Long shot tears up after making Phillies’ roster
Amaro Sr. dead at 81
Rookie outfielder/first baseman Brock Stassi had an emotional reaction after being named to the Philadelphia Phillies’ opening day roster.
CLEARWATER, FLA. >> Rookie outfielder/first baseman Brock Stassi had an emotional reaction after being named to the Philadelphia Phillies’ opening day roster.
Video shows the former University of Nevada star tearing up and calling making the team “a dream come true” after six years in the minors.
The 27-year-old was a long shot to make it to the big leagues after being the 1,021st player picked in the 2011 draft.
Stassi’s younger brother, Max, is a catcher i n the Houston Astros organization. He tweeted Thursday that his brother “truly earned everything to get to this point in his career” and has spent time in the offseason working as a substitute teacher.
Brock Stassi hit .333 with 6 home runs in 57 at-bats for the Phillies this spring.
Philadelphia opens the regular season at Cincinnati on Monday.
Brock Stassi, of Yuba City, California , was a standout two-way player for Nevada who was the Western Athletic Conference’s 2010 pitcher of the year and earned first-team All-WAC honors at f irst base in 2011.
He was drafted in the 44th round as a pitcher by the Cleveland Indians in 2010 but returned to school and was picked in the 34th round as a hitter by the Phillies with 1,021st overall pick the following year. Stassi was given a $1,000 signing bonus and has made good on that investment.
Stassi, who hit .362 with 54 extra-base hits in final two seasons at Nevada, has slowly worked his way up the Phillies’ chain. It took him four seasons to reach the Double-A level and debuted at Triple-A last season, when he hit .267 with 12 homers and 26 doubles in 100 games. Stassi is primarily a first baseman but also can play i n the outfield.
“I always believed in myself even when things weren’t going well,” Stassi said. “I always had confidence that I would work hard. Even when I was in high school and wasn’t recruited to go to college and then was a late pick, I had a lot of confidence. It was always my end goal and I never doubted myself ever.”
••• Ruben Amaro Sr., a gold glove shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1960s, has died. He was 81.
The Phillies said Amaro died Friday in Miami.
Amaro spent 58 years in the game, most of them with the Phillies. He won a gold glove for the Phillies in the season of their infamous collapse in 1964. He later became Philadelphia’s first base coach and was on the staff when the Phillies won their first World Series in 1980. He also played with the St. Louis Cardinals (1958), New York Yankees (1966-68) and California Angels (1969).
He returned to the Phillies organization in 1999 and spent eight years as a minor league coordinator, scouting and player development advisor, and Gulf Coast League manager. His final position in the game was as a scout for the Houston Astros from 2010 to 2016.
His son, Ruben Amaro Jr., was an assistant general manager and GM for the Phillies from 1999 to 2015. He’s now the first base coach for the Boston Red Sox.