Baseball, probably more than any other sport, trades on tradition. It's a game that's often first played -- and eventually watched -- by father or grandfather and son, passed down like a family heirloom, almost effortlessly linking generations.
Usually, that takes place in a backyard and a living room.
For one New England family Tuesday night, it played out on the lawn at Fenway Park.
Leading off for the San Francisco Giants was Mike Yastrzemski, patrolling the same position -- if in a different uniform -- as his grandfather Carl did, off-and-on, for 23 seasons of his Hall of Fame career.
On Tuesday afternoon, some five hours before game time, the two walked the patch of grass that connected them, linking them further. A camera crew from the MLB Network recorded it all, but it remained something of a private moment, shared across the years.
Beforehand, Carl, who is not given to showing his emotions or, these days, sharing his thoughts much at all, noted how proud he was of his grandson for having the perseverance to log parts of seven seasons in the minors before making his major league debut earlier this summer.
"He played 700-something games in the minors,'' marveled Carl, "and always kept telling me that he would make it someday. And it's finally come true for him. He worked hard, never complained.''
At 29, Mike will not follow his grandfather to Cooperstown. That's not the career path of someone who has rookie status at this stage of his career. But all those years, all those bus rides, that was never the point.
Mike was never trying to match what his grandfather had done. Asked Tuesday why he kept at it, even when it seemed like he was destined to remain stuck in minor league purgatory with the Baltimore Orioles, he didn't hesitate.
"Love for the game,'' he said, "just really enjoying showing up to the ballpark every day and I really had just fun being out on the field.''
All those years in one uniform, his grandfather had that same dedication to his craft, that same sense of professional pride.
It's easy to look at Carl's career numbers -- second all-time in games played, fourth in hits -- and assume that he was simply preternaturally talented, destined for greatness from the beginning.
But that was never the elder Yastrzemski's story. His career was borne of hard work, and with a somewhat slight build, he was largely self-made. He had the misfortune to follow Ted Williams in left, and three batting titles, an MVP, a Triple Crown and better than 3,400 hits and 400 homers later, never seemed to shake his shadow.
Mostly, Carl worked. He owed his 1967 season to a vigorous winter workout program, becoming one of the first major leaguers to concentrate on offseason workouts and perhaps the first to hire a personal trainer. From then on, the work never stopped. He wasn't above taking early BP in his 40s, and he was forever tinkering with his swing and set-up at the plate, eternally in search of the perfect adjustment.
Mike has followed that path, though on a different level: grinding away in the minors and working to find his swing. Alex Cora noted that he detected a change in Mike's swing this past spring -- one flatter and more direct to the ball. After being dealt to the Giants organization, then promoted with a chance to play regularly with a new organization, he's made the most of his opportunity.
It wasn't until the middle of high school that the boy began to understand that the man he knew as his grandfather was also a baseball legend. Later, what struck Mike most was how long his grandfather had done what he had done.
"When I turned 23,'' said Mike, "that was the kind of the big shocking moment because I realized for (the length of) my entire life, he had shown up to Fenway Park every day. That kind of blew my mind. I can't picture 23 years worth of major league experience.''
And like his grandfather, Mike has a stoicism to him, careful not to be overwhelmed by the highs or beaten down by the lows. Baseball is a game of failure and it takes an even approach to survive it.
Still, hours before his Fenway debut, Mike allowed that this would be an ordinary game.
"I don't get wrapped up in moments very easily,'' he said. "I think I've kind of trained my whole life to block out situations. But I think tonight, I need to take a step back and get lost in maybe one of the moments and let myself appreciate that and experience it. And then we get back to business.''
As if scripted, "one of those moments'' took place in the top of the fourth when Mike turned on a 96 mph fastball from Nathan Eovaldi and sent it soaring into the center field bleachers for the first home run at Fenway by a player named Yastrzemski in 36 years.
A Yastrzemski just homered at Fenway.
Can you believe it? pic.twitter.com/IaEhCDyhwF
— MLB (@MLB) September 18, 2019