Inching Toward Daylight (One Sixty-Two: Day 26)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Twenty-Six: Kyle Blanks, San Diego Padres

There are times when life just feels like it’s clicking. Work is going well. The family’s healthy and happy. We’ve managed to get to the gym lately. Heck, even the weather is great.

And then there are the times when it’s all off-kilter. The job is stressful, the kids are sick, there’s no time to even think of a workout, and, to top it off, there’s been no sun for days. You know the story: When it rains, it pours.

We duck our heads down and try to inch forward, ever so slightly, toward daylight. We trust that we’ll get there, and that those moments of grace will return.

Kyle Blanks is a 23-year-old baseball player, and he is a major piece to the present and future of the San Diego Padres. The left fielder has hit home runs throughout his minor-league career, and last year he smacked 10 homers for the Padres in a brief, late-season call-up. So as 2010 began, Blanks was handed a starting job for the big club.

And right now, a quarter of the way through the season, Blanks couldn’t hit a beach ball if you tossed one at him. His batting average stands at .157, and 46 of the 86 outs he’s made so far have come via the strikeout. If Blanks keeps this up, he will likely find himself back in the minors soon to work on his hitting.

I would imagine that every at-bat feels like it’s moving in fast-forward for Blanks right now, just as life feels rushed and dizzying to the rest of us when events snowball out of our control. We try and breathe deep, keep our wits about us, and watch that ball closely as it comes our way.

Kyle Blanks still has the bat in his hands, and there’s another game tomorrow. It’s sunny quite often in San Diego; that sun will find the young left fielder soon enough. It will all start clicking, and the hits will fall. Eventually.