My new favorite player

We miss more than you might think without having affiliated baseball in town.

I'll have Exhibit A today and Exhibit B tomorrow.

Exhibit A happened last week while I was on vacation. I had taken my 8-year-old daughter to Jackson, Miss., to see her grandmother.

While in Jackson, we took in a Mississippi Braves game. For $8 we had seats on the front row, ground level, by the Chattanooga Lookouts dugout.

The first inning ended with a Braves player flying out to deep center field.

As the Lookouts were coming in and the Braves were going out to the field, we saw the center fielder ambling toward us. He had the baseball he caught for the third out in his hand and gave it to my daughter.

Now all I knew about the Chattanooga center fielder was what I saw in a first-inning at-bat when he hit a rocket off Matt Harrison, one of the Braves' better pitching prospects.

So I remembered his name from his first at-bat - Jay Bruce.

Well, if you follow baseball closely, you know Jay Bruce as a first-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Reds. You know him as a participant in the Futures Game.

For my daughter and myself, we know him as a class/nice guy who is our new favorite player.