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How many of us have had dreams in our lives, only to give up on those hopes when life gets rough? For new Yankees pitcher Eric Reyzelman, life has been a study of hardships, letdowns and perseverance. You can say that Reyzelman was born into struggles but his day of reckoning may have just arrived.
New York Yankees draft pitcher Eric Reyzelman in the fifth round of the 2022 MLB Draft.
Okay, what is exactly the big deal about reporting on a fifth-round draft choice whom you may have never heard of? Eric Reyzelman’s life story itself is an American success story that we can all get behind in this day and age of division and anger. Eric Reyzelman was born to Jewish parents who immigrated from the then-Soviet Union and settled in the United States. Pulling themselves up from their own bootstraps like so many generations of immigrants before them, Eric Reyzelman’s parents firmly established a pattern of hard work, sacrifice and frequent setbacks and disappoints along the way to achieving a dream. For Reyzelman, that dream was to become a Major League baseball player and this week he’s moving closer to realizing that dream.
While Reyzelman was going to famed De La Salle High School in the Bay Area (the school is portrayed in the movie When the Game Stands Tall), he was literally cut from the school baseball team not once but twice. Moving on to the University of San Francisco, the right-handed pitcher was able to attract the attention of other college programs and he ended up transferring to Louisiana State University, an SEC baseball powerhouse. While opportunites like LSU came knocking, other setbacks starting creeping in for Reyzelman including having Tommy John surgery in early 2020 just as the Covid-19 pandemic wave swept across the United States and the world. Reyzelman had to learn the hard way what his parents learned in fleeing from the Iron Curtain and making a new life in America: The American dream doesn’t come easy.
While at LSU, Reyzelman settled into a reliever role in the Tigers bullpen and developed his fastball into an MLB-level pitch and throwing close to the magic 100 mph threshold. Reyzelman is a lanky 6’2” and 188 lbs and may have time to develop more muscle since his next stop seems to be with the Yankees farm system. Reyzelman was drafted in the fifth round (160th overall) and appears to be heading towards wearing pinstripes in the near future rather than wearing LSU purple. While most baseball fans don’t get too excited when hearing about a fifth-round draft pick, folks should start remembering the Eric Reyzelman’s name as he could very well be in the Yankees bullpen in the very near future.
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