After years of battling through injuries, Brendan Beck finally got the call he'd been waiting for. At 27 years old, the right-handed pitcher made his major league debut with the New York Yankees on Thursday, tossing three solid innings in a 9-2 victory over the Texas Rangers.
"You always want it to happen and you think it's going to happen, but when it actually does, it's still like a dream," Beck said after the game. "Now it's something I've done. I can picture that moment—being out on the field with the guys. I'll take that back and really get to work."
The journey to the mound at Yankee Stadium was anything but straightforward. Beck learned the day before that a call-up was possible, but not definite. His Triple-A manager, Shelley Duncan, along with pitching coach Spencer Medick and bullpen coach Pete Larson, delivered the news before Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's 11 a.m. game in Worcester.
"Just a lot of sitting around and trying to keep my mind distracted," Beck recalled of the anxious wait.
The Yankees didn't make their final decision until evening. Around 8 p.m., Duncan summoned Beck to the hotel lobby with simple but life-changing words: "Hey, pack your bag." By 9:30 p.m., Beck was in a car headed to The Opus Westchester hotel in White Plains, arriving around midnight.
"So many moving pieces—phone calls and texts," he said.
Baseball runs in the Beck family. Brendan pitched at Stanford, just like his older brother Tristan, a 29-year-old righty who made his MLB debut with the San Francisco Giants in 2023. Their mother, Lucy, and sister, Meghan, are also Stanford graduates.
Selected by the Yankees in the second round of the 2021 amateur draft, Beck signed for a $1.05 million bonus. But the road to the majors was paved with setbacks. He underwent Tommy John surgery and didn't make his professional debut until June 2023. Another elbow injury requiring surgery wiped out his 2024 season entirely.
He started 2025 at Double-A Somerset before earning a promotion to Triple-A last June. Across 24 starts and two relief appearances, Beck posted a 13-5 record with a 3.36 ERA and 123 strikeouts—finally proving he belonged on baseball's biggest stage.