Jeremy Fikac has the perfect reminder of his major-league debut displayed in his office: An oversized "K" sign, courtesy of the ushers at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium.
Fikac, an assistant baseball coach at Texas State, made his first appearance on Aug. 16, 2001, in the eighth inning of a game against the New York Mets. He struck out the first man he faced, Benny Agbayani. Then he struck out Vance Wilson. Then Jay Payton. Three batters, three Ks, all swinging.
The Padres scored twice in the bottom of the inning, Trevor Hoffman delivered three outs in the ninth, and Fikac not only had three strikeouts in his debut, but a victory.
It was soon enough for his dad, who had flown to San Diego when Fikac was called up from Triple-A, then had to wait three more days to see him get into a game.
"He says 'When are you going to pitch? It's getting expensive to stay in San Diego,'" Fikac said with a grin.
You can look up the box score and play-by-play here, and here's a link to his career stats.
Jeremy's signature is No. 2 in Lone Stars of the Diamond, so now we're off and running on our project to find as many of the Texas-born big-leaguers in the book as possible, have them sign our copy and then write about them here.
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