The yells for “Daddy” were in the background, a sweet reminder that James and Jessica McCann don’t get one minute off with twins Christian and Kane scrambling to get into anything and everything.
The interview in the final week of McCann’s offseason was tough coming together. It was packing time as spring training for the Chicago White Sox in Glendale, Ariz., was about to begin.
One potential phone call was canceled by mutual agreement because an Ozark day turned out unseasonably warm and James insisted that the reporter take advantage with a fly-fishing outing. Another was wiped off the books when Jessica went shopping to prepare for the trip to spring training.
“I’ve got solo duty with the twins for two hours,” James said. “It’s all I can handle. You just chase them for two hours. They love to get in the fridge or the pantry. They just get everything out.”
No doubt.
The interview finally came together as mom and dad went to the gym.
“We work out in shifts,” James said. “I went first and now we are switching cars and I’m taking the twins home.”
So as he sat in the parking lot at the gym with the twins strapped in car seats, McCann delivered another in a long line of wonderful updates, the kind that continue to make him one of my all-time favorite Razorbacks.
As any of his teammates and coaches will detail, McCann is the complete package. He’s got a great, 6-3, 225-pound frame, a cannon for a right arm (hence, his MLB nickname of McCannon) and all of the character traits, smarts and intangibles that probably will make him a manager some day.
We talked about the twins, 26 months old. An update is always required for these “miracle babies," who were born 10 weeks premature. They spent the first two months of their lives at the hospital as their lungs matured.
“Christian was 3.2, Kane 2.8,” their father recalled their birth weights. “Jan. 26 was the 2-year anniversary from when they came home.”
They were born in Nashville, Tenn., just after James and Jessica relocated to nearby Franklin to be close to her home in southern Kentucky.
Franklin was picked when they learned that twins were on the way.
“We’d been thinking of relocating (from Fayetteville), but when we knew it was going to be two, we knew she was going to need help from family,” he said. “Logan Forsythe had been telling us about Franklin and it made a lot of sense.
“Logan was working out with us when I was at Arkansas, then we had two offseasons together there. We get along and push each other. We have a solid group of six to 10 MLB guys with us every day.”
Forsythe, 33, will be trying to make a MLB team for the 10th season. He played in the World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and has logged time with four other teams. He signed a minor league contract with the Philadelphia Phillies in the offseason.
A Memphis product, Forsythe had been trying to talk McCann into a Tennessee move for several years.
“This is a good place to live and with a major airport, it makes it easy for Jessica to get to where I’m playing, or family to come to visit,” McCann said. “It’s worked out.”
Yes, it makes perfect sense. Everything with McCann usually does.
It finally did at the plate, at least for the first half of last season when McCann turned into an All-Star catcher in his first season with the White Sox.
It made no sense that the Detroit Tigers turned him loose after the 2018 season in one of those inevitable cost cutting measures bad teams experience. McCann is a glue guy, invaluable in the clubhouse and with young pitchers. Why the Tigers didn’t want that is still strange.
The White Sox signed McCann for $2.5 million, one of the great bargains of 2019. He recorded career bests in homers (18), hits (120) average (.273), RBI (60) and runs (62).
McCann’s first half was spectacular. He hit .356 in April and May, then finished the first half at .316. There was a .173 July, but he was solid in the last two months and finished at .226 for the second half.
It was enough for the White Sox – with high praise for the work he did with the pitchers – to give him a one-year contract for $5.4 million. And, that was just after they signed Yasmani Grandal, another all-star catcher, to a four-year, $73 million deal.
That the Sox wanted both might be difficult to understand. Obviously, you can’t play two all-star catchers at the same time. Manager Rick Renteria told McCann not to worry. It will work itself out.
McCann is not one to worry about things he can’t control. It’s just his nature.
“It did catch me off guard,” McCann said. “I thought I’d potentially found my long-term team.
“I don’t know how it’s going to play out. That’s fine. That’s not in my control. There are a lot more things I can control.
“I’m a firm believer everything happens for a reason. I didn’t understand why the Tigers didn’t want to pay me, but it led to me becoming an all-star. God has a plan for me.”
That’s the kind of thing I’ve heard from McCann since he arrived on campus at Arkansas in the fall of 2008. It was then, the fall of McCann’s freshman year, that hitting coach Todd Butler bluntly described him as “a future big leaguer.” He was the regular catcher by the time the Hogs reached the 2009 College World Series, beating out senior Ryan Cisterna, a good receiver.
The White Sox picked up Dallas Keuchel in the offseason. Keuchel, a former Cy Young Award winner, was the ace of the Arkansas staff in 2009, picking up two victories in the CWS.
“I didn’t catch Dallas for most of that year,” McCann said. “Cisterna was the Friday night catcher. I’d play on Saturday or Sunday. But I did catch Dallas at Omaha when when he came into the Virginia game, the one we won in extra innings.”
McCann also caught future big leaguers Drew Smyly and Mike Bolsinger that night in Omaha.
Keuchel and McCann are excited to be back together. It was no fun to play against each other. It was probably less fun for Keuchel than McCann.
“I don’t know my career average against Dallas, but I think it might be pretty good,” McCann said. “I did hit a grand slam.”
McCann is not one to trash talk, or make big predictions, although he thinks the Sox are going to be good.
“I didn’t send him a text on that one, but he did send one to me that night,” McCann said. “It said, ‘You are welcome.’ It was fun.
“I’m excited he’s with us and I think we have really good potential to be good. I think it will be a fun season.”
McCann’s 2019 was plenty fun. He’s been solid in many ways in six MLB seasons, but there was a jump last year.
“It was by far my best year,” he said. “It went from the lowest of lows; when the Tigers said they didn’t want to pay me, then, going to the Sox and playing in the All-Star game.”
McCann’s start was so hot Renteria soon put him in the clean-up spot behind Bobby Abreu.
“If you told me I was going to be their clean-up hitter, I would have laughed at you,” McCann said. “It was pretty strange to look at that lineup card and see your name fourth.
“No one told me. It was just there that first day when I looked at the lineup card. But it really didn’t matter at that point whether I was hitting eighth, fourth or first. I was just trying to be consistent and no matter the situation.”
Without question, McCann was a different hitter in 2019. He knew late in the 2018 season that he needed to make some changes. His average dipped to .220, a career low.
“Even before the Tigers let me go, I started to figure out what I needed to do,” McCann said. “I spent two months in the offseason watching video.”
What he saw was “not myself. I was trying to be someone else.”
Playing with power hitters Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez in Detroit might have gotten him into bad habits.
“I watched those super stars and got away from me,” he said. “I tried to do things like them. I’m not them. I had to be James McCann and do the things I’d done in the minors.
“I opened my stance, got my hands back and stayed to the big part of the ball park.”
The big leagues have gotten to be about elevating the fly ball for more home runs.
“I tell people line drives eventually turn into home runs,” he said. “They did for me.”
And, it turned into a trip to the All-Star Game that just kept getting better. McCann turned in the key plays at the plate and on defense to spark the American League to a 4-3 victory.
McCann’s eighth-inning single was in the middle of the AL rally for the lead. He made a diving catch of a pop foul with two NL runners in scoring position in the eighth inning.
“My all-star experience is something I’ll remember forever,” McCann said. “It was the best two days you could have. Getting to play in the game was a dream come true. The hit was a dream come true. The diving catch is something you dream about as a kid.
“There were just great memories everywhere. MLB does such a great job of taking care of family, so everyone was there. The home run derby was full of memories. Sitting on the top step of the dugout with my boys was great.
“They are too young to remember it, but we’ve got all of these pictures of future Hall of Famers holding them. They will see them some day.”
Right now, it’s still about Christmas in February with the twins.
“It was a great Christmas,” McCann said. “And, they are still singing Rudolph and saying 'ho-ho-ho.' It’s a fun age.”
Everyone is going to Arizona, a great place for spring training. They call it the Cactus League and it’s far and away better than the Florida swing that’s called the Grapefruit League. The Tigers train in Lakeland, Fla.
“We love it,” McCann said. “Everything is in close proximity in Glendale. It’s no more than 30 minutes to any of the other training facilities. The drives in Florida are much longer, over two hours a lot of the time. That means you get home at 8 p.m. sometimes. I’m home each day at 4:30 in Arizona.”
That means more time with the family.
“We go as a family,” McCann said. “And, Jessica and the twins will come to Chicago at different times. When I’m on the road, they go back to Franklin.”
The twins provide the proper perspective.
“They sure do,” McCann said. “They don’t care if I went 0-for-4, when I get home they expect me to put a ball on a tee for them to hit. Now Jessica knows if I’m 0-for-4, but they don’t.
“You put so much into baseball, but in the end, there are going to be more catchers from Arkansas go to the big leagues. I’m their only father.
“They give everything a different focus. They were so fragile.
“It’s funny, but you hear about a parent’s love. But, until you are a parent, you have no idea how much you can love someone until you hold your child. It does change everything.”
That makes perfect sense, too. It was predictable with James McCann.
Chicago White Sox catcher James McCann is shown with his wife Jessica and their sons Kane (left) and Christian. (2019 Major League Baseball/Chicago White Sox)