Durango High product Pham delivering for Cardinals

People always enjoy stories about a guy spending a lot of time in the minor leagues, paying serious dues and whatnot, before he breaks into the majors. Especially if he does something in the majors. This is probably why the Chicago broadcasters were saying a lot of nice things Friday about a local guy named Tommy Pham, who now plays for St. Louis.

This was before the Cubs and Cardinals started hurling baseballs at one another during a weekend series.

Pham is 27 years old, heretofore a career minor leaguer. He graduated from Durango High School.

Last year, he was called up in September. He batted twice. He struck out twice. Then it was back to the minors. Then he got injured again — it seems injuries and a rare eye disorder called keratoconus always were retarding his progress — and Pham sat out three months.

It looked like he might be remembered in the way people remember Archie "Moonlight" Graham, except Moonlight did not get two at-bats in the majors. He was only a defensive replacement. And then in the movies, a young Moonlight winked at the pitcher, choked up a little on the bat handle (so you know it was the movies) and hit a sacrifice fly after they called him from out of the Iowa corn.

But Tommy Pham got called up again in July. He hit a home run against the Padres.

Last Wednesday, he got called from out of the proverbial corn again by Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, or at least from out of Memphis of the Pacific Coast League, by way of Caracas in Venezuela — by way of Springfield and Palm Beach and Quad Cities and Batavia and Johnson City, of the Appalachian League.

In his first two at-bats against the Brewers, Pham hit home runs. The third time up, he hit a triple. The fourth time up, he flied out to the wall in the deepest part of Miller Park. He also made a nice catch in center field.

The next day, he smacked a line drive off the head of the Milwaukee pitcher. He was credited with a double; Jimmy Nelson left the game to have his head examined. Earlier Pham had hit another triple. Then he hit a single.

The St. Louis beat reporters said maybe Matheny should play this kid — er, young man — more often, and then the next day the Chicago broadcasters were rhapsodizing about him.

They said he was from Las Vegas.

It wasn't that long that Tommy Pham was playing ball for Durango High — isn't that how the cliche goes? To him it probably seems like a long time ago, especially after all those bus rides in the Appalachian League and the New York-Penn League.

Now he's playing center field for the vaunted Redbirds when Matheny can fit him into the lineup. He's wearing No. 60, which isn't a vaunted number for a center fielder. But one would rather be No. 60 in St. Louis than No. 7 in Memphis or Springfield or the Quad Cities, etc.

Let the record also show that Tommy Pham is the first person of Vietnamese ancestry to play in the major leagues since Danny Graves of the Reds in 2006. That's also a pretty good story.

All of it is a great story, said Pham's high school coach Sam Knapp. "Three things about Tommy Pham: "No. 1, he's a great person; No. 2, he was a great student in high school; No. 3, his work ethic was second to none."

Heavy on the No. 3.

"He had a dream, and he stuck with it when a lot of guys would have given up," said Knapp, who also coached former Cardinals outfielder Ryan Ludwick at Durango. "He's overcome a lot of adversity. I'm so proud of him.

"When I send him a text, he always texts back. He doesn't have to do that."

Heavy on the No. 1, too.

After his two-homer, one-triple, one-nice-catch-in-center-field game in Milwaukee, Pham told the St. Louis beat reporters, "I didn't try to do too much." OK, so his postgame quotes need a little work.

The next day when the baseball writers approached after he had lined that ball off Jimmy Nelson's head, he said the bus was leaving for Chicago and he didn't want to miss it.

He was not trying to be curt or evasive or Marshawn Lynch. The bus really was leaving. It's one thing to miss a bus in the Appalachian League or the New York-Penn League, but you don't want to miss one to Chicago when it's all you've been waiting for.

The Cardinals, who have been struggling down the stretch, had lost two in a row to the surging Cubs when much traveled and lowly paid Tommy Pham came to bat against Jon Lester, also well traveled but much more highly compensated, in the first inning on Sunday at Wrigley Field.

Pham did not wink at Lester, but he did hit one of his pitches completely over the bleachers onto Waveland Avenue.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski