This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- Jim Thome is able to work in three distinct avenues of baseball, from the White Sox, to MLB Network, to his son’s high school team, and the Hall of Famer is loving every minute of it.

“This time in my life, I’m very fortunate, right?” Thome told MLB.com during an interview before the start of the 2023 Major League Baseball season. “The White Sox are awesome about this. ... They let me be around Landon’s game, and watching him, and I’m very thankful that they’ve done that to give me the opportunity.”

• Top 10 moments of Thome's career

Thome rejoined the White Sox in 2013 as a special assistant to general manager Rick Hahn and he spent a few weeks around the team during Pedro Grifol’s first Spring Training as a manager, just as Thome did last year when Tony La Russa was at the managerial helm. Thome has an exceptional mind for the game and an exceptional understanding of the game, which is an understatement, as his 612 home runs and .956 career OPS would support.

As someone who has talked to Thome on many occasions about baseball, I can verify this knowledgeable impact. But Thome loves sharing those bits of knowledge with White Sox players, coming from a person who genuinely wants to help them reach their dreams.

That same philosophy rings true for Thome’s work with Nazareth Academy baseball, where his son, Landon, is a freshman playing for an Illinois high school championship varsity program. Head coach Lee Milano asked Thome to come aboard as a voluntary coach, but Milano also realizes Thome has commitments in other baseball worlds.

“Obviously, I’m a parent as well,” Thome said. “But to be around it, and to help these kids in the cage, or anything that happens in the game, it’s great.

“Where they are at, at the high school level, if you can help them in little things of their game, if they go on to college, and one thing has improved, we can give them that will help them, that’s what it’s about. If I can play a little part of that, that’s the aspect of giving back to the game I truly enjoy.”

It’s also interesting for Landon’s friends and teammates to realize they are being assisted by a Hall of Famer who happens to be Landon’s dad.

“We’ll be on the bench, and we’ll have a little time and some of them will ask, ‘Hey Jim, who was the toughest pitcher you faced?’ Or ‘Who do you feel good off of?’” Thome said. “And obviously, the toughest was Randy Johnson.

“You see their eyes light up and just the stories of telling them about the big leagues, these kids are very smart. They truly want to learn the game. And I love it because any time you tell them something, a tidbit, a little thing about the game, they really embrace it and want to do good. They want to go on to college and have a great career.”

It's a wonderful life for Thome, who, as a proud dad, also pointed out how his daughter, Lila, is thriving in college at Purdue. Good things often happen for really good people.