As the tectonic plate’s weak spot pulled west, another line of mountains cracked through the seam, then again, and again, until Arizona was neatly striated: mountain, valley, mountain, valley. Temporally, it was not unlike the Lions’ own draft system—big player, journeyman, big player, journeyman, the positions cycling through apogee and ho-hum every few years. But if you look across the land, consider the topography at the start of 2011, the Lions outfield is synced up into a moment of peak, peak, peak; Goodyear plus Trey Townsend (several years apart in age, but both 2010 Gold Gloves), plus Corey Matthews, a high draft from UNC. Matthews reported to Single-A Carolina in August, spent the fall in Arizona, and played winter ball in the DR. His stats were good in Chapel Hill, but reports from coaches—all that different letterhead, the Carolina Clappers and the Arizona Arroyos and the Gigantes del Cibao stacked in a pile on Botter’s desk—are that he’s been making unbelievable progress, the kind of development that poises him to do the improbable: jump to the majors in his first full season. Which would mean that across the Lions outfield: mountain, mountain, mountain.

Back in the day, some of those Arizona slopes were two miles tall. Taller than that even, to start, but like an octogenarian back in uniform for the old-timers’ game, we all lose a few inches. Hell, I’m two inches and eight pounds shy of my peak, which I hit during my junior year of college, when I was just a tick younger than Corey. The school was in need of a catcher (the recruit had a broken arm) and I, being Little League friends with the team’s ace, was called on to catch. We were D-II and no one expected much, though we won more games than we lost when I was behind the plate. After the season I went back to my English major and to slowly shrinking, but that time on the field, a couple of months of orchestrating the team from behind the plate, I think it always gave me a leg up with the athletes. Looked like one of them, at least until I started looking like one of their coaches. Aging’s a bitch.

But I was talking about mountains. Take a look at the McDowell Mountains, bordering Scottsdale to the east—that’s a fine example. They started as nearly perfect basaltic cones. But wind picked up the valley floor and blew dirt in the mountains’ faces; the softest stone slipped away with the insult. Not everything has the steely nerve of Stephen Smith, the fortitude to remain flawless under attack. Stephen can stay strong, but mountains, lesser men, they crack and crumble. Today, the McDowells are all jagged, and the tallest of them: four thousand feet.