Long before Danny Mendick rose up and met the moment of his baseball career in 2022, before he broke into the big leagues as a September call-up in 2019, before the White Sox decided he was worth a 22nd-round draft pick in 2015, before a brand-new Division I college program offered him a partial scholarship heading into his junior year in 2013, there was the unforgettable pro day at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York.
Pro scouts came to campus to look at, well, whoever might be worth looking at. It turned out that five Tribunes baseball players hit, fielded and ran — chased their dreams — in front of the scouts that day, but Mendick, a smallish sophomore infielder from the area, wasn’t one of them.
