A local baseball player has pitched his way onto an international team with hopes of being scouted to get a shot at the big leagues one day.
Paul Xenophontos, 15, who splits his time between his home in Newmarket and his family’s indoor baseball training facility in Holland Landing, is a pitcher and third baseman for the Oshawa under-16 elite team.
He was recently selected as one of 12 players for a Nomadic Baseball international team, which will host a showcase July 1 to 8 in Denver, Colo. with 35 teams.
“There’s going to be a lot of scouts there, so hopefully I catch an eye,” Xenophontos told NewmarketToday. “The next step would be to go to university with it and hopefully go pro with it.”
The showcase will include training camps and end with a tournament July 4 to 8, which will include players from around the world, including New Zealand, Kuwait, the U.S. and Australia, he said.
Two other players from his Oshawa team, who also live in that city, have been selected for the international team as well.
Xenophontos, a student at Dr. J.M. Denison Secondary School in Newmarket, played Triple A for the Markham Mariners for eight years before the team dissolved and he switched to the Oshawa elite league.
The upcoming showcase is not the first time Xenophontos has played internationally. In March, he went to spring training in Florida and his team placed second in a tournament, falling to Venezuela.
He plays year round and trains six days a week — something he does not mind doing because of his passion for baseball.
“(I love) everything about it. It teaches you a lot about life; there’s a lot of life skills in it,” Xenophontos said. “There’s challenges in every kind of game.”
He said his dream is to one day play for his favourite team, the Boston Red Sox.
“They’re one of the original teams. They’ve been in the MLB (Major League Baseball) so long,” he said.
Xenophontos’ mom, Victoria, said he has been playing baseball since age five, so it is great to see him succeeding at what he loves.
“It’s nice to see all the hard work paying off,” she said.
