FULLY LOADED Fernando Tatis Jr. does it all

Stop me if you have heard this before: Baseball is in trouble. The game has lived through more than its share of scandals, work stoppages, and demographic challenges. And that was just in 2020.

- KIERAN STECKLEY 

Major League Baseball needed as bad as ever for the 2020 season to get started. The New York Yankees, which love them or hate them, drive the national interest in the game and were primed for a World Series berth, something that hasn’t happened in a decade. Perennial power and recent World Series champion Houston Astros were caught in an illegal sign-stealing ring. Its fallout leftCommissioner Rob Manfred between a rock and a hard place of displeased fans and baseball personnel.

And all of this is on top of the usual lack of interest from the sports-viewing public, save for Trade Deadline Day and the postseason. Throw in COVID-19 and the ensuing league player's union battle for return-to-play stipulations, and baseball was a blackjack player in Vegas just trying to recoup its losses enough to buy a plane ticket home.

Baseball needed someone who attracts eyeballs without being a clown show. It needed someone talented, fun and unapologetically full of swag.

It needed Fernando Tatis Jr. And in 2020, it got all of him.

THE COME UP

One of the things that makes Major League Baseball unique to other American sports leagues is it thrives on anticipation. Die-hards follow their team’s top prospects through the minor leagues for years. Even the league’s bottom-dwellers maintain a certain level of interest.

San Diego Padres fans – and collectors, too -- had been calling for Tatis’ ascension to The Show.

And he did not disappoint.