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Red Sox's latest star-in-the-making has talent to go pro in another sport: bowling

FORT MYERS, Fla. – At the beginning of every game, when the batter’s box remains freshly manicured, Mookie Betts grabs his bat by the barrel. With the knob end, he traces into the dirt a cross and two letters: EC. It’s his ode to his family, his friend and the sport at which he might be even better than baseball, which is saying something, because evaluators across baseball agree Betts is really, really good at baseball.

Mookie Betts has speed, hitting ability and power, as well as nuanced skill. (USAT)
Mookie Betts has speed, hitting ability and power, as well as nuanced skill. (USAT)

They throw around loaded words like “star” and don’t flinch. This is not the hype machine that churns into overdrive when a Boston Red Sox prospect arrives. It is the recognition that great baseball players come in all sizes, and Betts packing just 160 pounds onto his 5-foot-9 frame makes him no less worthy of the sobriquets generally reserved for Kris Bryant and other such leviathans.

Betts is a short-supply commodity: the skilled toolshed. Which is to say not only does he pack the raw, natural tools of speed and hitting ability and surprising power, he complements them with the skills of polished players, like an advanced approach at the plate and enough feel in the field to have seamlessly switched from shortstop to second base to center field over the last three years.

In the process, Betts went from a fifth-round pick out of suburban Nashville to a near-lock as the Red Sox’s center fielder and leadoff hitter opening day. He’s beating out the incumbent, Jackie Bradley Jr., and the Red Sox’s $72.5 million Cuban investment, Rusney Castillo, and he’s doing it after an offseason spent immersed in that other sport.

“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,” Betts said. “Five days a week, I was bowling.”

Bowling.

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Like forbearers Earl Anthony and Walter Ray Williams and The Dude, Betts loves nothing more than to roll. This is no idle pastime, either. Betts said he averaged around a 225 this offseason, the sort of number that, were he so inclined, might be good enough for the Professional Bowlers Association.

Betts caught the bug early, starting at 2 years old, excelling soon thereafter, jumping from alley to alley in Nashville to bowl seven days a week. There he met a man named Earl Carter, a friend of his mother’s and later a mentor. When Betts latched on to baseball, Carter showed up at his games, the loudest person in the stands, his cheering as delightful to Betts as it was obnoxious to the opposing team.

He happened to share initials with Etta Collins, Betts’ grandmother. She was the nurturing sort, the one who gave him his first grape. He loved it, and every time he eats them today, he thinks of her. When both of them died, Betts wanted to find a proper way to honor them. Thus, his carving in the dirt. He figures they’re looking down, seeing what he’s doing now, marveling at it like everyone else.

The Red Sox in particular are enamored of Betts, enough to end the conversation when Philadelphia asked for him this offseaso

Betts is expected to bat leadoff for the Red Sox. (Getty)
Betts is expected to bat leadoff for the Red Sox. (Getty)

n in a potential Cole Hamels deal. Not that they needed any particular justification this spring, though Betts’ 11 extra-base hits among 19 in just 42 at-bats, with just three strikeouts to boot, heartens an organization already teeming with offensive capability.

Sticking Betts atop this lineup at 22 years old – in front of Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, 18 All-Star appearances among them – is a particularly fine compliment, considering how easy it would’ve been to slot Pedroia there. Granted, Betts’ aptitude more than warrants it. Boston summoned him to the major leagues in late June last season with just 99 games above Class A. He proceeded to hit .291 with an .812 OPS. He walked in about 10 percent of his plate appearances and struck out in just 14.6 percent, which, when combined with his speed, fits the perfect profile for a leadoff hitter.

“There’s some things you just can’t explain,” Betts said. “I don’t know when I go up there what I do. I can talk about it all I want, but when I’m in the moment, whatever’s going through my head, I just don’t know. I can look back on it, but I don’t carry those things.”

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It’s no shock that Betts excelled in neuroscouting exercises the Red Sox ran on him as an amateur. Such tests try to quantify the It Factor that others identify when raving about Betts. Size among position players is not necessarily an impediment, but for Betts to combine speed and power and athleticism and patience at that size is anomalous enough that Boston wanted to use him as a test case.

And he could just be an outlier, a sample of one who happens to translate. Stars are stars that way, one of one, limited editions, incapable of replication, like a bowling lane with an oil-pattern slick different than every other. Mookie Betts joined the Red Sox last year, but he’s arriving now, ready, as always, to roll.

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