LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- The Arkansas Travelers play in an immaculate, little brick stadium just across the Arkansas River from the Little Rock skyline.

The few thousand fans who show up to the Double-A ballpark on a midweek evening tend to cluster on the patio down the right-field line, where they can sample an assortment of cold draft beers for between $3 and $5.25. It's a beautiful setting to watch minor league baseball.

Meanwhile, the old stadium, Ray Winder Field, sits abandoned out by Interstate 630 and soon will be in shambles. They just gave away the seats. The wrecking balls and bulldozers aren't far behind. Never mind that Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played there, that Ferguson Jenkins used to pitch for the home team.

The Angels picked up Mike Trout with the 25th pick in the draft two years ago. John Cordes/Icon SMI

One of the joys of baseball is that, just as the old memories start to fade, new folk heroes crop up in cities and towns all across the middle of America.

One of them has been creating noise out of North Little Rock for a couple of months. The scouts who aim their rented Impalas, Malibus and Camrys toward Dickey-Stephens Park have birthed rumors of a mythical talent roaming the Texas League. They speak of a teenage player with the size of an NFL running back, the speed to blind an umpire and flummox a defense and the baseball savvy of a major league veteran.

The No. 1 prospect in baseball is a boy among men and a man among boys.

If everything you read about Mike Trout, 19, sounds fantastical, if it raises the hackles of skepticism on the back of your neck, have a little patience. All this praise, thick as it may seem, comes from seasoned baseball professionals, guys trained to quantify talent, to ferret out weaknesses.

It comes from employees of some of the 23 other teams who had a chance to draft Trout two years ago and let him slide, all the way to the Los Angeles Angels at No. 25.

Professional admirers

The Travs, as they're called here, take batting practice more than two hours before game time, in an empty stadium, rap music pumping. If you want to talk to someone who sees Trout play every day, you have to wait until it's over, walk up the staircase, down the concourse and through a green metal door into the Arkansas clubhouse.

"I can't tell people what I really think because they think I'm insane," Arkansas manager Bill Mosiello said from behind his desk. "Now, they're probably saying, 'You were right.'"

Scouts send Mosiello texts about Trout all the time. Here's one he got last season, when he managed him at Single-A Cedar Rapids, just a few months after Trout graduated from Millville High outside Philadelphia: Maybe this is what Mickey Mantle looked like at 18.

One said: My only prototype for him is Rickey Henderson.

Another said: I've been doing this 40 years. I've never seen a kid doing what he's doing.