Driving home with his wife from the airport in Los Angeles, less than 24 hours after hoisting the World Series trophy, the name Mitch Longo still resonated in the mind of Dodgers outfielder Alex Call.

The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out an entire minor league baseball season in 2020 and left organizations with fewer spots to fill a year later. Longo was a casualty of the cutdowns. He was released by Cleveland coming out of spring training in 2021.

The last minor league game of his baseball career came just a year later.

That could’ve been Call.

Call – a third-round pick in 2016 by the White Sox – had a disastrous 2019 campaign in which he hit .205 in Double-A Akron. Then came the lost season. He was 26 years old by the spring of 2021.

Cleveland’s decision came down to Call and Longo. The

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