Sharjah baseball prodigy sets heart on big leagues after meeting New York Yankees legend

Situated just a few blocks away from Sharjah Cricket Stadium, it is not a huge surprise to see people carrying bats and balls up to the second floor of Safari Mall in the city’s industrial area.

Seed Sports does, after all, have three lanes of nets, space for two bowling machines, and tension netting that is essential for games of indoor cricket.

Seeing a father and son pushing a shopping trolley filled with baseball bats, gloves and a bucket of balls through the food court and into the sports centre does, though, feel a little odd.

At least to the uninitiated. “You must be here to meet Professor Dan?” says the member of staff on the front desk, with a knowing grin that says: “Wait till you see this.”

Dan Fredrick, who teaches English at the nearby American University of Sharjah, rigs up a pitching machine, sets it to fast, and runs his 14-year-old son Dorian through some batting drills.

To start with, he faces 100 fast balls. And he does not miss one. “He never misses,” says the same member of staff.

The second ball he faces is hit with such crispness, it bursts through a hole in the tension netting.

Such is his power and finesse, it would be easy to think one of the former Major League Baseball stars who was in the UAE this weekend for the launch of Baseball United has wandered off track and ended up in Safari Mall.

Instead, it is a teenage schoolboy who was born in Sharjah and lived all his life there.

Dorian Fredrick has a lofty ambition: “To play Major League Baseball, 100 per cent, and be a professional player.”

He is too young – by four years – to try out just yet for any of the sides in Baseball United, which will become the UAE’s first pro baseball league when it starts in November.

But he is already on their