Blue Jays pitcher is former beer league softball superstar
Hold on, let me grab my glove.
Blue Jays relief pitcher Bo Schultz had a homecoming of sorts Tuesday night at Citi Field in Queens, New York.
Originally from Dallas, the 29-year-old Schultz interned at Men’s Journal in Brooklyn in 2006, pursuing a journalism career that had taken him to Northwestern as a walk-on student athlete. He joined the Turkey’s Nest beer league softball team and was an instant sensation in right field.
“I remember early on, I was playing third base, knowing what kind of arm he had,’’ Jordan Heller, manager of the Turkey’s Nest squad since 2000, told Vice Sports in February. “A ball was hit to the deepest part of right field. He tracked it down, spun, and threw a perfect strike to nail the runner tagged up from second by a couple of feet. The guy looked up at me like, ‘You have got to be kidding.’ Nobody ran on him again.’’
Undrafted in 2008, Schultz signed with the Oakland Athletics and had stints in an independent league in Texas and in the Arizona Diamondbacks system. The Blue Jays claimed him off waivers in October 2014.
In eight big league appearances between Arizona and Toronto, Schultz has a 5.17 earned run average and a 9:2 strikeout to walk ratio. He has blossomed at the AAA level with the Buffalo Bisons, where he had a 1.69 ERA before being called up by the Blue Jays.
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