White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery is a hot shot but not a hot hitter

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Infielder Colson Montgomery won the three-point shooting contest among his fellow White Sox teammates outside the team’s training facility Wednesday, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Growing up in small-town Indiana — Holland, population 619 — Montgomery was as proficient in basketball as he now is in baseball. Hoosiers basketball, of course, runs in the blood.

Montgomery defeated Mike Vasil, Ryan Borucki and Zach Franklin by making 12 of 20 shots. That’s 60%, much better than the average from three-point range in the NBA right now of between 36% and 37%.

By contrast, he’s batting .185 this spring after hitting .239 in 71 games last season after being called up from the minors July 4.

Despite all that, manager Will Venable said before the Sox played the Angels at Camelback Ranch that Montgomery will be on the Opening Day roster and will be at shortstop March 26 in Milwaukee. He’ll bounce between short and third base.

‘‘He’s been having a good spring,’’ Venable said of Montgomery. ‘‘The pregame work has been great. There have been some barrels there recently. He’s still coming along, trying to find his way at the plate. But the defensive stuff, the running stuff we’ve asked him to do, he’s been outstanding.’’

It was a dream of Montgomery’s as a kid to be out there on Opening Day, and this will be his first one in the majors.

‘‘I think it’s a dream of everyone,’’ he said.

Baseball can be a killer with its large doses of failure.

As Bulls legend Michael Jordan discovered in his aborted transition from basketball to baseball, hitting a ball is perhaps the hardest thing to do in sports. Jordan’s career shooting percentage in the NBA was 49.7%. His batting average in 1994 during one season playing for Birmingham was .202. And that was at Double-A.

Montgomery, 24, is like many of the young Sox players: a work in progress. He’s 5-for-27 with two home runs, three RBI and eight strikeouts this spring.

It’s the dog days of camp, for sure.

‘‘When you get to this time of the spring, the days seem the same and start getting a little stagnant,’’ Montgomery said after smacking a hit in four at-bats Tuesday against the A’s in Mesa. ‘‘You just have to keep being process-oriented. Just come in and do the work you need to do to play 162.’’

Montgomery had to make the choice between basketball and baseball early in his amateur career. He was recruited by Purdue and Louisville to play basketball, but he chose baseball out of high school when the Sox selected him with the 22nd pick in the 2021 draft. At 6-3, he’s the all-time leading scorer in Southridge High School basketball history with 1,966 points.

The Sox, however, gave him a $3 million signing bonus, which made his decision pretty easy.

Montgomery now is playing for Venable, who had to make a similar decision between baseball and basketball, albeit at Princeton University, where he excelled at both sports.

‘‘I always liked basketball better until I made baseball my profession,’’ Venable said.

And for good reason. Venable averaged 10 points for Princeton in basketball and hit .344 in his first season playing baseball, earning All-Ivy League honorable mention.

‘‘I was always a basketball guy but learned later in high school and early in college that playing it after college was really not my path,’’ Venable said.

Montgomery made a similar decision, and now he’s following his own path.

‘‘My goal every day is just to get everything out of each day,’’ he said. ‘‘Just show up and try to be the best person [and] the best player I can every single day. If I do that, everything is going to fall in place. It’s a building block every day. That’s the way I look at it. Baseball is such a tough game.’’

On Wednesday, he fell back on his other sport. Swish.