WORCESTER—There are decades of baseball left for the Worcester Red Sox to play and the world changes quickly these day. Still, you can’t help but wonder if the team somehow managed to save the best for first.
Perspective is a long-term concept, but how remarkable was it to see Ryan Fitzgerald in town last weekend? Triple-A baseball in Worcester is only three seasons old and the franchise already has had a player so popular he was brought back to say good-bye after changing uniforms.
That might be unprecedented in minor league baseball, like the fact that on Aug. 20, 2022, he became the first minor league baseball player to debut his own merchandise collection.
Saturday was “Farewell to Fitzy Day” sponsored by the WooSox. It included visits to Polar Park and the DCU Center for a Railers game. It was the perfect way to say goodbye since Fitzgerald is a dedicated hockey player and avid fan.
His farewell came about when he was taken by the Royals in the Rule 5 minor league draft, an ancient baseball mechanism to make sure that good players can get a second chance when an organization can’t find room for them on the big-league depth chart.
“I assumed they’d probably have me back for the caravan here this winter,” Fitzgerald said Saturday. “I was expecting to do that, but with the Rule 5 happening, that kind of got nixed. Then I was down in the Dominican Republic. …but at the end of last season, I fully intended to be back in Worcester next year for sure.”
As memorable as his time with the WooSox was, it was not major league time. That has always been Fitzgerald’s ultimate goal. So he was very happy when teammate Nick Sogard’s message showed up on his phone down in the Dominican telling him that he had been selected by Kansas City.
“It was great news,” Fitzgerald said. “I’d been with this organization for a while and I felt that it was probably time to move on anyway. Obviously, I was still under contract for another year, but with them putting me on the Double-A roster and making me available for the Rule 5, the Royals saw me and scooped me up and that was the upside.
“I think it’s going to be a better opportunity for me to make it to the big leagues there. Who knows — it’s baseball, right?”
While nobody to date has been more connected with the WooSox identity than Fitzgerald, he actually was not a franchise original. That makes his impact even more remarkable. He was called up from Double-A Portland on July 29, 2021, and started both games of a doubleheader at Polar Park. Fitzgerald was in the lineup again on July 31. Fittingly, three games into his Triple-A career he had started games at three different positions — shortstop, second base and third base.
Uncharacteristically, he was 0 for 10 in those games.
That changed dramatically as his career advanced. At the end of the 2023 season, Fitzgerald was the team’s all-time leader in games played (235), at-bats (821), runs scored (115), hits (194), doubles (52), triples (11), RBIs (137), and walks (94).
Somewhere along the way, Fitzgerald became more than just a baseball player. Exactly how did that happen?
“That’s a good question,” he answered. “I was thinking about that on the way over here, on the flight here, and I think it was the perfect storm between Worcester getting here in 2021 and not really having had a baseball team before that. It was definitely the perfect storm for a guy like me to come in and try to make an impact. I don’t think it would have worked this well with another town, another city.
“People really like baseball here. They’re not far from Boston, and to be able to come and see the WooSox play instead of driving an hour into Boston is huge. Plus, all the outreach the WooSox do — they give you the platform, they give you the tools.”
While Fitzgerald was not with Worcester when it commenced play, he was with the WooSox for some key moments, one of them just after he arrived—that July 31 game.
“One of my favorites is playing behind Chris Sale in one of my first games here,” Fitzgerald recalled. “He was rehabbing and Tate Matheny made that catch out in left-center to take away a home run. I played shortstop, I think, and I had made a nice play up the middle. I think Marwin Gonzalez was rehabbing (he was), playing first and I made the play. I threw it and said ‘Oh no it’s in the dirt’ and he just picked it like it was nothing.”
Fitzgerald was the third baseman on Aug. 4, 2022 when the Worcester pitching staff combined to throw a no-hitter in a 12-0 victory over Durham.
“I remember turning around,” he said, “and watching (Devlin) Granberg laying out for the ball in left field, and he got it.”
Fitzgerald is hoping the Royals will be his ticket to the major leagues. If he does spend time in Triple-A it will be a homecoming of sorts. Kansas City’s Triple-A affiliate is in Omaha and Fitzgerald spent four years there playing college baseball at Creighton.
When he dropped the first puck on Saturday night it was not Fitzgerald’s first experience with a faceoff. He has taken plenty through the years and still skates, although as a pro baseball player, has to be careful with that. Sometimes he gets lucky with the weather in his native Illinois.
“I skate a little bit,” he said. “When the pond freezes I get out there. My brother’s men’s league team has asked me to skate with them a couple of times, and I’m not gonna say whether or not I have been out there. I do as much as I can on the pond and I’ve been watching my little brother play a lot.”
That is Colan Fitzgerald, who is with the Huntsville Havoc of the Southern League this season. Ryan Fitzgerald made a trip down to Alabama to see him.
“I’m so proud of him,” Ryan Fitzgerald said. “I’m Kind of living through him. I know it sounds crazy that I’m living through my little brother who plays hockey.”
Illinois, Worcester, the Dominican Republic and Alabama — Ryan Fitzgerald has been all over the place this winter. He has some destinations in mind for the warm weather and they start in Kansas City, Mo.
WooSox fans will miss him, but won’t forget him.
