“She’s still a little sister, you know, so we have our little arguments,” Garton said, smiling. “But she’s been through a lot and she’s always been there for me.”
And she’s not shy in letting others know about her brother’s accomplishments.
Brittany attends a school for the blind near the family home in Guelph, Ontario. When the Reds drafted Josh in the 12th round (No. 359 overall) last June out of Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, she was one of the first to learn of it despite being in class.
“She told her teacher it was draft day, so she had to have her cell phone on, so I got to call her,” Garton said. “And she was yelling and screaming when I told her, so that was pretty cool.”
Better still, Brittany was at Fifth Third Field on a family visit recently when Josh hit one of his six home runs since joining the Dragons in early May.
A young O’Neill?
Garton, 22, has made quite an impact in little more than a month, leading the Dragons in homers, slugging percentage and OPS (on-base percentage and slugging combined) while becoming a fixture in the middle of the order.
He knows the name, but Garton can’t tell you much about Paul O’Neill, the former Reds and Yankees outfielder to whom Dragons hitting coach Ken Griffey compares him without hesitation.
“Plays hard all the time,” Griffey said. “Doesn’t play scared. He’s aggressive at the plate. He swings the bat. He just reminds me of Paul when Paul was a young kid. And Paul was something to see.”
After arriving from extended spring training, where an arm injury kept him from breaking camp with the Dragons, Garton described himself as a “make-things-happen kind of guy.”
In his first game, on May 3 against Bowling Green, the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Garton showed what he meant by bowling over catcher Mark Thomas, knocking him unconscious, to score a run. BG folk thought it was a cheap shot, but it sure fired up his teammates that night.
“I really like his old-school style,” said Dragons manager Todd Benzinger. “It’s really a breath of fresh air to see a young guy kick it old school.”
Garton fears neither barriers nor baseballs; he reached base twice Tuesday when hit by pitches and has bounced off numerous Midwest League outfield walls already.
There is a price to be paid for this hellbent style. His back and shoulders ache. “I’ve got knots all up and down my spine,” Garton said. “I’m just trying to play through it. They can take me out of the lineup, but I would never go in and say I’m too hurt to play.
“I don’t like days off.”
The dreaded hitch
In his first exposure to pro ball last summer, Garton batted .205 in 37 games at rookie-level Billings, bearing little resemblance to the hitter who clubbed 20 homers as a junior college sophomore and who had a scholarship to Florida International University waiting for him had the draft not gone to his liking.
He took some time to get going this spring, too, and a couple of scouts passing through Dayton have talked about a hitch in his swing that might become more problematic as he progresses through the system.
Griffey scoffs: “Just because he has a hitch doesn’t mean he’s not getting to the ball. Dave Winfield had a big hitch. It just depends on the hitter and how well he can get to a pitch. This kid gets to fastballs just as well as offspeed pitches, even with the hitch.”
Wherever he’s been, what shines through about Garton is the effort he puts forth and how he keeps it all in perspective.
“I don’t know if carefree is the word, because he’s very serious and intense,” Benzinger said. “But he’s a kid who enjoys playing the game. He’ll break out a smile and joke around a little bit.
“He’s not afraid to show you how he feels, and I like that. His game speaks for itself, but he kind of realizes he’s just playing baseball. He’s not saving the world. He’s not curing cancer.”
Brittany’s eyes
Josh said Brittany’s blindness can be traced to a series of kidney failures leading to problems with her central nervous system.
“And then there was a chemical imbalance,” he said. “The way my mom explains it, her pupils exploded. So the color of her eyes is black with a white, cloudy inside. Her eyes aren’t open very often.”
The Dragons’ radio broadcasts are available over the Internet, which comes in handy for far-away families like Garton's.
“Every now and again I’ll call home and be like, ‘Brittany, you’ve got to listen to the game tonight, I feel hot,’ ” Josh said before stroking two doubles Wednesday in a 6-3 loss to Kane County.
Broadcasters Tom Nichols and Nick Anastos are Brittany’s eyes, painting a picture of her brother’s every at-bat and outfield adventure.
“I know my parents have gone through a lot of stuff with Brittany while also trying to support me through baseball,” Josh said. “The way I play, what I do out here, I’m just trying to give back to them.”
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