In a lengthy Sports Illustrated profile well worth reading, Tom Verducci shares some details of Giants ace Madison Bumgarner’s life growing up in rural North Carolina. There are too many good details to list here, but among them:

Before he dated [his wife] Ali, he dated a girl named Madison Bumgarner (“No relation, I’m sure of it”)….

Kevin Bumgarner lives across the street from the Center Grove Baptist Church on Deal Mill Road in Hudson. In the cemetery adjacent to the church is buried an Adam Bumgarner. And a Barbara Bumgarner. And a Calvin Bumgarner, and a Delia Bumgarner, and on and on and on. Of the 305 interments in Center Grove Baptist Cemetery, 55 are Bumgarners, beginning chronologically with Michael Lee Davidson Bumgarner, who was born in 1832. His father, Thomas, was born in 1810 and is buried in nearby Granite Falls, one of 192 Bumgarners buried in Caldwell County. So many Bumgarners took root here that this stretch of Deal Mill Road came to be known about a hundred years ago as Bumtown. In addition to the Madison Bumgarner he dated at South Caldwell High, there is another girl named Madison Bumgarner enrolled now in the school.

You have to figure some enterprising teams are going to be doing a lot more scouting in Caldwell County, N.C. now that GMs know there are several Madison Bumgarners walking around.

Bumgarner also once killed a rattlesnake and saved a baby jackrabbit it had already swallowed. Again, read the whole thing.