With the Orioles or in his backyard, Blaze Alexander never lost his childhood joy from baseball

LOS ANGELES — This couldn’t be more different than that little field in Indiana, the one behind his house that earned the nickname “The Sandlot” because all the neighborhood kids flocked to it for baseball.

They had a net behind a makeshift home plate. If a ball cleared the road in left field, that was a home run. Center field was the street, and a house in right field with ivy on it was called Wrigley.

That was Blaze Alexander’s favorite field — the open lot behind his house where his love of baseball flourished. Alexander, a member of a baseball-obsessed family full of minor and major league players, first felt the childhood wonder of this game by running around with his older brother and sister, CJ and Sloane, and all the other neighborhood kids.

Dodger Stadium this weekend was as far from the sandlot as could be. Its well-manicured grass, perfectly raked dirt, the sea of blue-clad fans — it’s a “mecca” of baseball, Alexander said, in a different way from the sandlot.

And yet the sandlot never leaves Alexander, the Orioles’ 27-year-old infielder. More precisely, the emotions he first felt two decades ago have never left. Major League Baseball can be a pressure-packed environment, with big-money contracts on the line.

To Alexander, walking onto this diamond hardly feels different, because the kid inside him remains.

“You look around, and everything is super calm,” Alexander said. “It kind of feels like when I was a kid on the sandlot. Truly. Sunset happens, and I don’t know, it brings me back to my childhood. It’s just something I really, really love. I adore the game.”

Alexander got there on his own, but once he showed interest and aptitude, his father, Chuck, dedicated ample time to training his sons.

“There was no pressure to do that,” Chuck Alexander said. “They just wanted to play.”

So Chuck Alexander educated himself on the best drills and weight training avenues to take. They liked to say, “baseball never sleeps,” and “they lived with that and went on to be who they are today,” he said.

This runs in the family, after all. CJ reached the majors with the Kansas City Royals in 2024 and plays in Triple-A currently. Chuck played four years in the minor leagues as a left-handed pitcher. Chuck’s grandfather, Charles, also played in the minors and Cuba.

Blaze Alexander’s grandmother was a Plesac, which connects them to uncles and cousins Zach, Frank, Dan and Joe — all professional ballplayers, too.

“It’s just part of what we did,” said Chuck Alexander, who added that all the family history in the game influenced “me at a young age. It carried over and you kind of wanted to fill those shoes and pursue baseball, and the boys were no different. We never had to force anyone to go to the field.”

In fact, it was more likely Chuck had to force CJ and Blaze off the field.

When it finally became too dark on the sandlot, another game soon began.

“Me and my brother would roll up socks, and we’d use those little souvenir bats, and we’d play a little game in our room until our dad came up and yelled at us to go to sleep,” Blaze Alexander said. “We were always doing something baseball.”

That was in Indiana, where Alexander was born. The family moved to Florida when Alexander was in fifth grade, then returned to Indiana so Sloane could graduate high school where she grew up. Ahead of Blaze Alexander’s high school years, the family returned to Florida, where he blossomed into a baseball star at IMG Academy.

On the scoreboard at each game, Alexander sees his birthplace listed as Cape Coral, Florida. He wants to set the record straight. He was born in Merrillville, Indiana, and the family lived in nearby Hobart.

That’s where this love began: on the sandlot.

There were many times, Alexander said, when his dad would return from work, pull his car in the driveway and find Blaze’s friends sitting in the garage. Blaze wouldn’t even be there — but Alexander said all the kids had the garage code, which meant they had access to “all the popsicles and drinks you can imagine” in the refrigerator.

To some, the freedom with which they play the game leaves as they grow older. The stakes are higher, there is money riding on results, and thousands scrutinize their every move.

Alexander hasn’t lost that. His father thinks some of this has to do with playing baseball for only part of the year as he grew up. Alexander also wrestled at a high level, and while baseball taught him teamwork, wrestling taught him to compete and to control his emotions.

It also toughened him, Alexander said. When he learned to deal with headlocks and takedowns, he could handle a tough bounce on the infield — or in the driveway and street, where Chuck Alexander hit his boys grounders.

“We’d field balls on the concrete. We wouldn’t even use the sandlot,” Blaze Alexander said. “He’d hit us ground balls on the road and we’d get crazy hops, and that’s the hardest surface you’re going to field on. We’d ruin baseballs. He’d hit bullets on the concrete, and that’s where we learned to field. If we can field on this, you can field on anything.”

Maybe that’s why Alexander is so at ease on a major league field. The hops here, by comparison, are routine. And at the plate he’s hitting as though the stakes are only so high as a game with friends.

With his three-hit performance Sunday against the Dodgers, Alexander’s average rose to .312. Since May 25, Alexander has a .446 average and 1.194 OPS. He’s proving he deserves everyday at-bats for the Orioles while showcasing to his teammates that almost nothing rattles him.

“Love his attitude,” Alonso said. “He plays with this childlike joy that shows, and it’s really infectious for the rest of the squad.”

Take Saturday night’s game as an example. The Orioles were on the ropes against the Dodgers. The stadium was loud. Two runs had already scored in the ninth inning, with defensive gaffes playing a role in the unsteady display.

And yet, in the clubhouse after the 3-2 win, Alexander beamed. He called all of that fun. And why shouldn’t it be?

“I was having fun,” he said. “I don’t know. You’re in Dodger Stadium. It’s loud. Just hit me the ball; I want to make a play. That’s what I was thinking. I was enjoying it.”

That’s because you can take Alexander out of the sandlot in Hobart, Indiana. But you can’t take the kid out of Blaze.