Maybe Switching Positions Will Help Dom Brown, Hope Phillies

We just talked about how refreshing and wonderful Roy Oswalt is, so let’s talk about how downtrodden and emotionally destroyed Domonic Brown is.

"“I experienced a lot. This is the first time in my career I really had to deal with a lot of failure. I’m learning how to cope with that. It’s just trying to stay positive and learn as much as I can.”—Dom Brown"

Moving from right field to left field may not seem like that big a deal.  For instance, I was once forced to make the move in the middle of a game.  It turned out the dramatic waving and shouts coming from my coach meant he wanted me out of the game, not that he wanted me to move to left field, as the left fielder tried desperately to explain.  Needless to say, the next eight balls went to right, where I did not go to them, because I was now the co-left fielder.

“Failure” is a rough emotion to go through alone.  Fortunately, I had another left fielder to go through it with me.  But Dom isn’t as lucky and incompetent as I was as a Little Leaguer.  And although I may not have been failing by myself, my co-failer in that situation was screaming and sobbing the whole time, claiming his father had come to see him play for the first time and by ruining the game I was also ruining his life.

Is Dom Brown’s life ruined?  Not yet.  He has plenty of time to repair the damage he and the Phillies did to him by slumping tragically and keeping him on a roster with no plans to actually use him.

So it makes sense for him to spend two weeks in an instructional league, followed by an offseason when he can go through a magical metamorphosis in which he goes from young, inexperienced letdown to righteous, unstoppable phenom with the pure, raw talent of a baseball legend.