If you don’t know the name Ariel Antigua, chances are you know something about him. He’s a 5-year-old precocious baseball player! No? OK, he’s the one who can mash 85-mph heat, the one whose slugging was showcased in a viral video, the one who prompted reels of a 4-year-old and then a 3-year-old. That must ring a bell. Well, now, he’s also the focus us a long story by Thomas Lake in this week’s Sports Illustrated. The piece is pretty fantastic, and if SI decided its cover not by newsstand sales potential but on editorial merit, I would think that Ariel Antigua would be very much an SI cover boy.  Instead of blindly lionizing the kid or, worse, pretending to perceive his essence after following his family for a few days, Lake writes himself into the story, which becomes a chronicle of a certain kind of family life and, generally, the mere circus of being a baseball sensation. It’s also a story about being 5 years old.

If you don’t know the name Ariel Antigua, chances are you know something about him. He’s a 5-year-old precocious baseball player! No? OK, he’s the one who can mash 85-mph heat, the one whose slugging was showcased in a viral video, the one who prompted reels of a 4-year-old and then a 3-year-old. That must ring a bell.

Well, now, he’s also the focus us a long story by Thomas Lake in this week’s Sports Illustrated. The piece is pretty fantastic, and if SI decided its cover not by newsstand sales potential but on editorial merit, I would think that Ariel Antigua would be very much an SI cover boy.  Instead of blindly lionizing the kid or, worse, pretending to perceive his essence after following his family for a few days, Lake writes himself into the story, which becomes a chronicle of a certain kind of family life and, generally, the mere circus of being a baseball sensation. It’s also a story about being 5 years old.