Evan Longoria Charts His Own Path, On And Off The Baseball Diamond
When Evan Longoria’s second child was innate in Nov 2014, he was not circuitously his fiancee in Tampa, Florida. Instead, Longoria was on a other side of a world, personification in a Tokyo Dome for a ball array with Japan.
Checking his phone ceaselessly around any inning, he got a heads-up that a baby was entrance soon. He proceeded to take himself out of a diversion and FaceTime fiancee Jaime Edmondson, examination around live tide as his son was born.
“Of course, it was right during a game,” Longoria told The Huffington Post. “And it was a surprise. We didn’t know what it would be, though Jamie urged me to go and wasn’t upset.”
At 29 years old, Longoria is resolutely in a primary of a superb career spent wholly with a Tampa Bay Rays. A three-time All-Star third baseman with dual Gold Gloves, he won a 2008 Rookie of a Year and leads a authorization in both sum home runs and RBIs.
To know Longoria’s stream success on a ball diamond, it helps to initial know a rather unlucky start to his career.
Just over 6 feet high and 170 lbs. as a high propagandize comparison outward of Los Angeles, “Longo’s” usually legitimate collegiate seductiveness came from circuitously USC, a unapproachable module with illusory ball tradition. But a Trojans eventually soured on him and didn’t offer him a scholarship. Instead of perplexing to travel on, Longoria enrolled during circuitously Rio Hondo Community College, where he got stronger and excelled. Long Beach State — a long-lived powerhouse, with 4 trips to a College World Series — came calling. Three years later, Longoria was comparison third altogether in a MLB Draft, providing a doctrine in both stability and grit.
“Sometimes a highway reduction trafficked ends adult being easier to navigate since stupidity is bliss,” Longoria says. “I didn’t know that we was any improved or worse than a subsequent man — we only enjoyed personification a diversion and didn’t worry about anything else.”
When he’s not personification baseball, Longoria spends his time with his family, though also as an envoy for Red Bull and for a grill Ducky’s, a sports loll circuitously downtown Tampa. Perhaps his favorite hobby is drumming, a ability he picked adult about 5 years ago.
“I have my pack in this room off to a side of a field,” he says. “It’s right subsequent to a visitors’ clubhouse. The guys in a AL East have beheld my teenager improvement.”
Minor alleviation — or not so teenager — for a Rays is a necessity. After a many successful widen in authorization history, including a outing to a 2008 World Series that Longoria helped hint as a rookie, a group has regressed. Last season, it traded a best item — 29-year-old ace and former Cy Young personality David Price — and enters a 2015 debate but manager Joe Maddon for a initial time in 9 years.
Longoria, for his part, talks quietly about embracing his purpose as a group leader.
“It’s arrange of come organically over a healthy course of time,” he says of his role. “It’s a flattering humbling and an eye-opening experience.”
Opening day is here, that means that for Longoria, a ballpark is radically home for 162 days and nights a year. The hurdles presented by ball can turn immense, that creates family time that most some-more valuable.
“This year I’ll be means to move my daughter [to a stadium],” he gushes. “But it’s tough not being means to be there to assistance Jamie. [My daughter] knows when I’m gone. She says, ‘I wish daddy.'”
“She’s removing improved during FaceTiming.”
Apparently, it runs in a Longoria family.
Email me during jordan.schultz@huffingtonpost.com@Schultz_Reporthere
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