Undergrad Mason Estrada selected with the 225th overall pick in the MLB draft
Read the original article from MLB.com
PHOENIX — “You can know everything in the world, sport, but the only way you’re finding that one out is by giving it a shot.”
Robin Williams’ character in Good Will Hunting offers the above advice to an MIT janitor/genius played by Matt Damon. In the context of the film, Williams is imparting wisdom to Damon’s fictional character as it pertains to a love interest; but in the context of the life of Mason Estrada, an actual aerospace engineering major from MIT, the shot Estrada is taking is on something that he loves — baseball.
Estrada grew up in Covington, La., and before anything else, he loved being outdoors. Hunting. Fishing. You name it, whatever got him outside and active, he was game. It wasn’t until around age 12, when he reeled off a spate of homers consecutively, that it dawned on him that he was pretty good at that baseball thing, too.
While it would make sense that a kid who got a 36 superscore on his ACT (out of 36) and a 34 composite would have MIT on his short list of places to study, the way Estrada wound up on campus in Cambridge, Mass. — at a school with an acceptance rate that is south of five percent — was more a game of happenstance.
“One of my dad’s best friends growing up, one of his good friends’ father was the [athletic director] at MIT for a while, so they got me in touch with him and he got me in touch with the baseball coaches and kind of put MIT on my radar because I didn’t really think of it as an option for me,” Estrada said.
“It was always kind of school first. I was good at baseball when I was younger, I was not elite. I only had a couple of small looks from D-I programs, a lot of JUCO and D-II, D-III looks, and so no schools that were really interested in me that were worth giving up an MIT degree. So that’s why I ended up going to MIT. But it was definitely a juggle focusing on school, focusing on baseball — I just had to make sure I kept my priorities straight.”
