The popularity of baseball has grown in Germany over the past few decades, but manager Jendrick Speer was still searching for a few additions to the roster for the WBC qualifiers when he stumbled across Agassi on social media and realized his connections to the country.
“I found him because he’s a good baseball player,” Speer said. “With all the technology out there, we found him while researching and discovered that he had played in college and had citizenship. It worked out great and he’s a great guy.”
Growing up in the Las Vegas area, Agassi was right in the middle of a baseball hotbed. The metro has produced recent MLB standouts like Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, Bryson Stott, Paul Sewald, Joey Gallo and Tyler Anderson.
Agassi said his parents never pushed him into tennis, baseball or any other sport because they didn’t want to repeat their childhood and teenage years, which were totally consumed by tennis. Instead, he had a relatively normal upbringing and naturally gravitated toward the baseball diamond.
The lanky 6-foot-3 Agassi has had his share of setbacks during his baseball career. He needed Tommy John elbow surgery after his first game in 2019, which caused him to miss his junior season in high school. Then in 2020, his team played just a handful of games before COVID-19 shut down sports for the year.
