Aaron Ploetz

He is five foot eight. He has hit 21 home runs in his entire Major League career. Tonight he hit one to tie a World Series game. His name is Sal Frelick and he plays right field for the Milwaukee Brewers. Start with the sport he gave up. At Lexington High School in Massachusetts he played quarterback. As a senior he threw for 1,940 yards and 30 touchdowns, and ran for another 1,779 yards and 20 more. That is 50 touchdowns in one high school season. He was named the Gatorade player of the year for the whole state. In football. Steve Addazio offered him a football scholarship to Boston College. Once word got around that he would listen, more offers came in. Here is the part that decided his life. Boston College was the only school in the country that wanted him for baseball. And the baseball coach there, Mike Gambino, told him exactly what that meant. "If you're coming here, you're just playing baseball." He thought about leaving for somewhere that would let him do both. Gambino asked him a question instead. Was he looking past college. He realized he was not. "My degree was the main reason I went to BC." Boston College Magazine wrote all this down last year. He graduated in December of 2021, after summer classes and an overloaded final semester, while he was already riding minor league buses. The Brewers had taken him 15th overall that July. In 2024 he won a Gold Glove in right field and led every outfielder in the National League in defensive runs saved. He grew up a Red Sox fan copying Dustin Pedroia, another small infielder who played like he was being chased. His mother Patty calls him scooch. It is Italian slang for a pain in the neck, and she has called him that since he was a toddler who would not stay where she put him. He hugs her after games. Be honest about this season, because it was not a good one. He hit .230. In July he went on the injured list with a torn labrum in his right shoulder and did not play again for more than a month. He has never been a home run hitter and he is not one now. And his team has never won a World Series. They have been to exactly one, in 1982, and they lost it. They are up two games to none in this one. They need two more. But a five foot eight outfielder who was a better football player than a baseball player, who got one baseball offer in the entire country, who hit .230 this year on a shoulder he is still playing through, tied Game 2 with one swing, and his team is up two games to none. This week his hometown renamed a road after him. When did you last pick the harder thing on purpose.