Athletes - Mark Teixeira

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > Mark Teixeira

	Athletes - Mark Teixeira

Mark Charles Teixeira (born April 11, 1980 in Severna Park, Maryland) is a Major League Baseball player with the Texas Rangers. He is mainly a first baseman, but has also played at third base and in the outfield.

Personal

Teixeira, who is of partial Portuguese ancestry, graduated from Mount Saint Joseph's High School in Baltimore, Maryland where he was a standout for the school's baseball team. Teixeira was originally chosen in the ninth round of the MLB amateur draft by the Boston Red Sox in 1998. This was due to Teixeira's pure hitting ability and fielding prowess, but the fact that a large percentage of Portuguese-Americans live in Massachusetts surely played a role in the acquisition.

College career

Still, Teixeira chose not to sign with the Red Sox, and instead played college baseball at Georgia Tech. In 2001, his batting average was .427, and his OPS was 1.319.

A Texas Ranger

In 2001, Teixeira re-entered the draft and was selected by the Rangers with the fifth overall pick. He began playing professional baseball the next season. He started the 2002 season in the Florida State League, where he batted .320 with an OPS of 1.000 in 38 games. He was then moved up to the Class AA Tulsa Drillers, with whom he batted .316 with a .994 OPS and ten home runs in 48 games. It turned out that 2002 would be his only season in the minor leagues; he made the Rangers out of spring training in 2003.

As a rookie in 2003, Teixeira batted .259 with a .811 OPS and 26 home runs. He improved on these numbers in 2004, batting .281 with an OPS of .930, 38 home runs, and 112 runs batted in. For his accomplishments, he earned the Silver Slugger Award as the best-hitting first baseman in the American League as well as the Gold Glove signifying his place as the best fielding first baseman in the American League. Teixeira was also named to first All-Star Game after winning the fan voting portion of the selection to be named the starting first baseman for his league. During the game Teixeira hit a homerun from the right hand side of the plate - something he had failed to do in the entire first half of the season.

Making History

In 2005, Teixeira became the third switch-hitter in MLB history, after Eddie Murray and Chipper Jones, to hit at least 20 home runs in each of his first three seasons. He also became just the fifth player in Major League history to hit at least 100 home runs in his first three seasons joining Hall of Famers Joe Dimaggio, Ralph Kiner, and Eddie Matthews as well as another current first base star, Albert Pujols.

Accomplishments

Gold Glove (2005)
Silver Slugger Award (2005)
All-Star (2005)
Silver Slugger Award (2004)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mark Teixeira ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Mark Teixeira; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.