Bahamian professional baseball player with the Miami Marlins Jasrado “Jazz” Chisholm Jr. celebrated his 25th birthday yesterday, and was flocked by family and friends while fielding questions from the press at Fusion Superplex about his latest accomplishment of being on the cover of the popular baseball video game “MLB: The Show”.
The announcement for the Major League Baseball (MLB) all-star player came this past Monday. For Chisholm, being on the cover of the game is like a dream come true, and he’s ecstatic that it was announced just a couple days before his 25th birthday.
“This is something that you dream of,” said Chisholm. “A lot of people were out to Freedom Farm, saw me play and heard me yelling about how I wanted to be a big leaguer, Hall of Famer, and on the cover of a video game. These are stuff that I was saying from I was a kid. To live it now and see it happen right before my 25th birthday, is probably the greatest thing I could get for a birthday gift.”
He is the first Bahamian-born player in a major sporting league to be featured on a video game. The infielder turned outfielder for the Marlins said they just called him and told him that he was the cover athlete for the game.
“It was not like a match or I was working with them,” he explained. “When the cover athlete came out last year, I signed a deal with them and we were working on a couple things, on the game together, but I was not thinking about me being on the cover. I told them that after last season, I was going to be their cover athlete. They have a video of me telling them they were going to put me on the cover this year because I was going to ball out.”
The Marlins star player knows that being on the cover of the game means a lot, not only to him but to Bahamian kids who see one of their own on the cover of the game. He hopes that they can look at it and be better than him.
“It could make them live out their dream,” Chisholm said. “It made me live my dream and made me become who I am. I was seeing guys like Antoan (Richardson) and Albert (Cartwright) doing it before me. It was like I can do this, too, and I want to do it on a different level. I want to do it at the best level I could do it at. The more I got into it, the more I was like this is possible. Now, the younger kids look at it and say it is possible and they can be better than me one day if they have the same mentality.”
Chisholm’s first baseball coach at Freedom Farm was the late Franklyn ‘Frankie’ Simmons who died almost two weeks ago while coaching. He said it was one of the hardest losses ever for him. Chisholm remembers being by Simmons’ house and playing the very first edition of MLB The Show – MLB 06: The show with the Boston Red Sox’s David Ortiz on the cover.
“The crazy part is the first time I ever played this video game, I was at his house. It was with his youngest who was on the same team with me. I’m on the cover of a video game that I got introduced to in his house just because I was at his house. He would pick me up and we were early one day and we were playing video games – the first one they ever had out,” Chisholm said.
The high-energy player added that when he heard he was on the cover, he wanted to show Simmons his latest accomplishment and it hurts him that Simmons isn’t around to see it.
On his birthday, Chisholm was on a baseball field putting in work. He said he was happy to spend the other part of his birthday with family and friends as he does every year.
Chisholm was on his way to having a mega season in 2022 before he suffered a back injury in late June that eventually kept him out for the rest of the season. He became the first Bahamian to be selected to the all-star game in MLB in 2022. It was the fifth time in Marlins history that the club had a player voted in to start the all-star game, but Chisholm didn’t play due to the injury.
Chisholm was having a phenomenal year for the Marlins, batting .254 with 14 home runs, 45 RBIs (runs batted in) and 39 runs scored. At the time of his injury, he was in the upper echelon of second basemen in a number of offensive categories and had been a pillar of stability defensively for the Marlins.
Chisholm also had 12 stolen bases. He finished with an on-base percentage (OBP) of .325 and an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .860.
Defensively, Chisholm had 93 putouts and 123 assists in 220 total chances. He had helped turn 21 double plays and had a fielding percentage of .982.
This latest version of ‘MLB’ The Show is set to be released on March 28 and can be pre-ordered on February 6.
