The summer when I was twelve years old, I was the second best pitcher on my Little League all-star team. The best was a kid named Blake Snell. Yesterday, I watched him make his major league debut for the Tampa Bay Rays on the mound at Yankee Stadium. It’s safe to say I never quite caught up, skill-wise.
Blake was always the best baseball player in our little suburb, ever since we were nine years old. His dad, Dave, was a former minor league pitcher in the Mariners system, a hulking guy who constantly wore the ultra-reflective Oakley sunglasses that baseball players seem to favor. He always coached our all-star teams and taught us words that ten year olds probably shouldn’t know. I lived in constant fear of muffing a grounder and incurring his verbal wrath. But he was a great coach, and Blake was his prize pupil. Dave ran a training center out of a warehouse where Blake and his twin brother Tyler spent much of their time. I remember going there one time in high school with Tyler and some other friends to play Wiffle ball at 10 o’clock at night. It was their home away from home. Baseball was what just what the Snell kids did.
Blake’s talent was always clear, and when he grew something like eight inches between his sophomore and junior years of high school, other people started to take notice. He was the main attraction for our team at Shorewood, a lights-out lefty with nasty stuff and a deep belief that he was always the best player on the field. His junior season, my senior year, the team made it to the state semifinals at Safeco Field. Watching Blake string together strikeouts out there, it already seemed like a safe bet that it wouldn’t be the last time he pitched on a big-league diamond.
He and I were still friends throughout high school and I’ve run into him now and then the past few years, but for the most part, I’ve followed Blake’s pro career from afar. Tampa Bay made him the 52nd overall pick in the 2011 draft. He was great his first two seasons, regressed a bit the two seasons after that, and then in 2015 completely dominated across three levels of the minors, logging a 1.41 ERA and 11 strikeouts per nine innings. USA Today named him the minor league player of the year. Previous winners include Paul Goldschmidt, David Price and Prince Fielder. That was the first time I thought about the fact that the goofy guy I used to talk about Husky football with might very soon be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Blake started this season in AAA so Tampa Bay could delay his eventual free agency one more year. Then, on Friday, the Rays announced they were calling him up to start on Saturday against the Yankees.
I tuned in on an illegal stream, and man — what a surreal experience. There’s Blake in the Tampa Bay dugout nervously toying with a towel. There’s his mom and his brothers and a girl we went to high school with sitting in the stands. Now the broadcast is talking about his dad, Dave, who currently coaches the community college team in our hometown and couldn’t make the trip. There’s Blake warming up before the bottom of the first inning, breathing in deep gulps of air. He’s wearing high socks, just like he did in Little League, and he’s wearing the number four, just like he did in Little League. “He looks as if he’s eleven years old,” the Yankees play-by-play guy says, and I kind of have to agree.
First pitch: Strike one, a fastball low and away to Jacoby Ellsbury, one-time runner-up for American League MVP. Ellsbury flies out. Blake hits 96 miles per hour against the second batter, Brett Gardner, before inducing a pop up. So far, so good. Then he walks Carlos Beltran, and Mark Teixeira flares a single into right-center. Which brings to the plate none other than Alex Rodriguez — all-time legend, former Mariner, former idol of Blake’s. But not anymore. Now he’s just another guy Blake has to get out. A wild pitch (which looked more like a passed ball to me, but then again, I may be biased) brings Beltran in to score. On a 2-2 count, A-Rod gets a hold of one, launching a long fly ball to left. Desmond Jennings leaps at the wall and hauls it in, inches short of a home run. As the camera pans to Blake walking off the mound after narrowly averting disaster in the first inning of his MLB career, it’s pretty easy to read his lips: “Fuck, man!”
In the second inning, he strikes out the side, showing off a gnarly curveball to go along with a slider and mid-90s fastball. In the next three innings, just two batters reach base, Ellsbury on a single up the middle and Didi Gregorious on an error by the Tampa Bay shortstop. Blake calls it a day after 90 pitches in five innings, with the Rays leading 2-1.
He allowed two hits, one run and struck out six. The first batter he retired was Jacoby Ellsbury. The first hit he allowed was to Mark Texeira. The first player to score a run against him was Carlos Beltran. His first career strikeout victim was Brian McCann. Not a bad collection of names. What a dream come true. New York eventually won 3-2 on a walk-off home run by Gardner, but on a day like this, I find it hard to believe Blake cared too much. I think it was the other aspects of the day that he’ll mostly remember. I know I will.