Twins' Buxton streaks across C.R.'s baseball sky

CEDAR RAPIDS - Come a time in the not-so-distant future, people will brag about how they saw Byron Buxton play baseball in Cedar Rapids before he began tearing it up in the majors with the Minnesota Twins.

The Cedar Rapids Kernels have provided more good baseball in the first six weeks of this year's Midwest League than many previous Kernels teams did over five months. It's a team with prospects galore. But Buxton? Oh my.

Take Thursday night at Veterans Memorial Stadium. Buxton grounded an 0-2 pitch for a single in the first inning and then stole his 16th base of the season, but was retired on a routine fly ball and two bouncers after that.

His team seemed lethargic, failing to utilize scoring chances, and committing three errors in the first six innings. It looked reminiscent of the 2012 Kernels that went 53-86 instead of the team with the league's best record this season.

Burlington led 6-3 going into the bottom of the ninth. Bees reliever Jairo Diaz hit a batter with a pitch, gave up a double, and hit another Kernel. It was a gift-wrapped opportunity, and Buxton came to bat with the bases loaded and one out.

“Bux obviously was paying attention,” Kernels manager Jake Mauer said. “He saw (Diaz) couldn't throw a curveball for a strike.”

Buxton resisted Diaz's first pitch to him, a two-seam fastball that was low for a ball. He then sent the next offering, a fastball over the plate, out of the park and into the night. Everyone in the stadium knew it was a game-winning grand slam the instant they heard the sound the ball made coming off the bat.

Buxton was swamped by celebrating teammates at home plate. Shortly afterward, he got the goofy baseball tradition of a pie tin filled with shaving cream rubbed in his face by a teammate as he did an interview on the field.

The whole scene seemed like a moment out of “The Natural.” The 19-year-old seems to be just that.

The Twins didn't make Buxton the second player taken in last June's major league amateur draft and give him a $6 million signing bonus out of Appling County High School in little Baxley, Ga., because he was one-dimensional.

He is what is known in baseball as the five-tool player. They come around less frequently than walk-off grand slams. The tools are hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning skills and speed, throwing ability, and fielding ability. Buxton, a center fielder, has all five. Tom Kelly, who managed two world-championship teams for the Twins, says Buxton is the fastest player he has ever seen.

Through Thursday, Buxton was first in the league in hits, walks and runs scored, third in batting average (. 343) and RBIs (32), tied for third in stolen bases, and tied for sixth in homers with six. All this in his first full season of pro ball.

“I love it with a passion,” he said. “I wouldn't think it can get any better than this, just playing the game you love and it's also your job.”

Mauer may be the ideal manager for Buxton right now. His brother, Joe Mauer, was the No. 1 pick in the 2001 MLB draft and went on to become one of the game's biggest stars as a Twin. Jake Mauer, on the other hand, spent five seasons in the minors and never hit a single homer. (He does joke that he led the Midwest League in hit-by-pitches in 2002.) So he can relate to a gifted player while still understanding what that player needs to learn about the everyday grind of the professional life.

“There's no way to prepare for it other than doing it,” Mauer said. “A lot of these guys went through their first spring training this year. Denny Hocking, an old Twin, used to tell me the best way to get ready for spring training is just go stand in a hot field for six hours.

“These young guys are playing 140 games for the first time, figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's part of the process.”

Even phenoms aren't phenomenal every night. Buxton had a mortal 11 hits in his previous 44 at-bats before his ninth-inning heroics Thursday. But when that table was set for that at-bat ...

“It looked like he was ready for it,” Mauer said. “He expected it. He hit it a ton. A no-doubter.

“He's not afraid to be good.”

Before rejoining his teammates in the clubhouse after the game, Buxton signed lots of autographs for fans while the sides of his face were still coated in Barbasol.

“You can tell he was raised right,” Mauer said. “His family prepared him for what's going on here.”

“We raised him old fashioned,” Felton Buxton, Byron's father, told ESPN.com last year. “We raised him tough and made him respect his elders.”

Buxton wouldn't stand out if you saw all 25 Kernels stretching their legs in a truck stop parking lot in the middle of the night on a bus trip home from South Bend or Appleton. He's 6-foot-2, 190 pounds. At his rural Georgia high school, though, he was the center of the universe. He played quarterback, defensive back and punter for the high school football team. Witnesses saw him throw a football 82 yards.

He did some pitching for Appling County's baseball team, and had a 94 mph fastball. But he wanted to be an everyday player, and for good reason. You don't waste his kind of speed and pop as a pitcher.

Mauer says the kid needs work on his baserunning, knowing when to take the extra base, how to be a more-effective base-stealer. But, he said, “I'm nitpicking.

“For him more than anything, it's just getting that experience, preparing yourself to play every day, understanding what you've got to eat, getting your rest, that sort of thing.

“There's big expectations on him, without a doubt, with what his draft-status was and the start that he's gotten off to here. But he's the one guy you don't have to worry about the moment being too big or anything like that. He's a lot more mature than 19 years old.”

Buxton probably won't be here all summer. A promotion to Fort Myers of the Florida State League, the Twins' next step up from Cedar Rapids, may be imminent.

So see him here before it's too late. Even if he goes 0-for-4, in a few years you can say you saw Buxton in Cedar Rapids when he was just beginning his rocket ride.