Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Grant Balfour shows young Aussie Lachlan Wells the way to the Major League

WATCHING teenage Sydney Blue Sox pitcher Lachlan Wells this weekend will be the man who has the blueprint on how to make it on ‘The Show’.

Grant Balfour ,pitcher with the Tampa bay'rays' visits Wests tigers.

IT will be just another stepping stone at the beginning of a career for a kid with a lively arm.

A 17 year-old, already with a professional baseball contract in his back pocket, stepping onto the mound to show his peers and his supporters why a big league ball club on the other side of the world is prepared to give him his shot.

But while Sydney Blue Sox pitcher Lachlan Wells will be focused on the strike zone as he prepares to unleash his first fastball against the Adelaide Bite at Blacktown International Sportspark, you could excuse the teenager for taking a glance up into the seats behind home plate.

Watching the talented left-hand pitcher go about his work will be a man who has the blueprint on how to make it to what has become known over the years as ‘The Show’.

BALFOUR PITCHES MLB’S SYDNEY RETURN

Grant Balfour pitches for the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Sydney born-and-raised Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Grant Balfour is back in his hometown this week to spread the gospel for Major League Baseball.

His biggest impact however, should Lachlan Wells seek him out for a post-game chat, could come in the form of a window to the world into which the tyro is about to step.

Wells has signed a deal beginning in 2015 to play in the minor league system of the Minnesota Twins, which also happens to be the team that gave the now 36 year-old Balfour his chance at making it to the big time.

No matter how talented a prospect may be, the climb to the majors’ begins at the lowest rung on professional baseball’s ladder, and there are plenty who make it no further.

“I remember from my days going to my first spring training in Fort Myers in Florida with the Twins, he’s gonna make about $750 a month, living in a hotel and be living out of a suitcase basically”, said Balfour at Sydney’s Park Hyatt Hotel.

“You’re pretty homesick, you haven’t got a car and you’re trying to find a ride home from the ballpark each day. It can be very challenging”.

Wells will catch a Sydney Blue Sox game while he’s in town.

Balfour survived his own initiation to the pro-ranks and eventually earned a promotion to the Minnesota Twins major league team in July 2001.

He’s played 11 MLB seasons since that debut, made the 2008 World Series in his first stint playing for the Rays and became a cult figure for the Oakland Athletics with his highly animated appearances on the mound becoming known as ‘Balfour Rage’.

A club-record 44 consecutive saves as Oakland’s first-choice closing pitcher through the 2012 and 2013 seasons helped cement his position as one of the major leagues’ premier go-to men when the game is on the line.

The one time little-leaguer from Kings Langley in Sydney’s northwest is one year into a two year deal with Tampa Bay that is worth, at today’s exchange rate, $A7.2 million. Per season. That, in anybody’s terms, makes Balfour’s powerful right arm a limb made of gold.

For the youngsters like Wells looking for a wise word or two on how to realise the ambition?

“I just said, hey, I didn’t get the biggest contract to go over there, I may not be the biggest guy, but I’ll train harder than anyone and I’ll work to get there,” he said.

Get there he did, and there are 7.2 million very good reasons why the work continues.

Originally published as Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Grant Balfour shows young Aussie Lachlan Wells the way to the Major League