There might be a moment this weekend, over at Citi Field, when Freezer Man introduces himself to the Big Apple.
Even if you’re a Mets fan and you don’t want to see Brewers reliever Aaron Wilkerson do well, he has earned a salute from you.
“I like to use the phrase, ‘The road less traveled,’” the right-hander said Thursday, during a conversation in Manhattan. “Nothing about my (journey) to where I am now is conventional.”
And yes, that journey did prominently and memorably feature a freezer. It also featured Tommy John surgery, home-renovation royalty Chip and Joanna Gaines and a (very brief) work stoppage at independent ball. What you won’t find is his name in any amateur draft histories, or certainly not in any prospect rankings.
When Wilkerson graduated from Cumberland University (in Lebanon, Tenn.) in 2012, he was recovering from Tommy John surgery after seriously injuring the UCL in his right elbow during his senior season, his future very uncertain. So he moved back home to Waco, Texas, and landed a job at an H-E-B supermarket there, working a night shift in the frozen foods section for about six months.
“I unloaded the truck, stocked the shelves,” Wilkerson said. “My supervisor got another position, and they needed someone to come in and fill that spot. It was a 10-cent (per hour) increase. They said, ‘This whole section is yours if you want it.’”
He accepted the promotion, only to receive a call just a few days later from the Gary Southshore RailCats of the independent American Association. He had met with a team official on campus back when he was finishing up college, his surgically repaired arm still in a sling.
“They said, ‘Hey, why don’t you come down for spring training?’” Wilkerson recalled. “… I packed up the car and drove 17 hours to Gary, Indiana.”
It represented his first break — a modest one, to be sure — after prior opportunities fell by the wayside. The University of Arkansas expressed interest in him while he pitched at Panola (junior) College in Texas, Wilkerson said, but he turned out to not have enough academic credits. Around the same time, a scout from the Royals visited him and asked how he would feel about signing for a $10,000 bonus as a 10th-round draft pick. Wilkerson, thinking he was set with a scholarship to Arkansas, passed. After recovering from his surgery, he threw at a tryout for the Rangers in Round Rock, Texas, and didn’t receive a callback.
Even upon getting this break, though, much grinding remained. His pitching mechanics admittedly never great, Wilkerson connected with a Texas pitching guru named Clint Smith, who ran a flooring company on the side. Smith agreed to help Wilkerson remake himself, and since Wilkerson had little disposable income, he agreed in return to work for Smith’s flooring company. “You name it, we did it,” Wilkerson recalled, with much subsequent mention of grout. That’s when he crossed paths with the Gaines power couple, doing some work for them.
And when the RailCats traded him to the Forth Worth Cats of the United League, he found himself receiving a $300 paycheck every two weeks. The second check, Wilkerson said, bounced.
“We actually had a sit-in,” he recalled. “For a 7:05 game, we were all still in our street clothes at 7 o’clock. One guy said, ‘We’re not going to play if we’re not getting paid.’” The team’s owner came in and assured the players they would get paid that night off the game’s concessions sales. Crisis averted.
Wilkerson pitched for two more independent teams, the Grand Prairie AirHogs in the American Association and the Florence Freedom of the Frontier League. “At the time, I was just having fun playing,” he said. “It was just fun to be back in the game, doing something other than freezing my fingers off at night.”
In the middle of 2014, he received the biggest break to date: The Red Sox purchased him from Grand Prairie and assigned him to Class A Lowell, where at 25, he was the team’s oldest pitcher. Easing him into affiliated ball, rather than placing him at a higher Class A or Double-A, was critical, Wilkerson said. He had reached Triple-A Pawtucket by July 2016 when he went to the Brewers in a trade for veteran infielder Aaron Hill. He made his big-league debut with the Brewers in 2017 and has bounced up and down since.
“I feel like Milwaukee saw something in me that they wanted,” Wilkerson said. While his fastball averages 90 miles per hour, relatively modest for a righty reliever, his curveball, which he deploys often, has improved steadily; it’s up to 2,378 revolutions per minute, and he has a 45% groundball rate and a 6-to-1 strikeouts-to-walks rate in his two big-league appearances (totaling 5 ⅔ innings) this season.
Wilkerson’s agent Burton Rocks came up with the “Freezer Man” label for Wilkerson, out of respect for the superhero ethos of ordinary people turning extraordinary when placed in challenging situations. “He drew from his experiences on that night shift,” Rocks said. “There were counts (against batters) that, there was no way he should’ve gotten out of them. He found a way to get those outs, like he found a way to get out of the freezer.”
His client agrees: He draws on what he overcame to get here. He doesn’t want the credits to roll with his first major-league call-up, however.
“I’m a big leaguer,” said Wilkerson, who turns 30 next month, “but now I want to stick around so I can prove not only to myself, but everybody else, I can do this. I deserve to be here. I’m doing well here. It’s unfortunate it took me so long to get here, but I made it.”
So if Brewers manager Craig Counsell calls on Wilkerson to face the Mets? Give it up, just for a moment, for Freezer Man. He worked damn hard to get here.
— Let’s catch up on Pop Quiz questions:
From Gary Mintz of South Huntington: In a 2018 episode of “The Goldbergs,” Coach Mellor’s apartment features a photo from the inside of a former major league ballpark. Name the ballpark.
From Joseph Piro of Jersey City: In the 1987 film “Good Morning Vietnam,” which takes place in 1965, Marty (Robert Wuhl) mentions a famous ballplayer of the time during a radio broadcast. Name the player.
From Nick Sebastian of Emeryville, Calif.: Name legendary writer Philip Roth’s favorite baseball team.
— Congratulations to Bob Klapisch and Paul Solotaroff for their success with “Inside the Empire,” a fun account of the Yankees’ recent rise back to power. And I’m looking forward to reading “K” by Tyler Kepner, who writes even better than he pitches (for our New York media team).
Your Pop Quiz answers:
Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
Pete Rose
The Mets
–If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com
