Kris Bryant had already crushed a Felix Hernandez changeup in the first inning when he homered a second time against the Seattle Mariners. Billy Williams turned to Rick Sutcliffe during that Cactus League game in March and said: “We got to call him Roy Hobbs.”
Williams is a Hall of Famer who first joined the Cubs organization in 1956. Sutcliffe is the ESPN analyst who won Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards and threw almost 2,700 innings in the big leagues. Moments like that set the baseline expectations: Bryant would do unbelievable things for the rest of his career.