There are three major milestones in a baseball season: Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The first of these milestones in the 2004 season comes tomorrow, when we play a makeup game with Baltimore, and for a team with so many quality players on the disabled list, we’re doing pretty damned well going into the first turn. Especially when we can look forward to two of those—Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon—coming back between Memorial Day and the Fourth. A third, Bill Mueller, may return to the club between the Fourth and Labor Day.

That brings us back to Kevin Youkilis, Mueller’s replacement, who has now begun to attract so much notice that Terry Francona has had to publicly state that no, Youkilis will not be keeping the job at third once Mueller’s fit and ready to play no matter how well the GGOW[18] does between now and the happy day of Mueller’s return.

A piece in the Portland Sunday Telegram today by Kevin Thomas (who knows Youkilis from Youkilis’s days with the Portland Sea Dogs, the BoSox double-A affiliate) points out that Youkilis’s locker is on the far wall of the clubhouse, the traditional place for players who are just up for a cup of coffee in the bigs…as is undoubtedly the case with Andy Dominique, who delivered today’s game-tying hit in the bottom of the eighth. Thomas also points to previous Red Sox minor leaguers such as Wilton Veras, who came up to play third with high hopes, only to fade into obscurity.

Obscurity would not seem to be in young Mr. Youkilis’s future, however. “I know I’m going to be playing,” he told Kevin Thomas in today’s interview, speaking with quiet certainty, and with every passing game his on-base percentage seems simultaneously harder to believe for a rookie and less like a fluke. Moved up to the two-hole today, all Youkilis did was gothree for five, with three runs scored. His batting average is .317, and his OBP is hovering right around .425. The fans know that Bill Mueller may have to battle for his old spot back, no matter what Terry Francona has to say on the subject.

It sounds like they’re booing the kid when he walks to the plate, but the grin on Youkilis’s face says he knows better; that sound sweeping around the ballpark like a soft wind is the first syllable of his last name: Youk…Youk…Youk…

Two weeks ago he was playing triple-A ball in Pawtucket; tomorrow, on Memorial Day, he’s going to be playing the Orioles before a packed house, for the first-place Boston Red Sox. And I don’t want to jinx the kid, but do you know what I think, after having watched him in almost all of those games?

I think a star is born.