Frazier finds joy in homecoming
Jersey Shore guy thrilled to join young, rising Yankees
NEW YORK Todd Frazier didn’t walk through his Toms River, N.J., front door till about 4:30 Monday morning, a long flight home from a long, life-changing road trip sending him straight to his pillow for a long, late-morning sleep.
Hours later, he opened his eyes to his new baseball reality, one in which he wasn’t merely waking up in the family home he shares with his wife and two young children. For the first time in his professional life, he was at his baseball home, too, an intersection of addresses brought about by last week’s blockbuster trade from Chicago to the Bronx. By way of New Jersey. “It’s a homecoming that you can only dream of, and now it’s really truly happening,” Frazier said hours before his Yankee Stadium debut ended in a 4-2 victory against the Cincinnati Reds, before the busloads of fans had made their way up the Garden State Parkway to cheer him on, before the batting practice session routinely interrupted by cheers from his newest fans or hugs from his former teammates made an unbelievable day finally feel real.
That the Yankees were hosting the Reds in the first of a quick two-game series Tuesday presented another improbable twist in Frazier’s Hollywoodesque story. Cincinnati was the team that drafted him 34th overall in 2007, when the onetime Toms River Little League World Series champion had turned himself into one of the best baseball prospects ever to come out of Rutgers, his state university.
A few turns on the trade dial would move him first to the Chicago White Sox and now to New York, and thus, to New Jersey. It’s a story line so easy to root for, for a player so easy to support as well, an outgoing, engaging, funloving now 31-year-old man who never forgets for a second he is getting paid to play a game he loves.
“It’ll be fun — even if it ends up not great statistically, he will have fun,” Al Leiter was saying on the field Tuesday, the crack of batting practice bats going on behind him, the affection for a fellow Jersey Shore legend pouring out of him. Leiter, along with his brother Mark and his nephew Mark Jr. carry a heck of a Shore baseball legacy of their own, but they love rooting for the Fraziers, too.
“I’ve met many, many people in this industry, and very few have Todd’s personality, and I mean that in such a good way,” Al Leiter said. “In this area, where he grew up, you just give a brutally honest assessment of your performance and you bust your ( butt) and they’ll love you. He’ll do that.”
That’s the Frazier way. Has been since he was 12, when he led the Toms River All-Stars on an improbable championship journey in Williamsport, Pa., the key player in a perfect run through the Little League World Series and title win against Japan, when he didn’t just hit a leadoff home run but also earned the win in a relief pitching appearance.
Has been since he helped put the Rutgers baseball program on the map, a monster senior year (.377 batting average, 22 home runs, 65 RBI) so legendary that even young Reds star Patrick Kivlehan, Cincy’s starting left fielder and No. 5 hitter Tuesday and a 2012 graduate of Rutgers baseball, still talks about it.
Frazier earned a warm reception from his new home fans, ultimately deciding on a pivot and a finger-point toward the bleachers in response to his inclusion in the famed Yankees roll call, and he quickly rewarded the gesture with a clean pickup of a ground ball from Reds leadoff hitter Billy Hamilton.
“I was asking everyone what to do. I couldn’t think of anything,” he said later, with 3-year-old son Blake sitting in a black leather chair in front of his dad’s new locker. “I kind of did the Shooter McGavin thing from Happy Gil
more, a couple of guys liked it, so I guess I’ve got to go with that.”
His first at-bat didn’t fit the script, however. Walking to the plate with the bases loaded and no outs in the second, Frazier ( batting .203 at the start of the atbat), hit a hard liner to second. The ensuing double play scored the Yankees’ first run, but when Didi Gregorious got caught in a rundown between second and third, the Reds turned it into a triple play.
For a player who’d earlier described this game as feeling “like Day 1 again, like my first at-bat for the rest of my life, to tell you the truth,” this wasn’t the storybook he envisioned.
“I might have set a record, first-ever at-bat a triple play,” he said. “That’s got to be a record. It’s funny to laugh about it now, but at the time I was pretty upset.”
Frazier would get his first Yankee Stadium hit in his next plate appearance, and he was right about this regardless — this is only a beginning. He’s on a young, rising team, joining a group of intense but fun-loving teammates in the thick of a pennant race, a ready and willing voice of experience one minute or youthful exuberance the next.
“How many guys get to say they went home on an off day and got to hang out with their family in the place they call home in the offseason as well?” he said. “I get to do that a lot more now, and with such a prestigious team, an exciting team.
“We’ve got something to prove here and something to do, and that’s try and win every game and get to a World Series. That’s everybody’s goal.
“I see the determination on these faces. I don’t have any more words to say other than being excited and happy and having joy at being here in New York.”
By way of New Jersey.