Benetti: For Jacob May, story of hope continues in Charlotte
Baseball being timeless and all, it's rather shocking how much of the game 25-year-old Jacob May's experienced in the last two months.
On April 3rd, May's name was in the lineup, batting 9th. For the first time ever, he was announced as the starting center fielder for the White Sox. But rain made him wait 24 hours.
Approximately 460 hours later, on April 22nd, a full baseball game was played in Chicago that will be remembered only, maybe, by those who caught their first foul ball. And Jacob May, that is, who'd have forgotten it too if Melky Cabrera hadn't hit shaken hands with a railing.
In the 7th inning that night, with the Sox down for good, Cabrera ran from his left-field spot into foul territory to track down a foul ball. His hopeful reach to the crowd took his left hand into the metal barrier attached to the side wall. Cabrera finished the inning, but was pulled back in the bottom of the inning for May.
On the third pitch May saw from Carlos Carrasco, he rolled the ball to the right of second base and into center field for his first major-league hit. As May walked into the dugout, he took off his matte betting helmet, lowered it, leaned his face in and screamed.
0-for-26, gone.
The next day, in the Sox clubhouse, May said he sent the ball home with his mother because he didn't want anything to happen to it.
Nine days later, May singled Todd Frazier home in Kansas City in the fourth inning. May's first Mmjor-league RBI. There was no scream into a helmet. Just a postgame meeting.
Jacob May was gone. Sent to Triple-A Charlotte, where he'd spent 83 games worth of time last season.
Before he left the MLB Midwest for the Triple-A South, May got some advice from Sox catcher Geovany Soto.
"There's no secret to what any successful big leaguer is doing," May recalled Soto telling him. "A lot of people think 'Is there something they're doing that I'm not or do they have something I don't have.' At this level, everyone has the ability to compete up there."
A lesson Jacob May learned from the other side in Arizona not long before.
During spring training, Jacob May was one of two leading candidates as the 2017 Sox center fielder. The other was veteran Peter Bourjos. When Bourjos was traded at the end of camp, May - the self-described "underdog" in Arizona - was the de facto center fielder. His zero MLB games successfully competed with the 713 of Bourjos.
Now, just under two weeks into his return engagement in Charlotte, he's the purveyor of hope for others.
"Everything that I've been working towards is worth it," May said. "At times in your career you feel like you're chasing a ghost. I tell all these guys that have never been there … to keep working."
"Enjoy your time here. You only have a small window to play this game and you never know when it'll end."
On March 28th, Jacob May won the job he'd dreamed of. 25 days later, he had the trophy of many MLB dreams - his first hit. A week and two days after that, he was on his way back to the place where, sometimes, the dreams seemed distant and unreachable, now armed with the knowledge that they both are and are not.
• Jason Benetti is a play-by-play broadcaster for the Chicago White Sox, as well as ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @jasonbenetti.