Buck up.

We’ve all been asked “Why baseball?” by that water-cooler set – ever dwindling in North Texas, happily – who complains that the game is too slow, that they play too often, that there’s not enough freakishly tall or freakishly fast or freakishly violent. That it’s just boring.

We each have a dozen go-to responses, some of which would be a waste of time on most of the skeptics.

But get the sense that the person asking is actually open-minded to the idea of digging in and embracing the Great Game, and you might riff on the part about the beauty of the minor leagues, which gives Kansas City and San Diego fans very good reason to be invested right now, which did the same for Washington a year or two ago, which had core Rangers fans fired up two years before the World Series came to Texas and the bandwagon got max-blitzed.

The minor leagues also give us license to take our minds off one out of four against Kansas City and Oakland at home, because sometimes even being a fan of the best team in baseball demands an occasional distraction.

So thank you, Cody Buckel.

Thanks for being freakishly awesome.

Jurickson Profar and I will see you in Frisco, soon enough.