With Major League Baseball facing its single-most difficult challenge in its glorious 151-year history, and with the 2020 regular season in (very) serious danger of being canceled, Dodgers – and baseball – fans have only memories to fall back on (and sportswriters to write about) to keep their sense of sanity; most recently, their memories of just-canceled Spring Training 2020.

Rather than harping on the endless – albeit very real – negativity associated with the current coronavirus pandemic facing the entire world and its impact on professional and amateur sports, how about we look back on the 18 Spring Training games that the Dodgers did play and pick out our favorite memories from those games?

Although this is very much an individual thing and everyone has their own special memories from those 18 games, it’s hard – if not impossible – to not consider previously unknown (or at least little known) minor league outfielder Cody Thomas as being the Dodgers 2020 Spring Training MVP.

All the 25-year-old Colleyville, TX native and Dodgers 13th-round draft pick in 2016 out of the University of Oklahoma did in his 12 Spring Training games and 22 at-bats was post an alien-like .318 / .333 / 1.091 / 1.424 slash line, score five runs, drive in 11 runs, while hitting one triple and a Cactus League-tying five home runs.

What makes Thomas’ five home runs all the more memorable is that he hit two of them against the Colorado Rockies on February 29 at Salt River Fields … in the same inning!

Thomas also made what was arguably the single greatest defensive play of the Spring with his leaping over-the-wall catch to rob Chicago White Sox outfield prospect Blake Rutherford of an absolute would-have-been game-winning home run.

So what about you? What is your favorite Spring Training 2020 memory?

Be Wise – Sanitize

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