By By COREY ATAD
The Toronto Blue Jays have recruited a historic new player.
During the 2023 MLB Draft, the team brought aboard 17-year-old Arjun Nimmala from Tampa, Fla., who is also the first ever first-generation Indian American drafted.
Who Is Arjun Nimmala?
Nimmala was born on October 25, 2005 to parents Balu and Neeru, who moved to the U.S. from India in the early ’00s.
As a youngster, he and his brother Akhil were raised on sports, playing all sorts, including the most beloved sport in Indian: cricket.
Balu decided to get his son into baseball as a way for him to fit in better with the other children in America.
It took some work, but eventually Nimmala got the hang of baseball, and by the age of 11 he had dropped other sports to focus on his new love.
“I also played a little bit of soccer and basketball, and those are both really fun sports for me,” he told MLB.com. “And at that age … it’s just playing for fun. And then it came travel ball time for baseball, as well as competitive basketball. And I decided to go with baseball, because it was just the passion. I just had way more fun on the baseball field. So I chose baseball.
It was always a dream of mine to play Major League Baseball ever since I knew what the MLB was,” he said. “I kind of realized I was pretty good at the age of 12-13. Some of those skills started to pop out. And from then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go play college baseball.’ And now I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe I play MLB.’ But it’s always been a dream of mine and I’m going keep chasing that dream.”
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