Wellesley is back in the Majors

My hometown of Wellesley, MA is once again represented in Major League Baseball.
We've had many ballplayers who lived here while they played for the Red Sox: Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Mickey Vernon, Mike Torrez (the day after Torrez threw the home run pitch to Bucky Dent in the 1978 Red Sox-Yankees playoff the Wellesley Board of Assessors met and decided to raise the assessment on his house just to teach him a lesson - at least that's what I heard), Bruce Hurst, Bill Mueller, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Carl Crawford among many others. But now we once again have someone who grew up here playing in the majors. Nate Freiman.

Nate played in Wellesley Little League and at Wellesley High School. He was in the same class as my daughter Kara Kelley (2005). He was 17-1 as a pitcher and hit .500 his last two years. In the shot above he's playing for the Orleans Cardinals in the Cape Cod League. He played his college ball at Duke and spent time in the Padres farm system.

In December Major League Baseball held the Rule 5 draft. That's where teams get to draft players from other organization's minor league teams and it's done in reverse order of that team's MLB record the previous year. The Astros, who were much worse than the Red Sox in 2012, got to go first in the draft and picked Nate.

In March the Oakland A's claimed him off waivers and last night he made his Major League debut playing first base. Went 2-for-3 with an RBI so the stats have him batting an impressive .667.
Nate is the first MLB player from my home town since Jack Sanford.

Jack pitched for the Phillies, the Angels (the year they changed their name from LA Angels to California Angels) and the A's (during their final year as the Kansas City A's), but he's best known for his seven seasons pitching for the San Francisco Giants - the biggest highlight being his complete game shutout of the Yankees in Game 2 of the 1962 World Series.
Just for the fun of it, here they both are wearing A's uniforms:

On Monday, April 23rd the A's come to Boston for a series and we'll be cheering Nate when he steps to the plate at Fenway.