'It was Freaking Awesome': Cary's Priester Ready For Big League Debut

CARY, IL — The series of phone calls and FaceTime messages Quinn Priester has made in recent days are among those he won’t soon forget. After all, getting your first call-up to the Major Leagues only happens once in the lifetime of a professional baseball player.

And so here was Priester, the former Cary-Grove High School standout, calling his dad and his sister and reaching his mom on FaceTime with the news they had been waiting for — Not only would he be traveling to Pittsburgh to join the Pirates, but he would be making his first big-league start on Monday night at PNC Park against the Cleveland Guardians.

Asked on Sunday morning by reporters in Pittsburgh how he would characterize sharing the news, Priester couldn’t have been clearer.

“It was freaking awesome,” Priester said. “It was all really, really cool. Those phone calls, I’ll remember forever. They’ve seen the ups and downs and everything in between. To finally get that call to come out help this team win — it’s what we’ve been working for for years now, and they know how hard I’ve been working at it. So to see it be done, they realize how special of a moment that was for me. It was really, really cool.”

The response was varied.

Priester says his mom, Chris Foley-Priester, started freaking out. His dad, Andy, figured his son was calling him to say he had gotten injured. But instead, Priester — who was selected by the Pirates with the 18th overall pick of the 2019 draft — was delivering the news that has been a while in coming but is finally a reality.

Priester got the news strangely on Friday after being plunked by a comebacker during a start for Triple-A Indianapolis, seeing his manager come to the mound. Bur feeling well enough to continue pitching, Priester initially questioned his manager’s decision to pull him from the start before finding out why. He was heading to Pittsburgh.

How long he will remain with the Pirates has yet to be determined. Whether Monday’s outing against Cleveland will just be a spot start or if he will get the chance to stick around in the big leagues has yet to be shared with the right-handed pitcher.

At 22, Priester is now the youngest player on the Pirates roster and will cherish the opportunity. He spent Sunday’s game taking in his new surroundings during a 10-inning loss to the San Francisco Giants. Before Sunday’s game, he told reporters that he was looking forward to being in the Pirates dugout, where he hoped not to annoy his new teammates, including Rich Hill — the 19-year veteran.

“Since I can remember, I always thought I was going to be a professional baseball player -- a big league baseball player — but then as you’re growing up you start to realize how hard that is,” Priester told reporters on Sunday. “Then I came back around and realized oh crap, I can actually do this and just worked really hard at it, kept getting better and now it’s a new chapter for me and I’m really excited to keep learning and doing things right.”

Priester is considered the No. 4 prospect in the Pirates organization and has a 4.34 ERA in 87 2/3 innings in 18 starts for Indianapolis. But after a bit of a roller coaster ride in the minors, Priester, who represented the Pirates in the recent Futures Game, had been rumored to be on his way to the major leagues in recent weeks. But it wasn't until Friday when his Triple-A manager made the trip to the mound to tell the young pitcher that he was pulling him from the game that he was able to soak in the news and celebrate with his Indianapolis teammates that he was headed to the place he has always dreamed.

Both Pirates manager Derek Shelton and pitching coach Oscar Marin said Saturday believe that Priester has earned the opportunity for the call-up and are excited about what he does with the chance come Monday night.

For now, Priester is just trying to take everything in stride and said he will enjoy the ride — no matter how long it may last.

“(I’m) definitely going to be anxious,” Priester told reporters on Sunday. “But I definitely want to take everything in. These are days I don’t want back. I want to cherish the moment and appreciate all the things and people that got me here.”