Rob Christ immediately noticed there was something special about the 8-year-old on the baseball diamond.
“Sometimes I still don’t believe it’s true, you know?” Schneider said. “My parents did a good job of supporting me; even if I never made it, I felt like they were always going to be supportive no matter what I did. … But sometimes it doesn’t still feel like it’s true, like hitting BP with Justin Turner, George Springer. It’s still pretty surreal to me.”
The Blue Jays’ Davis Schneider wore John Vukovich’s old glove during historic debut — and had no ideaIn 2017, Schneider was drafted out of Eastern by Toronto in the 28th round. The MLB draft isn’t even that long anymore, after it was shortened from 40 to 20 rounds in 2020. No graduate of Schneider’s high school had ever made it to the major leagues. He had never cracked MLB’s top 100 prospect list.Schneider ascended from high Class A to triple A in 2022, and last August he got the call.
Davis stepped in the batter’s box for the first time as a major leaguer and sent the third pitch he saw over the Green Monster. It kicked off a historic start in which he became the first MLB player to record nine hits and two home runs in his first three games. “In the third inning, the Blue Jays scored four runs,” she said. “In the fourth inning, it was Davis’ two-run home run that went outside of Fenway Park, onto Lansdowne Street. And then in the fifth inning, they scored five runs. So if you look at the scoreboard, it says 425.Since his picture-perfect debut, Davis earned a regular roster spot with the Jays as a utility player, splitting time between left field, second base, and third.