MADRAS, Ore. — Boston Red Sox rookie Jacoby Ellsbury came home to a hero’s welcome Saturday after a fairytale season that saw him rise from Class AA to World Series champion.
“I need a basketball,” the 24-year-old Ellsbury said before wading into the roaring crowd that filled the gym of Madras High School, where the newly minted big-league star lettered in basketball, football, track and baseball.
“Yeah, but there were never this many people,” high school teammate Jake Jaca reminded him before a grinning Ellsbury started shaking hands and waving to the pressing crowd of some 3,000 people, many decked out in Red Sox hats and shirts.
Ellsbury is widely believed to be the first Navajo to play major league baseball, but was born and grew up in this small farming town on the Oregon high desert, where his mother, Marjorie Ellsbury, moved from her home in Arizona to become a special education teacher for the nearby Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.
Here she met Jim Ellsbury, a forester for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they raised four sons, of which Jacoby is the oldest. He is an enrolled member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes in Arizona.
“I’m really proud of Jacoby, coming out of the Navajo Nation,” said Ken Man, a member of the Warm Springs tribes.
Drafted by the Red Sox in the first round in 2005 out of Oregon State University, Ellsbury was called up to Boston to fill in for injured center fielder Coco Crisp in June.
When slugger Manny Ramirez pulled a muscle in his side in August, Ellsbury took over left field. He ended the regular season batting .353 with three home runs, 18 RBI and went 9-for-9 on stolen bases after 116 at bats, but with Ramirez healthy was back on the bench for the playoffs.
With the Red Sox down three games to one in the American League Championship Series and Crisp slumping, manager Terry Francona put Ellsbury back in, and he helped the Sox make a run of seven straight games to win the American League pennant and the World Series.
Ellsbury wiped away a tear as Madras Mayor Jason Hale proclaimed it Jacoby Ellsbury Day. He recalled being so nervous he almost threw up driving to the ballpark for his first start for the Red Sox, and pitcher Josh Beckett advising him, “Just don’t screw it up.”
Asked what advice he had for kids who wanted to follow in his footsteps, Ellsbury said, “I kept my nose clean and worked hard. They can do that.”
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