Like many talented young baseball players growing up, Jake Goebbert had a batting cage at his boyhood home in Illinois.
Unlike many future major leaguers, this batting cage was in the hay loft of a milk barn. Surrounded by lots and lots of ... pumpkins.
Yes. Goebbert grew up on a pumpkin farm, one his parents still own and operate, same one he and his wife, Heather, live right down the road from and pitch in to help when they return home for the offseason.
In fact, Goebbert was on the phone with his father the other day planning for the opening of pumpkin season this weekend.
Now, I don't know where you usually pick up your Halloween pumpkins.
What I do know is that if I lived within, oh, a three-state radius of Goebbert's Pumpkin Patch in Hampshire, Ill., two words would come to mind at this time of year: Road trip.
What is the opening weekend of pumpkin season like?
"It's not too crazy," Goebbert was telling me the other day. "We have a petting zoo, a corn maze, wagon rides, a pumpkin patch, pig races, a paint-ball area for kids, a pumpkin-eating dinosaur. ..."
Whoa. Wait just a candy-corn minute, cowboy.
A pumpkin-eating dinosaur?
"It's made out of one of those old-man lifts," Goebbert said of what I took to mean a small cherry-picker sort of contraption. "It's got teeth.
"It's pretty neat."
And judging from the photo on the family farm Web site - go check out www.pumpkinfarms.com -- the kids don't even look scarred for life.
"It's really grown over the last 15 years," Goebbert, who turns 27 next Wednesday, said of the family business. "I remember growing up and my parents starting to set up a couple of days before Halloween. Now, we open it a month before."
Jul 5, 2014; San Diego, CA, USA; San Diego Padres left fielder Jake Goebbert (4) hits an RBI triple during the seventh inning against the San Francisco Giants at Petco Park.
You would figure this would be the sort of thing that would earn Goebbert endless razzing in the clubhouse. Or, at least, lots of requests for fresh pumpkins around this time of year. But Goebbert never tires of the subject.
"It's wonderful to provide something different to talk about," he said. "It's something I'm proud of. I grew up in that environment, and it taught me a lot about business, work ethic. It's similar to a baseball game: It's entertainment driven, and you have to provide for the customers."
Picked (like a pumpkin?) by the Astros in the 13th round of the 2009 draft out of Northwestern University, Goebbert was acquired by the A's for Travis Blackley on April 4, 2013. The Padres landed him on May 15 this summer for Kyle Blanks (maybe it's just me, but I like to envision A's general manager Billy Beane phoning then-Padres GM Josh Byrnes during the trade talks saying, "Trick or treat.").
"It's been a blessing, an absolute blessing," Goebbert says of the deal. "You couldn't play in a better city, and we have a lot of support here."
The Padres have enjoyed getting to know him, too.
"We like his versatility," Padres manager Bud Black said. "We felt his best role would be to fit onto a National League team."
He can play first base, the corner outfield positions and, as a lefty bat, he's good off the bench as a pinch-hitter. In that role, he's hitting .316 (6 for 19) for the Padres.
Knowing how loyal Black is to his players, I asked whether the manager would be ordering his Halloween pumpkin to be shipped from Illinois this year.
"He's talking big stuff about those pumpkins," Black said, grinning. "I'm going to have to see about that."
The farm is 200 acres, about 80 of which are devoted to pumpkins, according to Goebbert. They also grow squash, tomatoes, peppers and sweet corn.
As a kid, as long as Jake played sports, he was excused from most of his chores on the farm. But in the summers and between seasons - he played baseball, basketball and football in high school - he worked.
The batting cage is still in that big ol' white milk barn - same pitching machine his parents got him for Christmas during his childhood - but now, when he is home during the winter, he takes his swings in a better facility.
The family's personal-record pumpkin checked in at 1,500 pounds a few years back. And the fact that this remains a humble family farm with all hands on deck can be found smack in the middle of the corn maze designed each year by his father.
The trick? Not as difficult as it sounds, Goebbert said: When the corn is still real low, you simply cut the maze with a lawnmower. And you keep mowing. As opposed to the bigger, corporate farms that use tractors and a GPS to design the maze.
"Those are the ones you see from the air," Goebbert said. "We do it the old-school way."
And no, all these years later, he has not tired of pumpkin pie.
"You can't get sick of pumpkin pie," he said, grinning. "And the apple cider donuts we make, you don't get sick of those, either."
Only hitch I could find in this entire, bright orange Halloween tale is this: As Goebbert told Fox Sports San Diego analyst Mark Grant earlier this summer, believe it or not, he STILL has never seen "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."
"I need to watch that, actually," he said. "I really don't know how I've never seen it, to be honest."
Likely, though, he won't have time until, say, November.
"They're expecting me to work the weekend I get home," Goebbert said. "It's going to be fun."
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Longtime national columnist Scott Miller is a weekly contributor to FOXSportsSanDiego.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottMillerBbl.
