Benetti: Sox building robust farm system in the South
North Carolina's proud enough of the Wright Brothers that license plates in the state feature the motto "First in Flight" written below a light plane. The Wrights' famed takeoff happened a little more than a century ago not far from the Atlantic Ocean in the town of Kitty Hawk.
The White Sox's coming liftoff likely will originate, in large part, from a few hundred miles to the west in Carolina's Interstate 40/Interstate 85 corridor.
The Sox have four minor league affiliates considered to play a full season (at least 140 games). All four opened their seasons Thursday night. Three of those teams suit up less than a tank of gas away from one another in the Tar Heel State.
The Triple A team sits in Uptown Charlotte, making its home in the sterling new BB&T Ballpark, which could be considered a structural homage to Orville and Wilbur with its offensively convenient dimensions (it's 315 feet to right field). That's the challenge facing the bulk of the return for Adam Eaton as Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito make up 40 percent of the Knights' rotation. They're joined by infielder Yoan Moncada, MLB.com's second-rated prospect and the cornerstone of the Chris Sale trade with Boston.
The Advanced A club, the Winston-Salem Dash, plays in a newly expanded Carolina League (up from eight to 10 teams). Sox notables in Winston-Salem include last year's 10th overall pick, Zack Collins, who went 3-for-4 with two doubles in his Thursday night debut. The Dash - called such for both speed purposes and the hyphen in the city - also feature Luis Alexander Basabe, a 20-year-old outfielder from Venezuela who had 47 extra-base hits in 110 games last season at two A-levels with Boston.
The Class A Kannapolis Intimidators - about 30 minutes from Charlotte - are named for Dale Earnhardt, the fallen No. 3 of stock-car fame who, before his passing, bought a share of the team. The rotation in Kannapolis is intriguing. It includes Alec Hansen, the 2016 2nd-round pick who was discussed as a possible first overall pick before a rough final year at Oklahoma. Kannapolis also will start Dane Dunning, a former Florida right-hander who was part of the Eaton trade and drafted 29th overall last June.
The only team outside Carolina is Double A Birmingham, where the locals still talk about Bo Jackson's 1991 rehab assignment. Birmingham is where professional radar gun recalibrator Michael Kopech begins the season. He's the right-handed starter who you might have seen throwing an "underload" baseball 110 mph on the internet this winter.
Every day for the foreseeable future, there will be dispatches from the South that excite Sox fans. There will also be reasons to want the progress to accelerate. North Carolina's minor league history offers solace for those tough times. In 1993, the ham-handed 19-year-old shortstop for the Greensboro Hornets committed 56 errors in 128 games. Two years later, he made his major league debut behind Jack McDowell in pinstripes. Thank goodness the Yankees weren't alarmed by Derek Jeter's bumpy teens.
As Wilbur Wright said, "It is possible to fly without motors, but not knowledge or skill." Sox fans can follow robust talent gain expertise in four separate places, three of which happen to be in North Carolina, a state whose recent champion university launched Chicago's greatest athlete in a generation.
• Jason Benetti is a play-by-play broadcaster for the White Sox, as well as ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @jasonbenetti.