Drew Maggi living the dream with first MLB hit

Drew Maggi is everyman. Every single player who has ever rubbed saddle soap into a new glove, rubbed dirt on their hands in a batter’s box, or put rosin on their hand to throw from the mound has dreamed of making it to the Show.

For most of us, we either blaze out in high school, or perhaps make it to college ball, before wasting away in some low-level amateur baseball league. Even those who make it to the minors usually spend only five or six years there before either getting the call or making the decision to move on with their lives.

Not Drew Maggi. The 33-year old has spent the last 13 years in the minor leagues, appearing in 1154 games and making 4,494 plate appearances in that time.

Earlier this week, Maggi gave us the feel-good story of the season when he was called up to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Asked why he stayed the course for so long, Maggi gave the answer that comes as no surprise to every baseball fan and former player around the world. “I love baseball.”

It really is just that simple for the man from Phoenix, Arizona. “I was grinding for 13 years but I was doing what I loved. The ultimate goal is the big leagues. Just kind of getting here, my name is in history. I put on a big league uniform, and I shared the field with the world’s greatest players.”

This was not the first time that Maggi had come up to the big leagues. Back in 2021, he was called up by the Twins, but never got into the game, making him one of MLB’s “phantom players.” But this time around, Maggi was determined to get to the plate.

“I didn’t know how long I was going to be up here,” he told MLB.com. “I really wanted to get a hit. I’ve been kind of thinking about it the past day, two days. When I got in there, I was just trying to slow everything down. They were cheering my name, and I was just trying to breathe.”

That’s right. Cheering his name.

The Pittsburgh crowd took Drew’s story to heart and gave him a standing ovation when he first came to the plate as a pinch hitter in Wednesday’s 8-1 win over the Dodgers. He struck out in that first appearance before going 0 for 3 the following day in his first MLB start.

Pinch hitting again in Saturday’s 16-1 trouncing of the Nationals, Maggi got a middle-middle fastball and punched it into center field for a single, driving in a run. That swing marked Maggi’s first MLB hit and first RBI. The crowd began chanting his name and everyone cheered wildly.

“That was great!” Maggi beamed when recalling the moment. “It was kind of like, it’s do-or-die here. I know, of all people, that this can end very quickly. Then, who knows where it goes from there? Maybe I never get back up here, and that was it. That was going through my head the whole day, so I said, ‘I’m swinging. I’m going out hacking.’”

Later in the game, Maggi got his first extra-base hit when he doubled in the ninth. Optioned back to Double-A Altoona in favor of Miguel Andujar from Triple-A Indianapolis, Maggi will never forget this stint in the bigs.

“It’s crazy to think everything that’s happened this last week,” says Maggi. “I was in Altoona, where we probably had 100 fans at a game. I was getting called ‘coach’ and ‘grandpa’. To go from that a week ago to this, I can’t even explain it, I can’t really describe how I feel about it. It’s been amazing.”

And of all people, Maggi knows what this opportunity means, not only for him but for everyone around him. “It’s just special. My mom, my parents, got to watch me play a big league game. All the thanks I’ve gotten from my old teammates, all the real grinders of baseball. A lot of this was for them. For me, I’ll carry with me the idea that you can do anything.”

Keep grinding, Drew. From all of us who never made it. You never know when you might get another shot.