy tools.” “He was one of those guys who could easily kind of blend in,” he told Christopher Smith of Masslive.com.¹⁰¹ Should the Red Sox make an all-out effort to sign him or allow him to marinate in the university ranks for a few years?

The Red Sox were in the market for impact players. Did Mookie qualify as an impact player? Not yet, maybe, but Watkins had a “gut feel” for Mookie and sometimes you just have to go with that. He liked this kid a lot. Liked everything about him, the way he played the game and the way he respected the game. Watkins felt that the potential reward outweighed the risk.

Amiel Sawdaye was armed with all this Mookie data and meta Mookie data, both human- and computer-generated, when he attended the 2011 June draft. All that aside, one of the biggest factors at play when selecting a player is signability. Teams don’t want to pick a player and then discover that he won’t sign a contract. If a player chosen in the first 10 rounds opts not to sign, his slot value is still counted against that team’s bonus pool. In 2011, penalties were put in place for teams that went over the signing bonus pool. On the other hand, they knew there was also interest from the Kansas City Royals and San Diego Padres and perhaps as many as four other teams. Even then, Sawdaye held off until the fifth round before deciding to put his faith in the enthusiasm of his scouts and the evidence of science, making Mookie their 172nd pick overall.

Mookie had been watching the draft from back home in Tennessee and when he was passed over in the second round figured he wasn’t going to be selected at all. From that point he watched with waning interest until the phone rang before the fifth round had begun. It was the Red Sox calling to try to assess the chances of Betts actually signing if he were drafted. Watkins explained the process to Christopher Smith. “The way the draft has evolved with the slotted values, it becomes such a priority to sign those first 10-round guys,” he said. “We don’t negotiate or come to terms with anyone before we draft them. But there’s got to be a comfort level.” That comfort level was reached during the phone call.

Mookie had committed to a baseball scholarship with the University of Tennessee, but when the Red Sox drafted him and offered him a $750,000 signing bonus, he consulted with his family and made the decision to turn pro. The bonus was about $600,000 above the slot value.

The Red Sox sent Mookie to Fort Myers for instructional league work in the fall of 2011 and that’s where he first met his future outfield neighbor, Jackie Bradley Jr. Jackie was already a bona fide star, having just led South Carolina to a second consecutive College World Series championship in which he was named Most Outstanding Player. Betts admits to being star-struck when he first encountered the major leaguer-in-waiting. They were assigned as roommates. “I was in awe,” he said in 2018. “I watched the College World Series and then I walked into my hotel room at instructs and Jackie’s there. It took me a second to kind of realize I didn’t want to be a fan boy at the time.”¹⁰²

The fact that they have some shared history as both roommates and teammates made their eventual reunion with the Red Sox seamless and no doubt hastened Mookie’s transition to the outfield. “We may not have come up together, but we came through the same ranks and through the same teams. We get to talk about our stories. It’s one of those things where I can stand next to him and know that we’ve kind of been together every step of the way. I knew what kind of player he is. He’s proven it. He definitely proved it in this series. He’s not just a glove out there. He can do it all.”¹⁰³ No doubt some of those stories revolve around their sharing a room. For some reason all the players congregated in their room to play video games, perhaps because it was the cleanest. The downside was that the two never had a chance to nap or relax. Even after they ceased to play, the rest of the team hung out there, often until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

Mookie also appeared in a single game for the Gulf Coast League Red Sox in 2011 but made the best of the opportunity, playing shortstop and going 2-for-4 while racking up two runs batted in and a stolen base. But on defense, he bombed, committing three errors in six chances, a subject that might also arise when he and Jackie Jr., two Gold Glove winners, reminisce about 2011.

In 2012, Betts played the full season in the New York-Penn League. In 71 games for the Lowell Spinners (58 at second base and 13 at shortstop), he hit .267 (with a .352 on-base percentage), failed to hit a home run, and drove in 31 runs. He did cut down on the errors, though, compiling a .958 fielding percentage.

While the Boston Red Sox were winning the World Series in 2013 (with JBJ, Mookie’s roomie from the Instructional League picking up a ring), Betts was finishing off a split season during which he played second base exclusively for two teams in Single-A ball. He began the year in South Carolina with the Greenville Drive (South Atlantic League) and played there from April 5 to July 7, hitting .296 and, more importantly, achieving a .418 on-base percentage, with eight homers and 26 RBIs. Usually batting leadoff, he scored 63 runs in 76 games. At one point, he had a 19-game hitting streak. He was selected to play in the league’s All-Star Game.

From July 9 through the end of the season on September 2, he played in “High-A” ball for the Salem (Virginia) Red Sox in the Carolina League. In 51 games with Salem, he hit .341 (.414 OBP) with seven homers and 39 RBIs and swiped 38 bases on the year. In one game in Myrtle Beach, he went 5-for-6 with two homers and seven RBIs—“a pretty good day,” says Mookie. Betts was named both the Breakout Player of the Year in the Red Sox minor-league system and the Offensive Player of the Year. He credited his dramatic improvement in batting to Greenville hitting coach U. L. Washington, who had him lower his leg kick when he stepped into his swing.¹⁰⁴

That fall, he appeared in 16 Arizona Fall League games and hit .271 for the Surprise Saguaros. He was named to play in the league’s Fall Stars Game. Tim Hyers tells a story about Mookie in the Fall League in 2013. He was in the dugout in Arizona with the Red Sox minor-league hitting coordinator. “We’re talking about outfielders. Mookie would shag every so often in the outfield. We were just talking about players and who could do in the outfield—this was before they made the transition. The coaching staff were all in there talking. ‘You got some good defenders, some good outfielders,’ and one of the coaches piped up with, ‘Hey, our best outfielder’s Mookie Betts.’ Everybody just laughed. ‘You see him out there shagging every day? He’s the best outfielder we have on the team.’ That just tells you the caliber of athlete that he was.”

He’d earned a promotion to the next rung on the ladder—Double A—and started 2014 playing for the Eastern League’s Portland Sea Dogs, geographically and psychologically nearer to Boston’s Fenway Park. He played 40 games at second base, but already the Red Sox were beginning to transition him to outfield work. He played an even dozen games in center field. Appearing in 54 games in all, he improved his offensive game, hitting .355 (.443 OBP) with an OPS of .994. He now had the full attention of the Red Sox decision-makers.

On May 10, he went 0-for-4, notable in that it was the first time all year that he had not reached base. It ended a streak that had extended back into 2013 with Salem—he had reached base safely, one way or another, in 66 consecutive regular-season games. Counting the five postseason games in which he played, Betts had reached base in 71 consecutive games. Though he failed to reach base in the May 10 game, he did drive in two runs, both on groundouts.¹⁰⁵ He was leading the Eastern League in batting when he was promoted to Triple-A Pawtucket (International League).

It was on a road trip to Scranton that Mookie experienced the charms of minor-league cities. The team was staying at a hotel that had the reputation of being haunted. The team had read all about it and late that night decided to go looking for ghosts. “I probably got only four or five hours of sleep all night,” says Betts. Little did he know that while he was searching for spirits, his teammates were conjuring up some mischief. “I came back to my room and I heard some shuffling.” Being more of a fencebuster than a ghostbuster, he did the sensible thing. “I started packing my stuff because I was going to leave. By the time I got to the door I was scared out of my mind. They got me good.”

The incident didn’t seem to hurt him at the plate. With the PawSox, he hit in 23 consecutive games starting on June 3 and before the month was out, he got the call that every ballplayer dreams of. He was going to the majors.

Interestingly, the sport-rich DNA that Diana passed along to her son had a strand that included a bowling component. For Mookie, bowling is much more than a weekend diversion from the stresses of Major League Baseball. Competing in a tournament with his mother, he won his first bowling trophy when he was just eight years old. In 2010 he was named Tennessee Boys Bowler of the Year and recorded a 290-point game. Even the historic 2018 baseball World Series wasn’t Mookie’s first. In November 2017 at the Professional Bowling Association World Series of Bowling in Reno, Nevada, he bowled a perfect 300-point game, one of four on his résumé. He is so good that he has expressed interest in someday joining the PBA tour.

Mookie excelled in many sports. As a high school hoopster player at Overton, the 5-foot-9 guard was MVP of the District 12-AAA League and Class-AAA All-City Player of the Year in the Nashville metropolitan area.¹⁰⁶ Overton High School coach Mike Morrison said Mookie could excel in almost anything: “You’d go play ping pong with him and he’d whip your tail in ping pong because his eye-hand coordination was superior to most kids and any of us around here really.”¹⁰⁷

The 2013 Red Sox had won the World Series, probably the most unexpected of the four twenty-first century world championships they have added to the five they managed to win in the early part of the twentieth century (1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918).

The 2014 team lacked the spark shown the previous season and in late June they were mired in fourth place in the American League East, seven games behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays and five back of the Yankees. The yo-yo-ing Sox had finished dead last in 2012 before their surprising revival the following year. They were destined to visit the AL East basement again in 2014 (they also finished last in 2015, before rebounding to first place in 2016, 2017, and 2018). At the precise halfway mark in the season, their record stood at 37–44 and it was obvious to everyone that they needed an infusion of fresh new talent.

They were in the midst of a series at Yankee Stadium when they decided to unveil their hottest young prospect in the media capital of the world. Mookie Betts was only 21 years old, but the stories of his potential preceded him to the majors. He was still known as a second baseman, but insiders knew his future was in Fenway’s outfield. Coach Arnie Beyeler worked with both Brock Holt and Mookie Betts during the 2014 season, helping them both develop more outfield skills, so they could transition from being infielders to outfielders.

Mookie was still primarily a second baseman, but the outfield experimentation that had begun in Portland had continued after his promotion to Triple-A Pawtucket. The Red Sox had a solid second baseman in Dustin Pedroia and felt that the quickest path to the majors for Mookie was in the outfield. With Pawtucket, he would play more outfield than second base. He started with the PawSox on June 3. He reached base safely in each of his first 22 games with the Rhode Island affiliate, batting.322 though June 27. Coming on the heels of his 66-game on-base streak that had just been snapped in Portland, it’s fair to say that Betts had the full attention of the Red Sox brass.

Mookie was glad to transition to becoming an outfielder, said Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers. Tim had been a scout for the Red Sox from 2009 to 2012 and minor-league hitting coordinator from 2013 to 2015. From 2016 to 2017, he served as assistant hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers, then came back to Boston for the 2018 season. He’d seen all these guys early on.

“I saw all of them come up. I was there the first day that Benintendi was drafted and I came in really the first full year for Mookie. Jackie had been in the organization, I think, about a year, a little over a year before I got there. I was the [minor-league] hitting coordinator. I was there for Mookie’s first day in New York. He’d come up as a second baseman. He was in Yankee Stadium. He’d had four starts in right field in the minor leagues.

“I think he wanted to play in the big leagues. He’s the type of player who wants to do anything to help the team. I think it was a twofold. He wanted to help the team and get to the big leagues as fast as possible. That was a route. And he wanted to help the team, do whatever they asked him to do.”

In the not-too-distant past, rushing a player to the majors was deemed foolhardy in the extreme, even dangerous to the player’s development. The argument was that a player’s confidence could be ruined beyond repair if he failed on the big-league stage. The Globe’s Christopher Gasper had already warned against rushing the “uber-prospect” to the majors. Not having been a first-round pick, he never really got the attention that some of those players did. Early in the 2014 season, reporters started noticing. During an interview as he began the season in the minors, he said, “Going from last year, really not getting interviewed at all, to now having some interviews once a week or so, it’s different . . . It was fun, exciting kind of going from not being anybody, not necessarily that I’m somebody now, but just kind of a name that’s buzzing a little bigger.”¹⁰⁸

As long as he was getting on base, there was always a chance to do more. “I just try to get on base no matter what. Whether it be walk, hit, error, whatever. Because I feel like I affect the game with my legs—stealing bags, scoring runs.”

He continued to get on base a lot. The 66-game on-base streak, begun the year before, lasted until mid-May 2014. He was soon promoted to Pawtucket and reached base in every one of his first 16 games.

On June 24, Betts was named to the All-Star Futures Game to be played on July 13 at Target Field. Red Sox outfielder Shane Victorino’s minor-league rehab work was suspended indefinitely on June 27; it was clear that the Flyin’ Hawaiian wasn’t coming back to the Red Sox outfield any time soon. Meanwhile, Mookie Betts was learning the position and was also burning up the basepaths, with 28 steals on the season to that point.

In total, he stole 54 bases during his time in Portland, Pawtucket, and Boston in 2014.

Betts was called up on June 28 and joined the team in New York where the Red Sox were playing the Yankees. GM Ben Cherington said, “I don’t think we can be gun-shy about calling up a guy we believe in. We also wouldn’t call someone up who we didn’t feel could be successful right away.”¹⁰⁹

Starting his career in New York against the Yankees meant immediate and total immersion into the rivalry often called the most intense in pro sports. Since that dark day when Babe Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the Yankees after the 1919 season, the histories of the two original AL franchises have been intertwined. DiMaggio and Williams, Fisk and Munson, Boggs and Mattingly, Jeter and Garciaparra: there were always opposing players who personified the competition between the two teams.

Betts was destined to be the new face of the Red Sox (just as Aaron Judge has since become the new face of the Yankees), and it was only appropriate that the archrival Yankees were the opposition when Betts got his first major-league hit. With Yankee Stadium as the stage, the scene couldn’t have been scripted any better. Mookie’s mother, father, and fiancée were sitting together at the game. He was playing right field, with Jackie Bradley Jr. in center and Daniel Nava in left. It was the first time that MLB and JBJ, former Instructional League roomies, had played in the outfield together.

Mookie batted eighth in the lineup that day, in front of JBJ. The Red Sox scored first, in the top of the second, when Stephen Drew hit a one-out single to right field, scoring Mike Napoli. Betts came up to bat for the first time in the big leagues and grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.

A three-run third-inning homer by David Ortiz staked the Sox to a 4–0 lead, but the Yankees scored in the bottom of the inning to get them on the board. Solo homers by Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran made it 4–3.

Digging in against Yankees starting pitcher Chase Whitley in the top of the fourth, the Red Sox rookie rapped a hard-hit single up the middle. In the crowd a TV camera captured Diana Collins, surrounded by Yankees fans, pumping her fist in an expression of unbridled joy. To put a cherry on top of a perfect day, Yankees shortstop and future Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, realizing the significance of the hit, retrieved the ball and rolled it to the dugout for the budding superstar. Mookie was thrown out trying to steal second but was philosophical about it in the postgame scrum. “They told me, don’t change anything, so I’ll take that here and try to be aggressive and steal bases,” he said.¹¹⁰

Bradley drew a walk to lead off the fifth and the next two batters also reached on bases on balls. Dustin Pedroia singled to right, scoring Jackie, for his third RBI of the game. In the bottom of the inning, Ichiro Suzuki hit a triple to right field and later scored. The triple was the result of what one writer called an “ill-advised” attempt by Betts to make a shoestring catch in right. It was only the third time that Mookie had played right field in the minors or majors. With the score 7–5 Red Sox, Betts walked to lead off the sixth and Bradley singled to left. After Brock Holt singled to load the bases and Nava struck out, Betts scored on a sac fly by Pedroia to make it 8–5, the final score.

Four days later, on July 2, Mookie notched his first hit at Fenway Park and once again Betts’s mom and dad and girlfriend Brianna were there to see it. The hit, which also happened to be his first career home run, was a two-run shot into the Monster seats against Carlos Villanueva in the fifth inning of an interleague game with the Chicago Cubs. In cases like this, every attempt is made to find the fan who caught the ball and retrieve the treasured piece of memorabilia for the young player. That wasn’t a problem because the fan who caught Mookie’s first career dinger happened to be Chris Large, who had pitched against Betts in summer ball back in Nashville, Tennessee. Large had been sitting with his sister Lindsey, who called the home run. “She said right before the at-bat, ‘He’s about to hit a home run,’” Chris told ESPNBoston.com. “I said, ‘What if I caught it?’” After the game, Chris, who faced Mookie when he was a 17-year-old at Overton High, was pleased to present the ball to his former adversary. “He told me he threw a 4-hitter against my team and I had two of the hits,” says Mookie.¹¹¹ The ball was quickly passed along to Mookie’s then-fiancée Brianna for safe keeping. Brianna and Mookie had known each other since they were classmates at Nashville’s William Henry Oliver Middle School.¹¹²

He remained with the Red Sox through June 13, but was shuttled to Pawtucket for the rest of July, returning to Boston for good on August 1. For the PawSox, he played in 45 games, all but six in the outfield, and batted .355 (.417 OBP). In the 52 games he played for Boston, he hit .291 with five home runs and 18 RBIs. His on-base percentage was .368. Still only 21 years-old, his first grand slam came on August 29 in Tampa Bay against Rays ace Chris Archer. Once again he sought the advice of veterans and found a mentor in veteran Jonny Gomes, who schooled him about the repertoires of major-league pitchers and what to expect from them. Betts played 25 games in center field, 12 in right field, and 14 games at second base after Dustin Pedroia underwent season-ending surgery in September.

Mookie’s first year was now history. Ever the perfectionist, he was his own worst critic. He analyzed his season and found himself wanting in several areas of the game. He had made too many base-running mistakes, swung at too many bad pitches, and he was still adjusting to outfield play. He vowed to learn and to improve. The admonition that he learned from his parents years earlier was to become his baseball mantra as well: “Somebody should only have to tell you once.”

In 2015 it was obvious by the third inning of Opening Day (April 13) that Mookie was developing into a five-tool player who could hit with power, throw with distance and accuracy, play the field smoothly, and run the bases with skill and speed. The Red Sox were playing the Washington Nationals. Playing center field in the top of the first he committed grand larceny, soaring above the bullpen fence and robbing Bryce Harper of a sure homer. The base-running part of the toolbox was on full display in the bottom of the first when he pulled off the rare double-steal-by-one-person-on-a-single-pitch trick.

With David Ortiz at the plate, Mookie was on first courtesy of a walk by Nationals starter Jordan Zimmermann. He timed the pitcher’s delivery and took off for second, just beating the throw from the catcher. As he popped up out of his slide, he glanced toward third and saw that no one was covering the base so he took off again, leaving the helpless shortstop holding the ball. By the time third baseman Ryan Zimmerman received the throw and ran back to his base, Betts was able to slide in just before the tag. The Nats challenged both safe calls—at second and third—but after a lengthy pause, Betts was declared safe at both bases. Two stolen bases on one play. He later scored on a Big Papi hit.

The home opener had become the Mookie Betts Show. Two stolen bases and a stolen homer. He topped off the crime wave in the third by stealing the hearts of the Fenway faithful, blasting a three-run home run off Zimmermann that sailed over the Green Monster. The homer made him the third-youngest Red Sox player to go deep in an opening day game.

At the plate, Mookie was still struggling, especially when it came to laying off the breaking balls. Mookie didn’t panic. He knew he was doing the little things that win ballgames: at the plate he was moving the runner over and pushing across a run. Once on base, he was going from first to third on hits; in the field he was keeping the double play in order and throwing to the right base. And then on June 12 he collided with the center-field wall at Fenway and missed the next couple of games. At that point he was batting an anemic .237 with only a .296 on-base percentage. Instead of sulking, he took the time to pick the brains of his more experienced teammates and he couldn’t have chosen better mentors in Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, and Shane Victorino. When he returned to the lineup it was with renewed confidence. He began to hit with authority, finishing his sophomore campaign with a highly respectable .291 batting average and 18 homers.

On September 25, 2015, Rich Hill was pitching a two-hit gem for the Red Sox when Baltimore Orioles slugger Chris Davis hit a ball to the deepest reaches of Fenway. With total concentration, Mookie tracked it down, leaped high above the low bullpen wall, and snagged it for the final out of the 7–0 shutout.

As the 2015 season entered its final stages, the man who was drafted to play second base was moved to right field, where he would play half of his games at Fenway Park, considered one of the toughest defensive assignments in the major leagues. In hindsight, it’s fair to say that the transition has worked out rather well. After all, if Mookie can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes (and he can), surely Fenway’s puzzling parameters could be conquered as well. In 2016, after only one full year patrolling this treacherous piece of real estate, he captured his first American League Gold Glove. At 24, he became the youngest Red Sox player since Fred Lynn (1975) to win the award.

Betts was in the Red Sox starting lineup on Opening Day 2016 in Philadelphia and homered in his second at-bat. That year also proved to be Betts’s breakout year offensively, earning him selection to his first AL All-Star team and a second-place finish in the MVP voting. He also reached the coveted 200-hit plateau with 214, second-best in the junior circuit. The right fielder was at or near the top in an assortment of offensive categories. He maintained a .318 batting average while ringing up a league-high 672 at-bats and led the AL in total bases with 359. He finished second in runs scored (122), beat out 42 doubles, and hit 31 homers while driving in 113 runs. Once on the basepaths he continued to be a threat, stealing 26 bases and rattling the nerves of pitchers throughout the league. His on-base percentage was .363 and his slugging percentage a lofty .534.

Baltimore Orioles pitchers can be forgiven if they develop nervous tics and flashbacks whenever Mookie’s name is mentioned. In 2016, he dismantled the Orioles pitching staff. In 79 at-bats, he sprayed 32 hits for a hearty .405 batting average. He scored 25 runs, nine of them via the long ball, and collected 22 RBIs. His on-base percentage was .472 and he slugged at a .810 clip, giving him an OPS of 1.282.

Baltimore fans were equally shell-shocked because Mookie did most of his damage in their own house at Camden Yards. In 37 at-bats at Orioles Park he hit eight homers, drove in 15 runs, and compiled a .514 batting average. His on-base percentage was an otherworldly .609 and his slugging percentage a jaw-dropping 1.162, giving him an OPs of 1.771. He also scored 18 times. At one point he had seven homers and 13 RBIs in 16 at-bats, an offensive display seldom seen even in the city that gave us Babe Ruth.

Now acknowledged as one of the best right fielders in the game, Mookie was kind enough to save some of his most memorable exploits for the hometown crowds at Fenway Park. Right field at baseball’s oldest ballpark was earning the reputation as a killing ground where base hits were turned into outs and home runs often died at the wall. But Mookie also shone on the road. At the legendary home of the Bronx Bombers in September of 2016, the Red Sox were going for their 12th consecutive win. Chase Headley hit a line drive in Mookie’s direction. He lost sight of it in the Yankee Stadium lights and started to slide too early. Somehow, he defied the laws of physics and caught it from the prone position. As if that weren’t enough, he got to his feet and pegged the ball to first to double up Starlin Castro.

After Betts’s 2016 season—which he completed with a 9.3 WAR second only to Mike Trout’s 10.5—David Ortiz said about Betts: “He’s not even as good as he’s going to be when he gets more experience.”¹¹³

In 2016, he did win that first Gold Glove—the first of three years in a row for him. Betts had only one error all season long and his strong, accurate arm produced 14 assists. He topped the major leagues in defensive runs saved with 32.

He came in second in MVP voting to Mike Trout, receiving a total of 311 points to Trout’s 356. Betts, and not Trout, was the only player in the league to finish in the top three of every ballot cast, but Trout’s 19 first-place votes outweighed Betts’s nine.¹¹⁴

It meant a lot to him to have ranked so highly. In early 2017, Betts said, “It’s different for me this year just knowing in the back of my mind that I can do it, and don’t need to force it. When you try to force things and do too much, bad things happen. I tell myself that I can do it. I can play at that level. It wasn’t me going out and trying to do anything out of the ordinary. It just came from me just being Mookie.”

He added, “I’ve learned to accept that I’m a role model to some people. I embrace it. I try to be the best I can be, smile, have fun playing the game, and make little aspects of the game enjoyable. That way, younger kids can go out, love playing the game, do things to have fun. . . . Even if it’s a 2–2 game in the ninth inning, I want to have the same smile on my face that I had in the first inning. You don’t want to get tight. You want to have fun and enjoy it. I think that’s what’s going to help me be the best I can be, help my guys be the best they can be, and young kids can see that, how to use that too . . . I think the challenge this year and going forward is going to be to continue being Mookie and not trying to be someone else.”¹¹⁵

It was a big year for the Red Sox. Coming out of the doldrums, which had seen them suffer last-pace finishes in the AL East in 2012, 2014, and 2015 (there was a pleasant interlude in 2013 when they won a world championship), the Red Sox had finished first in 2016, four games ahead of the Orioles. In 2017, they finished first again, with an identical 93–69 record, this time two games ahead of the second-place Yankees.

In 2016, the Sox had been swept in the Division Series by the Cleveland Indians. In 2017, they managed one win in the ALDS, but it was against the ultimate world champion Houston Astros, so there was perhaps less shame there. Probably no one predicted the heights that Boston was going to achieve in 2018.

During the 2017 campaign, Mookie started off strongly. He frequently put the bat on the ball or he worked walks. He kept trying to get on base. From September 12, 2016 to April 19, 2017, he went 128 plate appearances without a strikeout. He hit. 293 in April, and .296 in June, but he struggled in the other months, only to rebound with a .281 mark in September.

In 2017, his batting average dipped to .264 and his home run total dropped from 31 to 24, but he added another 26 steals and drove in more than a hundred runs for the second straight year (102). His overall numbers and sublime defense were enough to elevate him to sixth place in the MVP balloting. He won his second consecutive Gold Glove and second consecutive Silver Slugger.

Then came 2018, after which a shocking amount of bold print appeared in his Baseball-Reference batting stats. The dark ink indicated domination in categories that define superstardom. Aside from his league-leading runs scored (129) and batting average (.346), he posted a Williamsesque .640 slugging percentage, and an on-base percentage plus slugging (OPS) figure in the rarefied Ruthian range, at 1.078. All this added up to a Most Valuable Player Award, and the voting wasn’t close. He got all but two of the first-place votes and finished with 410 vote points, 145 points ahead of the runner-up, Angels outfielder Mike Trout.

The Gold Glove was his third in a row, putting him on track to equal Dewey Evans’s collection of eight in 2023. Writer Alex Speier gave some of the credit to the Red Sox analytics folks: “On June 21, Twins first baseman Joe Mauer lined a ball to right-center field, ordinarily a hit or at least a ball that would have required a significant run to intercept it. But Betts stood in the path of the ball, barely moving in order to track it. After he fired the ball back into the infield, Betts grinned at the dugout and pulled a card from his back pocket, waving it triumphantly. A new defensive alignment that had been suggested by the Red Sox analytics department—and printed on a small card for the outfielders to check—had been spot on.”¹¹⁶

Beside the MVP and Gold Glove, other hard-won hardware included a Silver Slugger Award, the AL batting title (the Rod Carew American League Batting Champion) trophy, and a World Series ring, making him the only player in history to capture all five in the same season.

Topping any award was the arrival of a beautiful baby daughter, Kynlee Ivory Betts, born to Mookie and Brianna Hammonds just nine days after the Red Sox clinched the World Series. Kynlee qualifies as baseball royalty, fitting since Mookie is a distant relative of Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and wife of Britain’s Prince Harry. Mookie may never have worn a royal crown but then Harry has never won a batting crown either.

There are many reasons for Mookie’s career season in 2018. He has always let his bat and glove do much of the talking, but he is a world-class listener. Not since a young Ted Williams interrogated his teammates, coaches, and opponents about hitting, has a player so actively sought out and heeded the advice of veterans. Ted, who often drove veteran players to distraction with his questions about hitting and opposing pitchers, was particularly keen to get an edge on the game. When he first came up to the majors in 2014 for a one-week cup of coffee, Mookie learned about major-league pitchers from veteran Jonny Gomes. His quest for knowledge has continued unabated. His long list of “instructors” includes Dustin Pedroia and anyone else who is successful with the bat. In David Ortiz’s final major-league seasons, Mookie used every opportunity to learn from one of the smartest hitters in the history of the game. In 2018, he was often seen in the dugout, post at-bat, analyzing what just happened with hitting coach Tim Hyers.

He worked hard, he prepared hard, and he played hard. But there was one factor that should be recognized: J. D. Martinez. The Red Sox signed Martinez in 2018, with the goal of filling the vacuum left by David “Big Papi” Ortiz. Although there will never be another Big Papi, Martinez did everything expected of him and more. At the plate, he confirmed and enhanced his reputation as one of the most feared hitters in the game. He scored 111 runs, accumulated 188 hits, batted at a lofty .330 clip, and stroked 43 homers. He led the American League in RBIs with 130 and in total bases with 358. His OBP was .402 and his slugging percentage .629 (1.031 OPS). He joined Mookie on the All-Star team and finished fourth in the MVP voting. He made a legitimate bid for the Triple Crown. He won two Silver Sluggers—one as DH and one as an outfielder. No other player has ever done so. So which was J. D.’s biggest contribution to the Red Sox season? Arguably it was the advice he gave to his teammates, most prominently Mookie Betts.

Mookie has cited Martinez for his generous sharing of hitting tips. It’s hardly surprising that the two have become great friends. They have developed a mutual admiration society and it has paid huge dividends. One is an unselfish guru of hitting and the other is a great listener. Mookie soaks up hitting advice like a sponge, retains it, and incorporates it into his plate strategy. He has openly credited J. D. for a rebound season in which he raised his batting average by 82 points (from .264 to a league-best .346) and his home run production by eight (from 24 in 2017 to 32 in 2018). This was accomplished despite the fact that Betts played in 17 fewer games and had 108 fewer at-bats.

In midseason, David Ortiz said, “He has such special talent. I’m not surprised what he’s doing. To me, to be honest with you, he’s going to get better. That’s how Mookie is—Mookie is always hungry. This guy, even when he’s doing well, he wants to do better. That’s the kid I saw coming up with us.”¹¹⁷

Fred Lynn agrees. “At the plate, Mookie has displayed unbelievable power for a guy his size. He’s up there and he attacks. He’s not up there to walk; he’s up there to attack the ball. That first pitch coming—he’s swinging. He’s slashing. Looking at it right now, Mookie has displayed an ability to hit—at .346—that’s hitting.” Indeed, over the course of his career, swinging at the first pitch he sees, Betts is batting .312.

Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers enthused over one overlooked aspect of Mookie’s year at the plate:

“He hit .300 with two strikes! That’s incredible! In round numbers, if you hit .200 with two strikes, we look at that as above average. I think the average in 2017 was probably .165, .175, something like that. That was like the average in Major League Baseball with two strikes. If a player’s hitting .200 with two strikes, that’s well above average and we’re happy. That’s a number that’s going to help you out. Mookie hit .300 this year.

“[As] a major-league player, over 50 percent of your at-bats are going to be with two strikes. A lot of players overlook that. It’s not something they want to deal with, because two strikes is the pitcher’s advantage, but you’re going to be in that position a lot in your career so we always say, ‘You better have a plan.’ You better develop a plan for that, because a lot of your season’s going to be with two strikes. Then Mookie goes and hits .300 with two strikes. That just tells you that, in one of the most difficult situations—we call that advantage to the pitcher—and he’s still hitting .300.”

Hyers, who has seen and coached a lot of hitters in his career, has a special appreciation of Betts’s batting eye.

“From day one, he’s one of the most impressive hitters I’ve ever been around, at identifying pitches early. Seeing the ball real early out of the hand. Understanding the strike zone. Picks up spin. Sees strikes out of the hand. Early recognition that really allows him . . . he’s ultra-quick. Very athletic. Great hand-eye coordination. If you put all the other stuff together, it’s something.”

Mookie’s batting average really dipped in 2017, down from .318 in 2016 to .264. Then he leapt all the way up to .346 in 2018. Which of course begs the question, what was the cause of what seemed to be a dramatic dip in 2017?

“The league adjusts to you as a player. They try to find weaknesses and holes, and I think he always swung quick and had a flat swing plane. It works. There’s nothing wrong with it. He came into the league and he did really well, but I think in ’17 they [pitchers] started throwing him a lot more sliders. Pitches with depth, we call it. Balls that break down. Batters with flatter swing planes, they try to work on the barrel. I think maybe he created a little bad habit of staying too steep and chasing some of the breaking balls running away from righties. I think he kind of lost some posture, lost some mechanics that I was sworn to reintroduce and talk to him about when I came over here in ’18. We talked about just getting on plane with that pitch. I want to say that they threw him almost 200 more sliders in ’17 than they did in ‘16. That was just to get him off-balance and to keep him out of the air.

“We made a few adjustments with his swing this year. We just talked about getting a better base, synching his upper body and lower body, but the big thing was to get on plane and add a little bit of depth on the back side of his swing plane to match the arc of some of those pitches, especially down in the zone. It was only a thing just to remind him of who he was and things that he did. Just adding a few cosmetic things.

“He’s just a quick learner. Also, we had J. D. with us. He’s really a student of hitting and mechanics. He picked up on a lot of little things like that, how they were pitching him. I think that was the big reason we saw the jump in the power, because they tried to go at him again, down in the zone with some of those pitches, and he just was ready for them and capitalized early.

“They were just, ‘Whoa, we’ve got to make another adjustment on this guy. He’s killing us. He’s a different guy from ’17 to ’18.’

“I don’t call it a major change. I just call it a cosmetic change in a couple of things, but you could talk to him about it. But it was a difference in getting on plane, we call it, just getting on plane with that pitch to match the arc, to avoid that rollover, the routine ground balls. He hit line drives and got the ball in the air just a little bit more. I think that helped him hit some homers.”

Betts’s ability to adapt and adjust extends to defense as well. His quickness and superior footwork allows manager Alex Cora to use him at different positions when the situation calls for it. Last season that even included a stint in the infield.

Betts, the former second baseman, got the opportunity to play second base for part of the August 3, 2018 game against the Yankees. “It was like a dream come true,” he said after the game. Haven’t been there since 2014. That’s why I take my ground balls, just in case.”¹¹⁸

In the World Series, he said he’d be glad to play second base, thereby enabling J. D. Martinez to play the outfield so that the Sox wouldn’t lose their regular DH’s bat at Dodger Stadium. “If that’s what it takes to win, I’ll do whatever. Gotta do anything to get that ring.”¹¹⁹

A Tribute to MLB

(with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan and the Pirates of Penzance)

He is the very model of a modern major-leaguer-er

He catches balls hit to the walls and often even further-er

He knows the angles of the park, and plays the ball accordingly

A master of right field in Fenway’s strange geometry

He’s well acquainted with the zone, and all matters bat-alogical

He hits the pitch to left and right and sometimes to the Triangle

He dives, he hits, he steals, he throws; his talent is incredible

He does it all, game after game, and with a smile angelical

Some Red Sox players from the past are completely unforgettable

Like Papi, Rice, Ted, and Yaz– to list them alphabetical

To that group, we’ll add a name that’s not the least heretical

‘Cause Mookie Betts possesses skills beyond the theoretical

Who knows what this man’s future holds? The question is rhetorical

His numbers when it’s over will no doubt be historical

Someday we’ll look back in time to when he was a rookie

We’ll smile at all the things he’s done and thank the gods for Mookie

There’s another possible reason for Mookie’s MVP performance in 2018 and it was on display for all to see whenever he entered the batter’s box. Even before Mookie signed his new $20 million contract for 2019, his $10,500,000 paycheck for 2018 meant he could afford some pretty decent jewelry. But Mookie was never the showy type. The only bling that he wore was a gold necklace that his father had given him in high school.

In March of 2018, he added a second fashion accessory, although it was more thing than bling. It was a small plastic ball and bat, attached by string and dangling around his neck. The bauble was given to him at a spring training game in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the Red Sox were playing a spring training game with the Houston Astros. The boy who gave him the trinket was 12-year-old Griffin Cantrell from Paducah, Kentucky. Mookie was the young boy’s hero and he wanted to show him how much he appreciated him. “Everyone asks for different things from players,” explained his father, Matt Cantrell. “He thought it would be cool if he could give him something for taking time out to stop.”¹²⁰

Mookie accepted the gift, gave Griffin an autographed ball, and posed for a picture with him. “It was really cool,” recalled Griffin. End of story. Well, not quite. Mookie took a genuine liking to the necklace and wore it almost continuously. Coincidentally—or otherwise—he also began the season with an offensive barrage. In April he batted .367 with eight homers and 18 RBIs. His slugging percentage was .797 and his on-base percentage was .457, giving him an OPS of 1.240. He continued his rampage in May, adding nine more homers and 19 RBIs while batting .372 for the month. An injury slowed him temporarily in late May and he missed 13 games, but when he returned, he gradually regained his stroke and the relentless assault on American League pitchers continued.

As the season wore on, people began to notice the new adornment and the way Mookie carefully arranged it during each at-bat. He was asked about it but couldn’t recall its source, so he put out a special appeal on WEEI for the secret giver to come forward. The mystery was solved when Griffin reminded Mookie of their brief spring training exchange.

Against all odds, the necklace somehow withstood the rigors of a major-league season—the swings, the brushback pitches, the diving catches, the head-first slides into second. Even Lloyd’s of London would have hesitated at insuring such a fragile objet d’art. In October, the good luck charm was still intact. Mookie also wore it as part of his everyday attire—to social occasions, and while relaxing at home. It had become part of him. “I just don’t take it off,” he told WEEI’s Bob Bradford. “There’s no way it’s going to break. I only take it off if I get my neck worked on, but other than that I don’t take it off.”

It received maximum national and international exposure during the World Series. When the Red Sox emerged victorious, Betts wasn’t ready to attribute any supernatural powers to the trinket. “It’s not necessarily a good-luck charm,” he claimed. “I just like it.”¹²¹

Traditionally, World Series champions are presented with rings and each year they seem to become larger and more ostentatious. Mookie’s ring will no doubt clash with his plastic necklace, but at the end of his career the ring—or rings—and the plastic necklace will no doubt have an equal place of honor in the Betts household. Who knows, he may even wear it to his Hall of Fame induction ceremony someday.

League and World Series championships aside, there were two postseason accomplishments by Betts that didn’t make the record books but that say a lot about the man. There was no sellout crowd to acknowledge it, but it revealed the real Mookie, the man behind the uniform. It took place late at night outside the Boston Public Library just hours after the Red Sox had tied the World Series at one game apiece with a 4–2 victory over the LA Dodgers at Fenway, a win in which Mookie had gone 3-for-4 and scored a run. If not for former Red Sox utilityman Lou Merloni, the incident might have gone completely unnoticed, but Merloni, now a WEEI radio personality, found out about it and spread the news. Betts and his cousin had been seen distributing hot meals of steak tips and chicken to dozens of homeless people outside the library. It was a cold night and they wore hoodies that kept out the chill and also served to make them anonymous. Some revelers passed by unaware of the identities of these two men supplying the meals. Most were gathered in cozy bars or at home with family to celebrate the win.

When the good deed made the news, Betts was genuinely surprised by all the fuss. Where he came from, people helped people, simple as that. When asked about it before Game Three at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, he shrugged. “I’ve been blessed with everything I have, and I might as well share it,” he said.

By December, much of the revelry had died down and the banquet season was in full swing. Before the offseason was over, there would be countless dinners and endless speeches where praise would flow like cheap wine. But Mookie was more concerned about giving back. Just days before Christmas, he presented brand-new bikes to a group of Nashville children. “You always remember your first bike,” explained Mookie. And when that bike is given to you by the American League MVP, it’s especially unforgettable. “It’s amazing just to know that you’re making somebody happy in some way,” Betts told Hayden Bird of Boston.com. “I just know that to see kids smiling and enjoying it makes me happy. I’m fortunate to be where I am and [I] just definitely want to spread the blessings.”¹²²

Another way Mookie pays it forward is to help city kids in Boston and Nashville get a fair shot at their own baseball dreams. “With baseball, I know there are a lot of kids who want to play ball, who are good enough to play ball and just don’t have that opportunity. I’m trying to do my best to make it happen.” Usually Mookie’s acts of charity are done in a behind-the-scenes, low-key manner. He has raised money for those unable to pay their medical bills and surgeries. “I just try to help where I can,” he told the Tennessean. “I was blessed with opportunities to succeed, so I’ve got to pass it down to the next person.” Little wonder he was named Tennessean Sportsperson of the Year. “Dreams have come true,” he added.¹²³

On December 22, 2018, before a Tennessee Titans home football game against the Washington Redskins, Mookie was honored as the “12th Titan.” Part of that ceremony involves plunging the Titans’ sword into the ground. He was told that in 2016, Nashville Predators hockey star P. K. Subban had doused himself in water before sticking the sword into the turf then ripping off his shirt and letting loose with a scream that echoed throughout Nissan Stadium.

During celebrations that followed the Red Sox’ 2018 World Series-clinching game, reliever Joe Kelly was in the midst of an interview when his two-year-old son, Knox, shouted “Mookie Betts” into the microphone. This is how an entire continent of baseball fans learned that the charming young man was a Mookie fan.

His father was dealt to the LA Dodgers in the offseason, but Knox wasn’t about to change his allegiance to the Mookster. He’d been mixing with the Dodgers players during 2019 spring training sessions and afterwards, in the middle of the crowded clubhouse, manager Dave Roberts asked him what his favorite team was, hoping to hear it was the Dodgers. Kids, after all, can be fickle, attaching themselves to people and things that are nearest to hand.

Knox didn’t hesitate. His answer was “Mookie Betts.” So not only is Mookie an MVP, he’s a one-man team.¹²⁴

Ted Williams would have loved Mookie Betts. He would have loved his intelligence, his patience, his compact swing, his bat speed, his quickness, his hand-eye coordination. He would have loved his desire to improve, his curiosity, his habit of asking questions and listening to the answers. He would have applauded his combination of power and average, his willingness to take a base on balls. He would have placed him in the company of Mays or Aaron, always with the caution that he must do it consistently over a long period. Ted would have asked him a hundred questions and Mookie would not only have known the answers but would have asked Ted another hundred of his own.

In Ted Williams’ Hit List, Williams went through hundreds of candidates before settling on the ones that fit his criteria of great hitters. Those criteria could have been written using Mookie as the prototypical Williams-style hitter.

Ted was like a little kid when he started talking about young hitters and often became animated, gripping an imaginary bat and looking out at some pitcher that had suddenly inhabited his mind’s eye. He did, however, have a definite bias towards players who could hit for power and average.

Ted left Pete Rose out of his book, as well as Wade Boggs, George Brett, and other hitters that many place among the all-time greats. At one point, he quoted his friend Mickey Mantle on the subject of Rose, saying, “If I hit like Rose, I’d wear a dress.” He also said that Dewey Evans’s stance made him “want to throw up.”

Would Mookie Betts be on Ted Williams’s Hit List if Ted were around to see him? There’s no question about it, although Ted would no doubt have cautioned that he has to perform at or near the same high level throughout his career. In the meantime, he would have put him number one on his personal on-deck circle and would have followed his career path with rapt interest.

Mookie Betts only had one game-winning hit in his first year with the Red Sox. He played in 52 games, drove in 18 runs, and scored 34. He made a splash. He contributed. He helped win games for the team, but he just had the one game-winner. It came, thanks to a grand slam. Plenty more followed—10 of them in 2015 and 14 the year after that.

August 29, 2014: It was a tough outing for Tampa Bay’s Chris Archer. He gave up three runs in the top of the first inning. The Sox had two outs and a baserunner in the second inning when an RBI double brought in a fourth Boston run. A walk and a hit batter loaded the bases. Bang! Betts hit a grand slam to left field. That made it 8–0, Red Sox. They didn’t score any more, but the Rays put up four as the game wore on. That made Mookie’s blast stand as the hit that won the game.

April 10, 2015: More than 41,000 packed into Yankee Stadium for a Friday night game. It started at 7:08 p.m., but at 1:08 a.m., the game was still on. Boston had a 3–0 lead in the sixth, but New York scored two in the bottom of the sixth, and then tied it up in the ninth. David Ortiz hit a solo home run in the top of the 16th, but Mark Teixeira matched it with a homer of his own in the bottom of the inning. The game wore on. In the top of the 19th, Xander Bogaerts singled, stole second, and advanced to third on a passed ball. There was one out. Betts was 1-for-8 in the game. And he made another out, but he made it count—he hit a sacrifice fly to deep center field. Bogaerts tagged up and Boston took and held the lead. Red Sox 6, Yankees 5, in 19 innings.

April 27, 2015: A walk-off single. Joe Kelly started for the Red Sox, and gave up five runs in six innings, three in the first and one run each in the third and fourth. Thanks to Pablo Sandoval, the Sox scored twice in the first and again in the fourth. They added another in the fifth, and then tied it in the eighth when Mookie singled, moved up on a single and again on a wild pitch, and then scored the tying run on a sac fly. In the bottom of the ninth, a strikeout and two singles put Red Sox runners on first and second. Betts came up to bat. The first pitch was wild, and both baserunners moved up. The second pitch was struck, for a single to center field. Game over.

May 5, 2015: Neither team scored for the first five innings. In fact, Tampa Bay’s Drew Smyly hadn’t allowed a hit. In the bottom of the sixth, Mookie Betts hit Smyly’s second pitch off the SPORTS AUTHORITY sign above Fenway Park’s Green Monster. There was only one more run in the game, for either side—Mookie Betts hit the first pitch of the eighth inning out, into the second row of the Monster seats. 2–0, Red Sox.

May 14, 2015: In the top of the fourth, Shane Victorino homered for one Red Sox run in Seattle. The Mariners moved a runner station to station and tied it up in the bottom of the sixth. Fernando Rodney came in to try and hold the Sox in the ninth, but Brock Holt doubled and Bogaerts sacrificed him to third. Mookie Betts came up and battled for six pitches, fouling off three consecutive two-strike pitches. On the seventh pitch, he hit a ball deep enough to left field for a sacrifice fly. As it happens, the left fielder dropped the ball so Betts reached base, but the Brockstar was the only one to score. It was enough.

June 21, 2015: The Red Sox racked up 13 runs before the Royals finally scored two in the bottom of the ninth. Two solo home runs (by Hanley Ramirez and David Ortiz) accounted for the first two runs. The third, decisive run scored in the top of the fifth—a two-run homer by Mookie Betts, with Sandy Leon on base. Bogaerts cleared the bases with a double later in the inning, but those runs were all gravy, as it turns out. Mookie had a double, a triple, and a homer in the game. All he needed for a cycle was a single, but it was not to be.

July 4, 2015: The Red Sox hosted Houston at Fenway Park on Independence Day. The Astros were comfortably in first in the AL West; the Red Sox were last in the AL East. Boston’s Clay Buchholz, though, pitched a complete-game masterpiece, allowing just one measly run in the top of the ninth. Bogaerts drove in Betts with the first Boston run in the first. Betts hit a sacrifice fly to drive in Shane Victorino in the second. The Red Sox added on four more as the game progressed, two of them runs Betts drove in.

July 11, 2015: One week later, still at Fenway, the Sox hosted the Yankees. Alex Rodriguez put the Yankees on the board with a solo home run in the top of the first. By the bottom of the seventh, it was 3–2, Red Sox. With two outs and a runner on second, Mookie greeted reliever Adam Warren with a triple to right-center, over the head of right fielder Chris Young, giving the Red Sox the run that made the margin of difference and won the game.

August 18, 2015: It was 7–0, Red Sox, before the visiting Indians scored their only run of the game. The Red Sox had the bases loaded with one out in the bottom of the second. Mookie Betts saw strike one from Trevor Bauer, strike two, and then seemed to have struck out on the third pitch. He started walking back to the Boston dugout, but was told, no, he’d fouled it off. He was fine with that and then hit a bases-loaded triple over the head of Francisco Lindor. The Red Sox won, 9–1.

August 21, 2015: Blake Swihart doubled in two runs in the bottom of the second inning. After a Josh Rutledge single allowed Swihart to go to third, Mookie singled to left field to score him. It was Red Sox 3, Royals 0 after two. Betts singled Swihart in again in the bottom of the fourth, but Kansas City only scored two runs in the game, so his second-inning single was the one that won the game.

September 7, 2015: The Jays scored once in the top of the first. The Sox scored once in the bottom of the second, twice in the bottom of the third, and twice more in the bottom of the fourth. It was a weak single to third base that drove in that fifth run. With a final score of 11–4, that one won the game. Mookie was 3-for-5 in the game, riding a 13-game hitting streak.

April 15, 2016: The Red Sox got three in the first inning. In the second inning, Christian Vázquez doubled off Fenway’s left-field wall. He moved up 90 feet on a groundout by Jackie Bradley Jr., and scored on Betts’s single to left. That made it 4–1, Boston. The Sox beat the Blue Jays, 5–3.

April 20, 2016: Bogaerts drove in one and Ortiz drove in two as the Sox took a 3–0 lead in the first. In the bottom of the second, Betts came up to bat with Bradley on second base. Betts, coming out of a 2-for-21 slump, hit a pitch from Chris Archer out of the park. Boston 5, Tampa Bay 0. The final was 7–3.

April 22, 2016: Two days later, with a 4-for-5 night in Houston, he was 8-for-14 over three games. He won this one, too, with a double to left field in the top of the second which scored Bradley. Betts scored on a wild pitch later in the game. The Astros went down, 6–2.

April 30, 2016: On the last day of April, the Red Sox were home again, and the New York Yankees were in town. Rick Porcello threw seven shutout innings and turned the ball over to a pair of relievers who kept the New Yorkers scoreless. All it took was one Red Sox run to win the game (though they enjoyed themselves, scoring eight times). That first run (and the second one, too), scored on a double by Mookie Betts in the bottom of the second inning.

May 15, 2016: With 19 runs total in a 10–9 game, it was—of course—the 10th run that beat the Astros. The RBI star of the game was Sox catcher Ryan Hanigan with four, and it was he who singled in the ninth run. Then it was Mookie Betts who tripled in Hanigan with the 10th. A few days later, Betts had five RBIs in a 9–1 victory over Cleveland. But not one of them was the game-winner.

May 24, 2016: Again, it was a sacrifice fly that earned Betts credit for a game-winning drive. The Rockies were at Fenway, and the run Betts drove in (Christian Vázquez, who tagged and scored in the second inning) was the fourth run in an 8–3 Red Sox win.

May 11, 2017: In Milwaukee, Boston got one in the top of the first. The Brewers got one in the bottom of the sixth. In the top of the ninth, with the two men on, Betts took a 2–2 pitch over the fence in left field. Kimbrel had already closed out the eighth. He struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth and booked another win.

June 16, 2017: Mookie Betts’s leadoff homer to deep left field in the top of the eighth broke a 1–1 tie at Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Drew Pomeranz had taken a three-hit shutout into the seventh, but with one pitch Brian McCann had tied the game. Will Harris relieved for the Astros. His first pitch was hit up and over the Crawford Boxes to give Boston a 2–1 lead, one that held.

July 2, 2017: First-inning RBI: Hanley Ramirez. Second-inning RBI: Mookie Betts singled, following Tzu-Wei Lin’s triple. The Blue Jays scored once in the bottom of the second. Perhaps thinking the game was a little too tight, with just the one-run margin, Mookie added a three-run homer in the top of the fourth and then a two-run homer in the top of the sixth. Now it was Betts 6, Blue Jays 1. He singled in two more in the seventh. All told, it was Betts 8, the rest of the Red Sox 7, and the Blue Jays 1. Last August 14, he had eight RBIs but no game-winner. On this July afternoon, he drove in eight and would have had the game-winner even if the Jays had scored two, three, four, five, or six runs.

July 16, 2017: In Boston, it was a day-night doubleheader against the Yankees. The Red Sox lost the afternoon game, 3–0, despite being given seven bases on balls. They won the night game, 3–0. Starter Masahiro Tanaka was Mookie’s victim, in the bottom of the third. Home run to left field. Two runs on the board. That was all it took.

August 16, 2017: Fenway Park patrons were a little despondent this Wednesday night when the St. Louis Cardinals scored four runs in the top of the second inning. The Sox got back two when pitcher Lance Lynn threw the ball away on a ground ball that Eduardo Nuñez hit back to the pitcher and saw a runner score from second. Then Betts hit a sac fly for the second run. In the bottom of the ninth, the 4–2 Cardinals lead was halved when Xander Bogaerts led off with a homer. A walk, a strikeout, and another walk put two on, but then Nuñez popped out foul to first base. Betts came to the rescue; on a 3–2 count, he doubled off the Monster, driving in two. Bradley had been off with the pitch and scored from first base, only because Yadier Molina had trouble corralling the relay, in the walk-off.

August 23, 2017: The four runs the Red Sox scored in the top of the ninth at Progressive Field sealed the 6–1 win, but it was Mookie Betts who drove in the second (and, therefore, winning) run of the game in the top of the eighth. Mitch Moreland had homered earlier. Edwin Encarnacion homered for Cleveland’s only run.

September 16, 2017: It was another one of those games on September 12; Betts had six RBIs, but not the one that won the game. Four days later, he homered leading off the top of the second at Tropicana. In the sixth inning, Benintendi reached first after forcing out Vázquez at second base. Benny was balked to second, then stole third and scored easily when Betts singled to left. The Rays later scored once, but it was the second one Betts drove in that had won the game.

September 20, 2017: Chris Sale (eight innings) and Austin Maddox shut out the Orioles, 9–0, pleasing the Red Sox fans who had flocked into Camden Yards. In the top of the fourth, Benintendi singled and Betts homered to left. That’s all it took to win, though Deven Marrero added a two-run homer later in the inning and Boston batters added five more during the course of the game.

April 25, 2018: Mookie Betts led off the game in Toronto with a home run to left field before the Blue Jays came back to tie it. In the top of the fifth, Brock Holt drove in one run, but in the bottom of the fifth, the Jays tied it. Then Yangervis Solarte hit a solo home run in the sixth to give Toronto a 3–2 lead. Holt got on base in the top of the seventh, and Betts hit a two-run homer to left to restore the Red Sox lead, now 4–3, which stood as the final score.

May 2, 2018: Just seven days later, Betts had another multi-homer game. The first was, again, a solo home run to lead off an inning, but this time it was the bottom of the fourth and it put a dent in the Royals’ 3–0 lead. J. D. Martinez slammed a two-run homer later in the inning to tie it up. Mookie hit another solo home run in the fifth to give the Red Sox a 4–3 edge. And then he did it again in the seventh—another solo shot, all three off Danny Duffy—to make it 5–3, Boston. Since the Royals got one back in the top of the eighth, it was Betts’s third home run that was the game-winner, 5–4.

May 22, 2018: A three-run Mookie homer in the top of the fifth inning turned out to be all the team needed to win, 4–2, at Tampa Bay. Rafael Devers provided a little extra insurance with a homer of his own in the sixth inning.

July 2, 2018: This was a game Rick Porcello will brag about for years. Playing in a National League park (Nationals Park in Washington), there was no DH and the pitcher had to bat. Following a single, a hit-by-pitch, and an intentional walk, three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (2013, 2016, and 2017) had two outs and faced the opposing Red Sox pitcher, Porcello. What happened? Porcello tripled and cleared the bases. Porcello’s hit didn’t win the game for himself, though. He gave up a pair of solo home runs, and later saw Joe Kelly surrender another one. In the meantime, though, Mookie Betts hit a solo home run to lead off the seventh inning. Porcello did get the win, and bragging rights for his prowess with the bat.

July 12, 2018: With the fifth and final run in the bottom of the fourth inning, the Red Sox had accumulated enough runs to beat the Blue Jays, 6–4 for their 10th consecutive victory. Toronto had held a 2–0 lead since the first inning, but Sandy Leon knocked in the first Sox run of the big inning, and then—on the 13th pitch of a long at-bat—Mookie Betts hit a grand slam over everything in left field to plate four more. It was starter J. A. Happ’s last pitch of the game.

July 27, 2018: The Twins took a 3–2 lead in the top of the ninth, but Devers led off the bottom of the ninth with a game-tying home run. In the 10th inning, Mookie Betts put one into the Monster seats for a walk-off win.

August 29, 2018: Those 11-run innings will more often than not win you the game. The Miami Marlins were in town and scored in the second, third, fifth, and seventh innings, for a total of five runs. The Sox had scored three times and were down by two. In the bottom of the seventh, they unloaded for 11 runs on 12 hits, without a home run. There was one Miami error and one intentional walk. Nuñez, Kinsler, Swihart, Bradley, and Betts each had two hits in the inning. Betts’s first, a double, drove in the run that provided the margin of victory.

September 3, 2018: In the top of the fifth, in Atlanta, the Red Sox scored first. And second, and third. The runs batted in went to Kinsler, Vázquez, and Betts. The single to left field by Betts produced the third run in an 8–2 win.

September 24, 2018: The Red Sox had already clinched the AL East, but a team needs to keep winning games in order to stay sharp. In the bottom of the second inning, Baltimore’s Dylan Bundy served up five base hits. Brock Holt and Vázquez each drove in one run, and then Mookie homered over the Monster to account for two more. The final was 6–2. It was Betts’s 32nd home run of the season, a career high. It was the third game in a row he had homered.

Mookie’s nine game-winning hits in 2018 help illustrate why almost no one tracks game-winners.

That season was also noteworthy for him for other reasons. He was an All-Star for the third time, won his third Gold Glove, his second Silver Slugger, and led the league in batting average, runs scored, and slugging. He won the Most Valuable Player award in the American League. What more could you ask for?

As was the case with JBJ and Benny, Mookie Betts—despite scoring 16 runs and driving in four—has not yet had a game-winning hit in postseason play.

A reported 1,271 players appeared in one or more major-league games in 2018. The single player with the greatest Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was Mookie Betts. He was ranked at 10.9 WAR, the highest mark for any position player since the 11.8 recorded by Barry Bonds in 2002.

Chris Sale was at 6.9, J. D. Martinez 6.4, David Price 4.4, and Andrew Benintendi 3.9.

The only two players in Red Sox history to reach 10.9 in WAR were Ted Williams in 1946 (10.9) and Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 (12.5).

The Boston Baseball Writers more or less concurred, voting him team MVP for three years running starting in 2016.

Betts is the only Red Sox player in team history to record 20 homers and 20 stolen bases for three seasons in a row. Only Jacoby Ellsbury (2011) and Mookie Betts (2018) have ever had 30-30 seasons.

Betts is the first Red Sox player since Ted Williams in 1957 to lead the major leagues in both batting average and slugging percentage.

Through 2018, Betts has hit 89 homers as a leadoff hitter, far eclipsing Dom DiMaggio’s 69 for the most in Red Sox history. Sixteen times he’s homered as the first Boston batter in the game.

Both on April 17 and May 2, Betts hit three home runs in a game. As of the beginning of the 2019 season, he has four three-homer games, more than anyone in Red Sox history. No major leaguer has ever done this before turning 26 years old.

He’s putting up some big numbers at an early age. He’s had four 20-homer seasons before turning 26 years old. Only Ted Williams, Tony Conigliaro, and Jim Rice have done that for the Red Sox.

In 2016, he scored more than 100 runs for the third season in a row. Only one Red Sox player ever did that before age 26: The Kid, Ted Williams. Betts scored 129 runs in 2018—that’s the most for any Red Sox player since Dom DiMaggio scored 131 in 1950.

Mookie is also a doubles machine. He hit 47 doubles in 2018, the fourth year in a row that he hit more than 40. The only other Red Sox player to do so four years in a row was Wade Boggs, who did it seven years in a row.

Speaking of the 40 doubles, and combining that with base stealing, Betts is the only player in major-league history to hit 40+ doubles and steal 20-plus bases in four consecutive seasons.

With 177 doubles since the start of his first full season (2015), he leads the majors in two-base hits.

He has been the leadoff batter in 461 of his 644 major-league games through the 2018 season. Batting leadoff sees a hitter start the game with no one on the bases, making it a little harder to collect runs batted in—though he has hit 20 first-inning home runs. He’s a .307 hitter with a .373 on-base percentage batting first in the order.

Ballplayers have lot of superstitions and phobias. They usually involve not stepping on the base line while running on and off the field, or an irrational fear of batting against pitchers with surnames like Ryan, Koufax, or Martinez. Some phobias are stranger than others and have little to do with baseball. Mookie once revealed to Katie Nolan of Garbage Time on FS1 that he has a fear of rust.

“I hate rust, it messes me up. It makes my skin crawl. I have to get away from it. It’s been this way pretty much my entire life. I don’t know why I don’t like it; if I see rust it just really messes me up.” He added, “It makes my skin crawl. I can’t sit right. I have to go and get away from it. I don’t know why.”

That’s one good thing about Gold Gloves and Silver Slugger bats. They don’t rust. Mookie now has three consecutive Gold Gloves as the best defensive right fielder in the American League and three consecutive Fielding Bible Awards as best defensive right field in the majors.

Fangraphs says he earned 83 defensive runs saved over the past three seasons (2016 to 2018)—the most runs saved by any fielder in any position in the majors.

One advantage he had is his speed afoot. This allows him, Fred Lynn notes, “to play a little bit more shallow and go back on balls and get them. You know, that kid can run. I’ve seen him play pretty shallow and dare guys to hit it over his head—and yet I’ve not seen them hit it over his head and keep it in the park. He snags those suckers. He has a pretty good idea of what’s going on that particular day, the pitcher, the batter, and the game situation.

“Dwight [Evans] played a little bit deeper unless there was somebody in scoring position and then he’d cheat in a little bit so he could throw them out. For arm strength, it’s Dwight. But in terms of foot speed, it’s Mookie all day long. Mookie does have a good arm, don’t get me wrong. He can throw; he gets his whole body into it.”

Whether it’s through defense, hitting, or a combination thereof, winning the game is the name of the game. On August 9, 2018, Mookie Betts had a very special night in Toronto. The Sox were visiting the Rogers Centre. With an 81–34 record, the visitors were riding high. But this night, they lost to the Blue Jays, 8–5. Mookie singled to lead off and scored the first of two Red Sox runs in the top of the first. The Jays tied it. He came up again in the top of the second and tripled, also to left field, but was left stranded.

The Jays scored once in the second and once more in the third, and held a 4–2 lead when Mookie came up a third time, in the top of the fourth. This time, he doubled down the left-field line, but was again left stranded. Now he had a single, a triple, and a double in the game. All he needed was a home run for the cycle. Not that one can just conjure up a home run any old time; in fact, he was walked the next time he came to bat. The Blue Jays held an 8–4 lead after eight innings. In the top of the ninth, with one out and nobody on, Betts banged out his home run, but there was no other scoring for the Red Sox.

He clearly enjoyed the trot around the bases, though, knowing he’d accomplished something very unusual—something he had never done at any level. “I had plenty of guys letting me know what I needed. We had fun with it, but we were losing the game and I wanted to do what I could to win the game, so I was just trying to get on base.”

When contemplating Mookie’s future success, it should be said that there’s nothing like healthy competition to spur a player to perform at his highest level (think Williams-DiMaggio or Jeter-Garciaparra). And for the Red Sox, of course, there’s no better competition than the players in pinstripes. More specifically, it looks like Mookie and Aaron Judge are the new faces of the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry. Given their disarming smiles and laid-back personalities, it may not have the outward intensity of Carlton Fisk-Thurman Munson or Jason Varitek-A-Rod, but fans of each team don’t care about such niceties. Heated arguments can be found on team sites across social media. What began with comparisons of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and has included such pairings as Fisk-Munson, Mattingly-Boggs, and Garciaparra-Jeter is now a battle of right fielders.

A recent ranking by MLB’s “The Shredder” promises to throw gas on the heated exchanges. In January of 2019, just as Mookie was finding a suitable place to display his 2018 MVP Award, The Shredder somehow concluded that Judge was the better player based on their data. Just to review, Mookie batted .346, hit 32 homers, and had a .438 on-base percentage. His Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was 10.9. Judge batted .278 with 27 dingers and a .392 OBP. His WAR was 5.5. Mookie also out-slugged the Gotham Goliath, .640 to .528.¹²⁵

Throughout the 2018 season, Mookie batted leadoff for the Red Sox. In January 2019 it was determined that he would be moved to second in the lineup, behind Andrew Benintendi. Mookie was taken by surprise at the move but, ever the team player, accepted the switch without complaint. “[Alex] Cora hasn’t put us in the wrong position yet so there’s no reason to start questioning him now,” he told Christopher Smith of MassLive. During a 35-minute phone conversation between the manager and the AL MVP, Cora laid out the reasons for the change. “He didn’t just come without facts and stats and everything,” Betts said. “That’s why he’s the best. Once he did that, I didn’t say much but, ‘All right. I gotcha.’”¹²⁶

As an occasional number-two hitter, Betts had batted at a .304 clip with a .360 on-base percentage and a .430 slugging average (.790 OPS) in 150 plate appearances at that spot.

Benintendi was also open to the move. “I mean you’ve got the MVP and he’s capable of driving in 100-plus,” Benintendi said. “And I think maybe hitting me leadoff and hitting him second will give him more RBI chances and some more chances to drive in more runs. But I’m looking forward to it.” He added, “I’ve hit leadoff before, and I’m going to try to set the tone like Mookie did last year,” Benintendi said. “It’ll be fun.”

In limited action at the top of the lineup through the end of the 2018 season (97 plate appearances), Benny hit .322 with a .381 on-base percentage and a .598 slugging percentage (.979 OPS). He also contributed five homers, seven doubles, and a triple. He promises that the transition won’t cause him to change his approach at the plate. “It’s essentially the same thing. You’re just hitting first.”