PHOENIX — Many mornings Landon Thome can be found in the batting cage in his Chicago-area backyard, his father, Jim, a few feet away with a baseball in hand.Jim, a Hall of Famer and five-time All-Star, throws to Landon. They talk about hitting. They practice soft toss, flips, tee work. They watch MLB Network and clips from games as they go. Landon asks questions. Jim listens, then offers advice.“He’s a Hall of Famer and played for 22 years,” Landon said, “so having that knowledge in my back pocket, I like to say, (with him) as my hitting coach, is pretty awesome.”Now Landon, 18, looks to build his own big-league legacy as a likely early-round selection in this weekend’s MLB Draft. It comes after a lifetime around the sport — first as a child watching his father’s big-league games and swinging at tennis balls in the backyard to a high school graduate and baseball state champion as a shortstop at Nazareth Academy (Ill.) The ultimate goal, Landon said, is to “be a major leaguer as long as I can.”The latest MLB draft intelKeith LawLandon, who is committed to Florida State, is rated 33rd in The Athletic’s top-100 ranking of draft prospects. He is viewed as a player who could grow into 25-homer power, Keith Law wrote, and who hits best with his arms extended — which can sometimes lead him to struggle when pitched in the upper-third of the zone.When Landon needed to work through problems like that, he could turn to Jim for help.There was little doubt in Jim’s mind that he would be his son’s hitting coach. That is what fathers do, he said: throw batting practice to their sons and give advice. Of course, as an MLB legend who hit 612 home runs while playing for six big-league teams, his perspective is different from that of most fathers.