Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
Joe Ryan is the proxy for baseball’s Lost Year. Everything else about his story is unique. A top pitching prospect for the Tampa Bay Rays, Ryan is a former water polo player and seventh-round pick and geography major out of Division II who grew up without travel ball, video games or cable while living an old-fashioned Tom Sawyer life in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods in Marin County, California.