Alek Manoah’s major-league debut was pushed back a day due to rain, but for his family, it was, initially, worth the wait.
Manoah was scheduled to start Wednesday night’s game for Toronto before it was rained out, so his MLB debut came in Game 1 of Thursday’s doubleheader at Yankee Stadium – and YES Network’s cameras caught his mother, with tears in her eyes, watching from the seats as Alek threw his first MLB pitch.
A half-dozen later, Manoah struck out Rougned Odor for his first career K, and Mrs. Manoah simply couldn’t contain her excitement:
It was the culmination of a meteoric rise for Manoah, who was the No. 11 overall pick in 2019 out of West Virginia and entered 2021 as the No. 5 prospect in the Jays organization. Between the short season as a rookie, the 2020 COVID shutdown, and the delay in the 2021 minor-league season, he had thrown just 35 official career innings – 17 at Short-Season Class-A Vancouver in 2019 and 18 for Triple-A Buffalo/Trenton this year – before making his MLB debut on the biggest stage in the game.
The Manoah family is no stranger to New York baseball, as older brother Erik was a 13th-round pick of the Mets out of high school in 2014 and spent three seasons in the organization, parts of two of which were pitched with then Short-Season Class-A Brooklyn.
Erik never made it to the Big Apple – he pitched for the Mets and Angels through May 2019, spent the rest of 2019 in the independent American Association, and will pitch in 2021 for West Virginia in the MLB partner Atlantic League – but the Manoah family’s first moments pitching in NYC will live forever.
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