The inside of a baseball consists of three layers of wool wrapped around a cork center, about 219 yards of gray and white four-play and three-ply yarn wound so tightly that it resembles a long piece of thread. At times in 2021, it seems that fabric has symbolically unraveled like the sport itself, with all the talk of spin rates, grip substances and how to combat this wave of cheating run amok that has led to historic rates of strikeouts and low batting averages.
Baseball always finds a way to rescue itself, however, and Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Shohei Ohtani are providing the antidote to our pitch-grip poison. They are the story of 2021: two sons of former major leaguers and the other a son of an outfielder who topped out in a corporate-sponsored non-professional league in Japan.