FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Two college kids started in center field against the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night. Matt Cook for Northeastern University. Nick Colucci for Boston College.
Both are younger -- Cook by 5½ months, Colucci by 46 days -- than 22-year-old Mookie Betts.
Cook is a senior, majoring in business. The team's media guide says he hopes to be an entrepreneur. Colucci is a redshirt junior, majoring in sociology, his career path yet to be determined.
Betts is not yet four full years removed from his graduation from John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee, but his future is seemingly laid out before him. A month away from starting the 2015 regular season, Betts is the leading candidate to be the Opening Day center fielder for the Red Sox.
A job that was supposed to be up for grabs this spring -- Cuban Rusney Castillo and his $72.5 million contract vs. Betts, who at most will be making a few bucks more than the major league minimum of $507,500, may the best man win -- now almost certainly will belong to Betts when the Sox open the season in Philadelphia on April 6. Castillo was diagnosed with a left oblique muscle strain on Wednesday, and while the Sox have not laid out a timetable for his return, it would appear likely that the best-case scenario will require Castillo be given some extra time to prepare for the season.
Betts might have won the job outright, anyway, though the size of Boston's investment in the 27-year-old Castillo would suggest the Red Sox don't anticipate him spending the prime years of his career in Triple-A Pawtucket. Now, barring an injury or a spectacular showing this spring by Jackie Bradley Jr., who played Gold Glove-caliber defense in center last season but didn't hit (.198), the almost-sure bet is Betts.
A year ago at this time, Betts was a Class A second baseman in the Red Sox minor league clubhouse, about a 100-foot journey from where the major leaguers dressed. He wasn't invited to big league camp, though he was summoned as a minor league extra to appear in a half-dozen games. He had five at-bats, and went hitless.
Thinking of last spring, Betts exhaled. "It was fun and nervous and scary and all of it,'' he said, "to be up here with these guys. Nerve-racking.''
No one could have imagined that three months later, Betts would be making his major league debut in Yankee Stadium, at a position he'd never played, right field, in front of a crowd that included his parents, Willie and Diana Betts, and his fiancée, Brianna Hammonds, who watched from box seats in the second deck.
He was asked, these many months later, if he had wrestled with the same thoughts that so often cross the mind of a little leaguer reluctantly occupying right field: Hit it to me, or please don't hit it to me.
"It was kind of mixed,'' he said. "I wanted to catch the ball, make a couple of outs. But if not, I was fine with that, too.''
Betts singled in the fourth for his first big league hit, the ball rolled into the dugout as a souvenir by no less than Derek Jeter. He walked and scored his first big league run in the sixth. He dived and missed a line drive hit by Ichiro Suzuki that went for a triple in the fifth, then snagged a deep drive by Mark Teixeira in the gap to end the inning.
The Red Sox won, and while there would be two more return trips to the minors, a kid who had received as many scholarship offers to bowl (he was Tennessee state champion) as to play baseball was rapidly demonstrating what all the fuss had been about as he rocketed through the minors, hitting everywhere he played: . 296 in Greenville, .341 in Salem, .355 in Portland, .335 in Pawtucket.
In 52 games for the Sox, Betts batted .291. Nearly a third of his 55 hits went for extra bases -- a dozen doubles, a triple and five home runs. He drew 21 walks, bumping his on-base percentage to .368, and stole 7 bases in 10 attempts. To a Red Sox offense that had lagged badly all season, he brought energy and a promise of better things to come.
And there would be no more internal debates about whether he wanted balls hit his way. He adopted the attitude urged upon him by Shane Victorino, whose back woes had helped to create an opening for Betts and who had taken an instant liking to the rookie.
"Now, after being out there I want them to hit it to me,'' Betts said. "Talking to Victorino, he's helped me so much. He told me, 'Be a monster out there. They hit it to you, they're out.' That's the mindset I have now.''
There had been some thought entering camp that Betts would be competing with Victorino for the right-field job, since the veteran was coming off back surgery. But manager John Farrell ended that speculation by declaring at the outset of camp that Victorino, assuming he was healthy, was his right fielder.
"Everyone knows what he can do,'' Betts said. "He knows he should be playing. I agree he should be playing, and I'm taking a backseat. Just having an opportunity, maybe, to make this team is a blessing.''
Betts said he spent much of his offseason focused on weight lifting and getting stronger. Listed at 160 pounds, the 5-foot-9 Betts says he now weighs closer to 180 pounds. With his speed, disciplined plate approach and dynamic style, he is well-suited to be the team's leadoff man.
"I love it,'' he said. "That's where I hit my whole life. There's a comfort level. I'm perfectly fine with it. No worries. I believe in myself, those guys [the Red Sox] believe in me, so no point in going up there doubting or worrying about anything.''
That's the same way, he said, he was approaching the competition with Castillo, whom he has befriended, cutting up in their mix of fractured English and equally fractured Spanish.
"I just know I can go out and play,'' he said. "We're all going to go out and play, not worry about the rest of it, not worry about the stuff we can't control. We've talked about that we're just going to work and help each other.''