In Phillips’s case, though, Goodwin accepts minimal credit. “He outworked everybody,” he said of Phillips. “He hit the baseball like Darryl Strawberry. All I had to do was make sure he didn’t get worse.”

Ask Goodwin for the reasons for Redan’s impressive, and unusual, baseball status, and he cites parental involvement as a significant component. One of those parents was James Phillips, who said his son Brandon was 13 when he decided to abandon other sports and concentrate on baseball.

“I got real angry at first,” he said. “He broke my heart. I was a football guy myself.”

Still, James Phillips kept pace with his son’s passion, practicing with him for hours at a time. They honed Brandon’s hitting skills in a church parking lot. When the weather turned uninviting, they repaired to a large room in the belly of the church for some more swings.

Nelson latched exclusively onto the sport even earlier, having hacked at pitches from his father, Daryl, as a 2-year-old. “Fastballs, curveballs,” the elder Nelson said. “I thought, I might have something here.”

“It was baseball all the time,” Goodwin said of Chris Nelson, remembering a small boy shagging fly balls and fetching bats for the high school team, which included his big brother. A pitcher and a shortstop at Redan, Chris Nelson had Tommy John surgery, nearly crushing his baseball ambitions. He and his father shed tears, then began waking before the sun rose to listen to Tony Robbins tapes that preached positivity. “We decided to make lemonade out of lemons,” Daryl Nelson said.

The ordeal might serve Chris Nelson well while he copes with a turbulent 2013 season. It commenced with him lodged in the Colorado Rockies’ lineup. He was sent down to the minor leagues and traded to the Yankees, who started, demoted and waived Nelson within a three-week span. He was then claimed by the Los Angeles Angels, where he remains.