A Sea Glass Season (One Sixty-Two: Day 107)

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 One Hundred-Seven: Delmon Young, Minnesota Twins

The girls are all into sea glass. Prior to this week, they’d never even heard of the stuff. Now they’re collectors.

One of my parents’ neighbors introduced the girls to sea glass, which is basically glass that has been weathered by the ocean and sand so much that all of its edges are smoothed out, or “cooked.” Depending on the chemistry of the original glass, the color may have changed as well. This kind neighbor gave the girls a green-colored piece of sea glass, with a portion of the Coca-Cola logo visible on the smooth glass. My daughters were amazed at the way in which nature had taken something so sharp and dangerous and turned it into something so smooth and soothing to the touch.

The girls and the neighbor are apparently not alone in their excitement over sea glass. According to a story in last Sunday’s Parade magazine, individual pieces of sea glass sell for as much as $300, and sea-glass jewelry can run into the thousands of dollars. A sea glass expert has self-published a book on the subject and sold 85,000 copies, and a North American Sea Glass Association meets this fall in Massachusetts. The recession has apparently done no harm to the burgeoning sea-glass industry.

And so, on a sunny Friday in August, my younger daughter and I went on a sea-glass hunt. Chelsea and I walked along the shore until we found spots where smooth rocks and pebbles abounded. As we combed through the rocks in search of sea glass, Chelsea looked at my findings and informed me if each one was real sea glass or not. She has apparently become an expert over the past few days, so Daddy could keep only the pieces she approved. By the end of our hunt, we had a half-dozen pieces of tiny green sea glass, as well as one small brown piece. Chelsea was satisfied, and she made sure to check with me several times during the day to make sure I still had the sea glass in my pocket.

The Parade magazine reporter, Stephen Fried, says it takes 30 years for the physics and chemistry of the ocean to smooth out the edges of sea glass. In the larger world, there are many facets of life that also take some time to lose their rough spots. Personalities, sensitivities, work ethic, job skills, social development – all are areas of life in which many of us carry some pretty sharp edges with us. It takes a combination of maturity, introspection and the guidance to help us smooth out the surfaces. Sometimes, people need even more time than sea glass.

The Minnesota Twins have a left fielder named Delmon Young. Five years ago, when he was with the Tampa Bay Rays, Young was considered the best prospect in baseball. He was seen as the face of the future for a franchise with tons of young talent. But Young’s reputation took a major hit during a minor-league game in 2006, when he threw a bat at a home-plate umpire who had called him out on strikes. He was suspended for 50 games after this incident.

By the end of 2006, Young was in the majors, and the following year he put together a strong rookie campaign, driving in a bunch of runs and showing flashes of speed and power. But after a trade to Minnesota before the 2008 season, Young seemed to play like a man with a lot of sharp edges. His power dropped, he swung at too many pitches, and his overall production fell to the level of a mediocre outfielder. The Twins, to their credit, kept sending Young out there, but he was clearly adrift.

Then this season began, and the sea glass that is Delmon Young washed ashore. With two-thirds of the season complete, Young has already driven in 83 runs – 10 short of his career high. The 24-year-old has more home runs than he’s hit in any season (14), and his 34 doubles are fourth-most in the league. He’s striking out less often, and he’s making productive contact far more often than in any of his big-league seasons, with a batting average well above .320.

I haven’t had the chance to talk with Delmon Young, so I’m not sure what the elements are that have smoothed out his edges. But I do know that it has happened, and that the potential Tampa Bay saw when it drafted him first overall in 2003 is finally being realized. This has made Delmon Young a valuable commodity in the Twin Cities this year.

Now is he as valuable as sea glass? I don’t know – there’s no saying what someone will do these days for a cooked Coke bottle. But I do know that whether it’s glass or human beings, the process of smoothing out our rough spots requires patience and perseverance. And when it happens, and we can see the difference, it’s pretty hard to put a price on that.