Baseball gives us snapshots like this, one-on-one matchups within a team game, the chance for the shimmering future to stare down the proud past. So it was in Milwaukee on Monday when Jackson Chourio , the Brewers’ rookie outfield phenom, faced Clayton Kershaw , the Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching icon. Advertisement Chourio, 20, was four years old when Kershaw made his debut, also at age 20, in 2008.
It was exciting to face him, Chourio said later, because Kershaw is his father’s favorite pitcher. He flied out and grounded out in his first two at-bats, then ran the count full in his third. The next pitch was shoulder-high, easily ball four, but Chourio could not resist.
He reached up and swung hard, as if knocking a beehive out of a tree, and smashed the ball off the right-field fence. Chourio hit it so hard that he stopped at first base, right where he’d be if he’d taken the pitch. But the Brewers could not complain.
“To be able to get to that pitch and drive it, it kind of encapsulates what he’s about,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “To me, that’s that young talent. You can’t teach that kind of stuff.
” For that moment to be historically memorable – think of a 20-year-old Miguel Cabrera against a grizzled Roger Clemens, or a 20-year-old Jim Kaat facing the vaunted Ted Williams – Chourio needs another decade or so like his last two months. He’s vaulted himself into the fun, flashy field of National League Rookie of the Year contenders while hel.