By Zach Finkelstein
Dante Bichette, a four-time All-Star during his 14-year big league career, was one of the Majors' top run producers during the 1990s.
His greatest contribution to the game of baseball, however, may wind up being his son, Dante Jr., the Yankees' top pick in the 2011 First-Year Player Draft and a recent subject on Yankees Magazine.
An amateur shortstop but now at third base, Bichette Jr. is considered by many to be a high-ceiling prospect with the talent to become a special Major Leaguer in several years.
Only 19 years old, the right-handed hitter made his professional debut this summer after signing for a reported $750,000 in June 2011.
Playing with the GCL Yankees, the former Little League World Series star hit a robust .342 with a league-leading 17 doubles and 47 RBIs en route to winning the shortseason league's Most Valuable Player award.
A very strong athlete, Bichette Jr. has sound hitting mechanics that allow him to generate above-average bat speed through the zone. The third baseman takes a very polished approach to the plate, working the count well for someone his age.
Although he does not project to be a prolific power hitter, Bichette II is quite capable of popping one out of the park. In fact, a long ball off his bat lifted the GCL Yankees to a league championship last August. After leading the Bombers' farm team to the triumph, Bichette Jr. boarded a plane for New York, where he finished the year with New York's Class A shortseason affiliate in Staten Island.
Bichette Jr. is relatively new to the hot corner but has already proven that he has what it takes to play the position, where he led GCL third basemen with a .945 fielding percentage in 2011.
In possession of superior hand-eye coordination, Bichette Jr. also starred as a nationally ranked amateur tennis player as a teen. Too much time did not pass, however, before he turned his full athletic focus to baseball.
Despite his youth, Bichette Jr. is a clubhouse leader to whom other players have gravitated. All his talents and intangibles notwithstanding, he is projected to start 2012 with the Yankees' Class A affiliate in Charleston, which is almost 800 miles and many baseball years away from the big leagues.
Should his name make it onto a lineup card in the Bronx, however, the Florida native may very well be under the watch of an old friend from his father's playing days in Colorado.
Bichette the senior spent the 1993-96 seasons playing with Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who got to know Bichette the junior well before anyone knew what kind of ballplayer he would become.
"In Chicago [when the Rockies visited the Cubs] we'd all stay at our house and little Dante would sometimes have a hard time going to sleep at night, and we'd get in the car and drive him around," Girardi told the New York Daily News. "And to think this is the kid we drafted, the kid that I was trying to get to sleep in the car seat."
Now grown up, the younger Bichette can go to sleep and ponder the prospect of playing for an old family friend.
"There's nothing better than the Yankees," Bichette Jr. said. "You grow up as a little kid dreaming of being a Yankee and hitting a home run at Yankee Stadium."
If he continues to produce as he did in 2011, that dream has a great chance of becoming a reality.
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