BRADENTON, Fla. — The other day, one of Jung Ho Kang’s custom-made baseball bats was in a bin in the LECOM Park clubhouse. Kang’s jersey No. 16 was etched into the bottom of the handle, and the bat was marked with the date it was made: March 15, 2017.
Jordan Luplow walked over to the bin, picked up the bat and slid it into the slot atop his locker with all the others. Luplow had brought the bat to a game in Tampa and put it in the team’s travel bag for the trip back, but it hadn’t made its way back to his locker; after all, it doesn’t have his own name or number on it.