TOWER GROVE — When the ballpark opens in Marion, Ill., one of the first things Southern Illinois Miners manager Mike Pinto will install in his new office is a glassed-in display of hats. They will represent teams from all over organized pro baseball. They will all be signed. They will all be size 7 1/8.

Pinto plans to put a sign above the hats that says:

“Will You Be the Next One?”

Pinto, who has managed in the Northern League and is ushering in the eagerly awaited expansion team to Southern Illinois, has only one request of his players and asks for only one promise. He wants only players who want “to get out” — that is get out of independent ball and get into a major-league system.

“And when they get there I want them to send me a hat, size 7 1/8, from every team they play for, and that hat has to be autographed,” Pinto said. “I tell them if I don’t get it within 30 days, I’ll track them down. And I will. Chad Hermansen’s should be arriving this week.”

I am gathering a collection of a different kind.

It’s size 2T.

With the major-league team swinging out West and stumbling through Motown, I went on a road trip, too. I visited four different levels of baseball in one week, concluding with Tuesday night’s game at Busch Stadium. I saw college ball, low-minors ball, independent ball and then major-league ball. In the current issue of St. Louis Sports Magazine, radio personalities McGraw Milhaven and Randy Karraker debate the question, “Is Baseball Still America’s Pastime?”

Milhaven uses attendance to argue yes.

Karraker uses the NFL to crown a new pastime.

As I criss-crossed Illinois and saw ballparks and pro ball at towns of all sizes, I realized there’s no question baseball is still the pastime. There is always a game to see. The argument shouldn’t be confined to the majors, it should be broadened to the game. How many alternate football leagues have survived? How many football games could you drive to tonight?

Ever see a kids birthday party  recognized at a football game?  

Ever go to a football game at the spur  of the moment?

There could be, what, a half dozen — or more? — pro ball games tonight within a few hours drive. Tickets are available now. Somewhere out there a fan will decide to go less than 30 minutes before first pitch. That fan will have a seat.

Baseball is our constant. That to me is a hands-down pastime.

And the 2T?

Souvenirs for the Little Man, of course.

Snapshots from the seven-day, four-level, two-car, 2T  tour:

NCAA: Mizzou vs. Illinois, Tuesday in Sauget, Ill.

A 61-minute  rain delay at  GCS  Ballpark robbed me of a few innings of the annual wood bat game and gave the game a stop-and-sloppy rhythm. Walks galore as  the teams traded runs in the first inning and the now 11th-ranked Tigers pounced for four runs in the second inning. Mizzou had  its eyes elsewhere — zeroed-in on the weekend series against  then 16th-ranked Oklahoma State at Stillwater, Okla  – but the Tigers surge toward the  tournament was obvious.

Deciding if this team is better than last year’s group is difficult. Last year, the Tigers didn’t have as many wins but when it came to the tournament they had bona fide aces atop the rotation — Max Scherzer,  who has been dominant in  two independent-league starts,  and Nathan Culp, who is shining in A-Ball – and came two wins shy of Omaha.

This year’s lineup is better. Much better.

And the pitching is enough. Plus they could get a nice advantage, mentioned below.

Lindbergh High grad Brock Bond  hit his first home run of the season in  the closest he’ll play to his hometown this season. Bond, a junior, scored four runs and drove in three more in the 12-5 victory. All-conference player Jacob Priday, of Sikeston, whose offensive burst  ties directly to the Tigers’ run to second  place in the Big 12, drove in two runs and walked three times; Aaron Senne, of Mayo High in Shjon Podein’s native Rochester, Minn., drove in four runs.

Chaminade grad John McKee, a senior, scored twice.

The game was over shortly after the rain delay.

Edwardsville native Evan Frey, the Tigers’ center fielder and leadoff hitter, saved his pop for the weekend at OSU. He won the Big 12 Player of the week award with a .500 average in the sweep, which he opened with a leadoff homer Friday.

That was that start of an awards binge by the Tigers on Tuesday. Frey got the weekly award, Priday led six Tigers onto the All-Conference, Trevor Coleman was named the conference’s freshman of the year (the first freshman ever to win the award at MU), and coach Tim Jamieson was named co-coach of the year. But the news Mizzou is really waiting for got an insider boost as well.

Baseball America’s college guru, Aaron Fitt, predicts Mizzou will host a regional.

That would be a first for the Tigers.

Low-A: Quad Cities vs. Western Michigan, Thursday and Friday in Davenport, Iowa

Wrote a blog last week from Davenport, Iowa, that detailed the ugly play on Thursday night as Western Michigan (Detroit’s affiliate) ran free and wild against the Cardinals’ Low-A affiliate. But there were more to the games than the Swing’s struggles. For example, there was Brandon Buckman.

The Nebraska alum and first baseman is driving in runs, smoking clutch hits, seeing the ball well, and it has a lot to do, he said, with an alteration in approach all the way down to batting practice. He opened up a little bit and has been working on driving the ball the opposite direction, lashing it to right field. In the two games I saw, pitchers started by pitching away from Buckman. Away. Away. Away.

He would either take the pitch or, if it edged close to the strike zone, drill it.

“The ball looks pretty big right now,” Buckman said Friday. “What I have been able to do in adjusting to the outside pitch forces them to try to pitch me inside. And that’s where my power is.”

Manager Keith Mitchell points to those kind of adjustments as traits that tell you the hitter is ready or close to climbing a level.

Saw two pitchers that stood out for Quad Cities, one in a game and one on video. P.J. Walters has been mentioned before. He’s a changeup specialist who just has a good noggin for pitching. He’s got a good feel for how to exploit the hitters at that level  and seems bound to move, to be tested.  Walters  drives a good bandwagong for all the Trey Hearne fans out there. They are similar, save Walters didn’t come out of nowhere.

As The Voice of the Swing, Ben  Chiswick, unearthed, Walters had what he called “Nintendo-like numbers” in high school.  Walters had a 36-1 record record at Faith High School in Alabama, including a 13-0 record and a 0.66 ERA as a senior. That final prep season, he struck out 123 batters in 85 innings.

He walked just four.

He walked just four.

Had to type it twice to believe it.

Walters was the relieving starter in the second game I saw at Quad Cities. He bought the Swing time to rally from an early 4-0 deficit, though they came one run short. Western Michigan had six hits in the first three innings of the game, and Walters held the club to one over his five innings in relief. He struck out six — getting a series of hitters tied up on his changeup — and walking … none.

The other pitcher, whom I saw on a laptop and in the bullpen, was Eddie Degerman.

More from the over-the-top pitcher this week.

Indy: Southern Illinois vs. River City Rascals, Sunday in O’Fallon, Mo.

Drove out  west to see Danny Almonte, Little League pitcher turned pariah,  start for the story that ran in  Wednesday’s editions of  The Post-Dispatch.  He was clearly nervous. He walked the first two batters he faced, missing with his 86-mph fastball and distrusting of his two breaking pitches (which looked OK during his warmup, to my eye). He escaped trouble by striking out a few batters to get out of the inning and limit the Rascals to one run.

In Southern Illinois, he’s landed with a developing family. Jose Torres, the outfielder quoted in today’s story, calls Almonte his “little brother”. Another outfielder, Eric Vega, has moved in with the same host family and is acting as a mentor and shepherd for Almonte in the ways of pro ball and middle America. His manager, Mike Pinto, spends his winters as a successful motivation speaker for many financial management firms.

His pitching coach, Brad Hall, is from northern Louisiana and has played and coached in all corners of the globe — from Shreveport, La., to Edmonton, Alberta, to New Zealand to the Czech Republic.

He knows how language and foreign territory can make a player shy.

“Are you sure?” one fan sitting next to me and a couple Miners’ pitchers said.

“That’s the kid from the Little League World Series,” the pal responded.

“Are you kidding?” the first fan said. “I’ll be (darned).”

This conversation is going to happen a lot in the Frontier League this season.

Almonte, 20, has better stuff than he showed that night. His fastball can climb to 88 mph or 89 mph, his coaches said. His curve remains an asset, especially to lefthanded hitters. And he’s very fond of his changeup, as that night’s start revealed: He kept pumping low-80s changeups and pitching more effectively as he got deeper into the game.

“I didn’t throw too many (curves),” he said Monday in Marion, Ill. “I was a little wild. Not a little — a lot wild. I was a lot wild.”

Spoke with him during the Miners practice Monday and Almonte was pleasant. He was   protective of his past, preferring to talk about his present. He said he talks with his wife daily, but didn’t want to discuss specifics. He was eager to explain the bracelet he has from his mother — it’s a band of little icons, painted pictures of Baby Jesus,  a reminder of his mom, who is in the Dominican Republic, and his middle name, which is de Jesus.

He got to see his mother for the first time last year since the Little League fiasco.  

“I carry her with me everywhere I go,” he said, tugging on the bracelet. “It’s one of the best things to happen in my life when I went to the Dominican Republic to see her. It was six years ago the last time. She says I don’t call her enough, and it’s like, ‘Mom, I’m busy. I’m busy. I’m playing ball now.’ But I’m always going to talk to her. She knows that. Always.”

Almonte was the name pitcher, but he wasn’t the attention-grabbing pitcher that night. River City Rascals starter Chris Clem got knocked around a bit but he also touched 90 mph regularly and comes across as capable of being a power pitcher in the league. Switch-hitting third baseman Trey Hendricks is also a name to track. He was just traded to River City from the Northern League, three years removed from being an Ivy League all-conference star with a .427 average (61 hits, 12 strikeouts) as a third baseman and a 9-2 record as a pitcher.

MLB: Pittsburgh vs. Cardinals, Tuesday at Busch Stadium

This was the best game of the bunch, as would be expected. Though seeing the Pirates load the bases three times against Adam Wainwright and get only two runs took me back to some of the other games I saw. No need to labor on this game because, as manager Tony La Russa said, it’s only one win and they need two to take the series and a sweep to hasten their climb in the standings. But a few things to note: Yadier Molina had a tremendous game with his hitting streak, his management of Wainwright and his racing, reaching catch near the Cardinals’ dugout.

If Wainwright has his curve working like it was in the second inning, he’ll take off.

It might be the first game where there really was a turning over of the lineup and a churning out of runs and a sense that the Cardinals were a threat to score in any inning, wherever they were in the lineup.

If not the first time, it was one of the few times.

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