FORT MYERS, FLA. – C.J. Cron had the opportunity most kids dream of, but he let that pitch go by.
Cron was 5 years old when his father, Chris, a former major league infielder, began managing minor league teams in the White Sox system, and the youngster spent much of his childhood in dugouts from North Carolina to Alabama to Montana, alongside his dad. Inevitably, those teams would offer to let him wear a uniform and fetch bats after hitters dropped them.
C.J. said no.
"I guess a lot of kids love doing that, and I could have been a batboy," Cron said. "I said I'd rather keep score in the dugout during games. Might as well learn something."
Now that's a kid bred for the analytics era in baseball.
"He's very smart about the game, very calculating out there. He works hard and has a good understanding of what it takes" to succeed, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "He's a guy we see impacting us offensively — but I don't like taking anything away from his defense and his baserunning abilities because he lets me hear it when I don't mention those things."
Manager's son, see. He knows baseball is more than just hitting.
"Baseball is really all I ever knew. I mean, when I learned to walk, it was on a baseball diamond," said Cron, whose father is now manager of Arizona's AAA team, the Reno Aces; whose younger brother Kevin is a first baseman in the Diamondbacks' system; whose second cousin Chad Moeller had an 11-year career in the majors, including the 2000 season with the Twins, as a catcher. "The game just runs in the family. I knew it was what I wanted to do, too."