The path.

For all the Juan Gonzalez-ness that Joey Gallo throws down, you read stories about Gallo spending his winters training with Jason Giambi, whose on-base numbers were more formidable than his power, and the picture gathers depth.

You read about Gallo “living in Adrian Beltre’s back pocket” in camp, as Mike Daly described it in a Monday morning MLB Network Radio interview.

About Gallo hanging around fellow lefty bomber Prince Fielder (nearly as much an on-base monster as Giambi was) as eagerly around the cage as he is around Beltre in the field.

About Gallo engaged in regular conversations with Michael Young about absolutely whatever Young wants to get across to the 21-year-old.

You read all those things, and you gain confidence that we’re fortunate not only that Texas engineered the first 10 rounds of its 2012 draft to go far over slot on Gallo with the compensatory pick it gained for the loss of C.J. Wilson, but also to have Gallo in a system where he’s gotten the coaching he has, and now has Beltre and Fielder and Young, along with Giambi, lining his path.

For all the patience that we need to summon up as far as Gallo’s arrival is concerned, there’s comfort in recognizing how much a kid like that can grow during finishing school, just by being around Beltre in the field and Fielder by the cage and Young anywhere at all, not to mention Giambi in the off-season, and I won’t even stretch to point out he took Greg Maddux’s daughter to his senior prom.

I believe part of what made Josh Hamilton so dominant in Texas was, yes, being embraced by an organization willing to take every step it could take to set him up for success, but also the fact that he got the chance to play for Ron Washington, and for all the sadness that clouds their careers today, nobody can deny their good fortune to have crossed paths. That was a fit.

I heard a talk radio discussion last week about how Monta Ellis and Tyson Chandler and J.J. Barea, for instance, have seen their games blossom — or even re-blossom — under Rick Carlisle. We all know what Johnny Narron did for Mike Napoli’s career. What playing with Young meant to Ian Kinsler. Beltre for Elvis Andrus.

If the Rangers’ Fall Instructs experiment with Ryan Cordell at shortstop is really something the organization takes into 2015 — an opportunity created in part with Jurickson Profar down and Luis Sardinas and Odubel Herrera and Chris Bostick gone — you can imagine how important it is that Cordell, in camp well before minor leaguers are expected to report, is getting to watch a rededicated Andrus get his work in.

There have already been reports that Young (“the work really gets fun for me when I get a chance to work with a young kid and help him out with his day and help him out with his career”) has stopped down with Rougned Odor and Michael De Leon in the last few days, and he’s spent time with Cordell as well. That’s awesome.

We’ll never be able to quantify how much any of these guys will have meant to Gallo’s development, or Cordell’s, or what Chi Chi Gonzalez can add to his polish by watching Yu Darvish work, and we don’t yet know whose career Jeff Banister will be indispensable to, but you see Young say, “I’m shocked [Banister] never got an opportunity before . . . he’s very hungry, very passionate . . . brings a lot of things to the table,” and then Phil Klein adds, “He says, ‘Why not us?,’ like people can doubt us, but it doesn’t matter . . . what it comes down to it is you’re there to win the day and get your work in, and let people say what they want to say . . . Oh, my God, I loved it . . . it gives you goose bumps” — well, me, too.

Leonys Martin has exceptional defensive and baserunning tools. Jayce Tingler, whose work with him started months ago, will help them play at an even higher level.

Banister is going to be great for Andrus. I think we all feel that.

Something, according to a whole bunch of local reports, has gotten into Darvish, and it’s all good. Banister has apparently looked his ace in the eye and said he wants him pitching inside more, and wants his starting pitchers as a group to lead this club in communicating better, and Darvish is telling reporters — in English, which is pretty cool — that he’s all in on both counts.

Darvish played for two managers in Japan (Trey Hillman and Masataka Nashida) and now two in the Major Leagues. You can say about dozens of Rangers players that they have the opportunity to take all the positives they learned from Ron Washington and blend in the things that Banister brings to the table — but for Darvish, who had no minor league seasoning stateside and thus has basically learned the MLB game from Wash and Mike Maddux, the idea of integrating Banister’s perspective and expectations into his approach makes you wonder whether it could help the 28-year-old take his elite game to a new level in 2015, as a pitcher and as a leader, the latter of which would give me more confidence that he’ll want to continue paving this path in Texas, in the form of his next contract.

The Rangers, set to face the Royals in the exhibition opener tomorrow, got an intrasquad game in on Sunday, and in it Darvish struck out two in a scoreless inning of work, while Anthony Ranaudo fanned three in his scoreless frame. It was a game that featured the three Ross’s getting work on the mound — Detwiler, Ohlendorf, and Wolf — though not Robbie Jr., who was traded five weeks ago for Ranaudo. Maybe the Rangers do for Ranaudo and the Red Sox do for Ross what Narron did for Napoli and Carlisle has done for Barea.

Actually, look back to Edinson Volquez for Hamilton and what altered paths did for those two in 2008. That’s not to suggest Ranaudo is going to go 17-6, 3.21 in the big leagues this season or that Ross will be that dominant in a bullpen role, but this isn’t Strat-O-Matic or FanDuel, and sometimes new coaches and new roles and new expectations do make a difference.

Ranaudo takes Ross’s number 46, which I mention only because I tend to spotlight a very specific uniform number this day every year, and 46 has a pretty light Rangers history, but today I’m 46, which gives me license to shoehorn, not that it would be unfair for you to suggest every day is Shoehorn Day in this space.

I’m not sure I’d say I feel older this morning, but I have felt older lately, for any number of reasons, and when Minnie Minoso passed away on Sunday, another piece of my youth was lost.

Pretty much all baseball cards were magic to me as a child, but few were magical as this one:

The back of the card described a “lined single to left field” by the man whose flawlessly classic baseball name, even to a wide-eyed eight-year-old, and the tremendously cool, tricked-up White Sox uniform he rocked were only the second- and third-coolest things about that card. Minnie Minoso was 53 years old when he rifled that single to left that I had perfectly imagined in my second-grade mind.

Minoso, who got into three September games in that 1976 season (one of which Bobby Jones appeared in for the Angels), had famously played big league baseball in the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, and the ’70s, and that was so cool.

When Minoso (who started playing in the Negro Leagues in ’46) turned age 46, he was seven years post-retirement — but five years pre-unretirement.

And nine years pre-unretirement, too. Minoso got into two games for Chicago in 1980.

And then one for the tremendously cool, tricked-up independent St. Paul Saints club in 1993.

And one for the Saints in 2003.

Seven decades of ball. C’mon. Does it get any cooler?

Minnie Minoso is gone, taking with him that little 2.5” x 3.5” piece of my youth, which probably makes me no different from baseball fans from any of three or four generations.

So yeah, feeling a bit older.

But just about every time I sit down to write, I end up feeling a bit younger by time I finish and click “Send.” I think the word “inspiration” means breathing life into something, and I don’t take for granted that you guys give me the chance to write things I want about baseball. I appreciate that a lot.

I appreciate the opportunity to stay close to this great game, any way I can.

I started doing this when Juan Gonzalez was having his career year and Michael Young was playing his first full season of minor league baseball, and I’m still doing it as Young’s post-playing path brings him back to the Texas Rangers, where he’s already impacting the paths Joey Gallo and Michael De Leon find themselves on.

And as the Rangers make preparations for an international J2 class that will be full of kids born after I first started emailing these reports out.

So, yeah, clicking “Send” doesn’t always make me feel younger.