Report: The son of tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Jaden Agassi strives to establish himself in baseball.
It should come as no surprise that Jaden Agassi, the son of tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, has been holding a racket since he was able to walk.
The young youngster cherished running. He enjoyed hitting the ball. The issue was that he wasn’t very accurate.
Agassi laughed as he remarked, “It was difficult for me to keep the ball in the lines.” “I just wanted to hit it as far as I could.”
His parents thus enrolled him in baseball. He is attempting to establish himself in the sports industry some 20 years later.
Pitching for Team Germany in this week’s World Baseball Classic qualifiers in Tucson, Arizona, is 23-year-old Agassi. Before attending USC to play collegiate baseball, the right-hander was raised in Las Vegas by his well-known American father and German mother. He speaks a little German and is a dual citizen.
Although baseball has become more popular in Germany in recent decades, manager Jendrick Speer was still looking to recruit a few players to the team for the WBC qualifiers when he came across Agassi on social media and became aware of his ties to the nation.
“I found him because he’s a good baseball player,” Speer said. “With the advancement of technology, we were able to locate him throughout our investigation and learned that he was a citizen and had played in college. He’s a wonderful man, and everything went really well.”
Agassi grew up in the heart of a baseball hotspot in the Las Vegas region. Recent MLB standouts including Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, Bryson Stott, Paul Sewald, Joey Gallo, and Tyler Anderson are also from the area.
Agassi claimed that because his parents didn’t want to relive their own youth and adolescence, which were completely engrossed in tennis, they never encouraged him to participate in tennis, baseball, or any other activity. Rather, he came from a very typical background and was destined to be on the baseball diamond.
The slack 6-foot-3 Throughout his baseball career, Agassi has had some setbacks. He missed his junior year of high school in 2019 after requiring Tommy John elbow surgery following his first game. His squad then only played a few games in 2020 when COVID-19 ended sports for the year.
Agassi remarked, “It almost worked as a blessing in disguise,” “I got almost two years to rehab my Tommy John, came back strong and then started my college career at USC.”
He experienced several ups and downs throughout his three seasons with the Trojans. After a coaching change, he regressed as a junior with a 9.70 ERA after having a strong sophomore season with a 3-2 record and a 4.34 ERA.
With a 2.96 ERA and 28 strikeouts over 27 1/3 innings last summer, he was able to regain his footing in MLB’s draft league. After the WBC qualifiers, he now hopes to sign with an MLB franchise. He will have another opportunity to display his mid-90s fastball during his time with Team Germany, which is expected to feature a bullpen duty.
“It felt good to find some things that work for me,” Agassi stated. “Stick on a plan and get 1% better every day.”
