Local Boy Makes Good? Marlins

[nanwynn]

Yesterday, working out in our local gym, I overheard a group of young guys [19-22] talking with a senior citizen about a friend "getting his big shot" on Friday, July 11.

Turned out it's local lad Chris Volstad who'll make his first Marlins' start tomorrow, so this ole local will be rooting.

[nanwynn]

Game start is tonight @ LA so start time will be @ 10:40 PM, EDT.

[nanwynn]

Wow! Chris Volstad goes into the 9th with a 3 hit shutout at LA. Has 87 pitches to here.

Single; K; ground out 4-3. Single, run scores = 3-1. They go to bullpen.

8 2/3 IP; 5 hits 1 run [earned]. Kent flies out to right. Final : 3-1.

Nice start for the Palm Beach Gardens 21 year old.

[jtur88]

Palm Beach Gardens is not the kind of place where I expect "natives" to regard somebody as a home-town boy.

[Zen653]

I hate it when managers pull a starting pitcher just one out shy of a complete game. I'm not sure why it bothers me, given the paucity of complete games these days, but I simply enjoy watching a starter finish what he started. I'm always impressed whenever someone goes all 8 or 9 innings.

Volstad had an excellent opportunity to pitch a complete game in his major league debut. Instead, it goes down as just another start. Too bad his manager panicked and didn't let the guy finish his own game.

[nanwynn]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Palm Beach Gardens is not the kind of place where I expect "natives" to regard somebody as a home-town boy.

Why not?

My wife and I are native New Yorkers. I'm from Queens [Astoria, East Elmhurst/Jackson Heights, Flushing, East Northport], my wife born in the Bronx.

We moved to Palm Beach Gardens in 1989, a town that had already been started by huge landowner John D. MacArthur some years before. We selected PBG, having shopped around for a few years before my retirement. Chris Volstad is a native son, just 21 years old.

Home is where the heart is.

As to Chris getting yanked at 8 2/3 innings, the broadcasters made it clear that the Marlins' manager was both trying to conserve his 21 year-old while giving him every opportunity to rack up a CG and/or shutout.

When Volstad lost the shutout AND passed 100 pitches, he opted to go the conservation route.

[jtur88]

I suppose it is considered remarkable that somebody actually came from there and made good, as compared with the renowned residents who settled there including Scott Carpenter, Gary Carter and Serena Williams. And being from NYC, famous people who came from there do not attract very much attention as home-town boys, unless they grew up on your block. But as a kid who grew up in a small century-old farm town (15 miles from Addie Joss' hometown), and whose father grew up in Mark Twain's home town, the concept of 'home town boy makes good' has a rather different luster.

I have a cousin who lives about 3 miles east of you, and I can't imagine anybody in his neighborhood even knowing each other, much less thinking of anybody as a home town boy.

This is not to put you down or diminish your sense of pride, by the way. Only to contrast how people from different social envorinments can hava a differenct sense of the meaning of home-town. I only moved to this town a year ago, and I have a sense of pride that it is the hometown of Doug Drabek and Ron Gant. (Drabek's son was just chosen in the '08 draft)

[nanwynn]

Originally Posted by jtur88

I suppose it is considered remarkable that somebody actually came from there and made good, as compared with the renowned residents who settled there including Scott Carpenter, Gary Carter and Serena Williams.

You know, your oracular pronouncements on trivial, mundane topics, like a PBG's kid having a great debut as a starter in MLB. and whether he qualifies as "home grown" in the eyes of a transplanted, older NY-er, are hardly worth the effort of response.

Do you feel it necessary to begin a recitation of the Palm Beach Gardens celebrity white pages to document your familiarity with "Our Town?"

And being from NYC, famous people who came from there do not attract very much attention as home-town boys, unless they grew up on your block.

Not really. NYC, going back generations, has always taken on a "small town" countenance as kids made good from miles and boroughs away, like Patsy Kelly in the 1920's and 1930s [my Dad's generation]; or Billy Loes, Johnny Antonelli, Carl Yastrzemski, [my own]; and on and on, people who relate well to young hopefuls are very adaptable to small town referents in rooting for "locals."

But as a kid who grew up in a small century-old farm town (15 miles from Addie Joss' hometown), and whose father grew up in Mark Twain's home town, the concept of 'home town boy makes good' has a rather different luster.

Is that a virtual reference? Or may we presume you refer here to your own family tree? Does the above serve as a template for acceptable boundaries?

I have a cousin who lives about 3 miles east of you, and I can't imagine anybody in his neighborhood even knowing each other, much less thinking of anybody as a home town boy.

Then speak for him only and your experience from visiting there. The "home town" is defined by the "boy;" so the thread IS about a home town boy from Palm Beach Gardens.

Some of us transplants feel right at home with our adopted roots.

Bottom line: Keep it simple.

P.S. Your last paragraph disclaimer does not erase the condescending "remarkable" followed by the supposed uprooted nature of the entire town ... nothing worth much here but transplants. It just proposes to be rather deeper than the subject at hand, a local kid making good and a transplant being tickled about it.