April 29, 2020

The Morning Of Mookie Betts's Debut

What do you remember about the day of your major league debut?

Mookie Betts:
I remember the hotel [in New York], walking in like, "Wow." When I first got into the room, I was wondering where my roommate was, because you don't have roommates here. My family came in [for the debut]. The morning of the game, we ordered breakfast at that hotel. I got eggs, bacon, some toast. [My girlfriend] Brianna was there. She got some fruit and eggs. My mom and dad were in different rooms. I just know that between the fruit, two orders of eggs, bacon and the order of toast, it was like $112. I was like, "I am never ordering food here again." That was the most memorable thing, other than baseball.
Betts was called up June 28, 2014 and debuted in Boston's 8-5 win over the Yankees the following night, Sunday, June 29. Not much of a JoS game story. This is the whole thing:
The professional level – AA, AAA, or the major leagues – doesn't matter. When Mookie Betts plays, Mookie Betts gets on base. In his major league debut, Betts singled, walked, and scored a run.

All nine Boston batters had at least one hit and seven of them scored. ... Dustin Pedroia went 3-for-3 and drove in 3 runs. ... David Ortiz cracked a long three-run homer in the third inning.

2 comments:

Jere said...

You know when I knew Mookie was gonna be a big deal? Okay, a lot of people who follow prospects more than I do probably knew a long time before this, but this was a specific thing that I took as a sign of things to come. April 1, 2014, a few months before his debut. I'm trying to sell a Ryan Kalish game-used bat barrel on ebay. Yes, just the barrel. Guy buys it, and sends me a question along with his payment, in a notification email l still have:

"do u have any game used items from Mookie Betts by chance"

It's not like I was running an ebay shop with dozens of Sox items for sale and therefore maybe hundreds more not listed. I was just one man with a random item for sale, and this guy took a shot asking if I specifically had Betts stuff. And I don't remember any other time where I sold something and the buyer asked if I had any other not-that-related stuff available. So it struck me that people were going out of their way to seek out this guy's gear before he'd played a big league game.

And look at him now... the man who made Mike Trout the second-best player in Los Angeles.

allan said...

I read Speier at weei.com and he wrote about the minors a lot. In the second half of 2013 in High-A, Betts's performance went into high gear and the hashtag #FeatsofMookie was born. (His game log for 2014 is nuts!)