PHILADELPHIA (AP) -Even as a 3-year-old with a plastic bat and ball, David Price was a prodigy.
“He was hitting it over the house,” Debbie Price remembered Friday. “Sometimes he’d hit it so far, I’d say, `You have to get that.’ I got tired of chasing balls.”
These days, David Price’s field is a bit larger than the yard outside the old family ranch home in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and his mom doesn’t have to play fetch anymore. On Thursday night, he became one of the least-seasoned pitchers to appear in the World Series, getting the final seven outs to preserve the Tampa Bay Rays’ 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.
“Fighting my nerves was probably the most challenging part out there,” the 23-year-old said. “I mean, I was nervous. I was very nervous.”
The lanky lefty sure looked calm and composed. If Price was nervous, pitching coach Jim Hickey didn’t pick up on it.
zoomed up from Class A to Double-A to Triple-A, then made his first major league appearance on Sept. 14 at Yankee Stadium.
On Sunday night, he got his first pro save in the pennant-winning Game 7 victory over the Boston Red Sox. Four days later, he became the first reliever to get seven or more outs in closing a World Series win since Cleveland’s Brian Anderson during Game 4 in 1997.
He’s not just another rookie with a 97 mph fastball.
“Hey, the footnotes of major league history are littered with those guys,” Hickey said. “Very rarely is it about talent. There’s a lot of guys that are as talented as him but have never had any kind of a career.”
While thousands of prospects never reach the major leagues and hundreds more make it up only to get bounced out at the speed of an exiting fastball, Price made it to the Series after throwing just 14 regular-season innings in the big leagues. Think of it this way: It took Philadelphia’s Jamie Moyer 22 years and 3,746 2-3 innings to reach baseball’s ultimate event.
Only two pitchers appeared in the World Series with fewer regular-season innings, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Boston’s Ken Brett (2) in 1967 and Anaheim’s Francisco Rodriguez (5 2-3) in 2002.
man. He came into a situation that was relaxed, as chill as you can possibly be.”
Price learned a lot of his poise at home. And he refined it during three seasons at Vanderbilt.
“My college coaches, they kind of molded me to be a winner,” he said. “In everything I do, I want to win – if it’s on the field, video games, it makes no difference in what I’m doing. I always want to win.”
It even extends to Mario Cart against his 4-year-old nephew. The day after Game 7 of the AL championship series, Price was practicing so he’d have a better chance of defeating young Corey. Even when Price is playing games, he’s not playing games.
“There’s probably going to be a couple Wii controllers that are going to be broken here the next couple of days,” Price said early Friday in the Rays home clubhouse, sounding serious.
Debbie says that trait comes from his father, Bonnie. Speaking Friday on the 10-hour drive from Florida back home to Tennessee, she made it sound as if the men in the family go into hyperdrive when they go against each other.
“Whether it be cards or pickup basketball or a game of pool, his dad, if he’s not out there trying to win the game, he says it’s not even worth playing,” she said. “For me, I play something for the fun of it, whether I win or lose.”
and two outs in the eighth inning and struck out Boston’s J.D. Drew. In the ninth, he walked Jason Bay before striking out Mark Kotsay and Jason Varitek, then retiring pinch-hitter Jed Lowrie on a groundout.
Hickey said it was the fifth or sixth inning when he spoke with Joe Maddon about the possibility of using Price as a closer.
“Are we willing to do this?” Hickey recalled asking the manager. “And he was good with it, and I was good with it.”
Turned out to be a pretty good idea.
These days, Price is getting the message that he’s become a success – as in text messages.
“Against Boston, I had 130 when I came in after that Game 7,” he said after phinishing off the Phillies in Game 2. “I just finally got through all of them today.”
He’s already become wealthy. But, of course, there are some things money can’t buy.
Major league contract: $8.5 million.
World Series ring? Price-less.
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