Making his mark in the MLB, Sal Frelick continues his support for Best Buddies and recalls great days with his friends from LABBB
P art of the beauty of baseball comes to light when seen through the eyes of a 7-year-old.
Such is the magic when Logan McDonough proudly boasts that Milwaukee Brewers right fielder Sal Frelick is his favorite player, living in the heart of Red Sox Nation not withstanding.
This is completely understandable, given that Logan’s dad, Gavin McDonough, is an assistant baseball coach at Lexington High, and Frelick enjoyed playing there under his tutelage.
Ask Logan what’s the best aspect of Frelick’s game, and he shouts without a doubt, “Robs home runs.”
Arguably the finest web gem of this past major league postseason wasn’t a catch at all, but indeed involved Frelick erasing a grand slam in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The game last month was played after Logan’s bedtime, but his dad made sure he saw the replay early the next morning. For those just tuning in, it went like this:
With Frelick playing center field in the series opener, the Dodgers’ Max Muncy stepped in with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the fourth inning. Muncy delivered a shot toward deep center field, Sal gave chase and leapt as the ball was about the clear the wall.
Within fractions of seconds, Frelick deflected the ball with his glove to keep it in the park, and after the ball barely grazed off the top of the wall, Sal grabbed the ball while landing and fired a strike to shortstop Joey Ortiz in the shallow outfield.
Meanwhile, confusion reigned around Milwaukee’s American Family Field, with many, including Frelick, thinking the outfielder caught the ball on the fly. “It hit my glove, and I saw it floating,” he said. “It was so loud in there.”
Ortiz alertly fired to catcher William Contreras to force out Teoscar Hernandez at home plate, then Contreras saw Will Smith also was confused off second base, and the catcher made his way to third and touched the bag to complete an inning-ending double play, keeping the game scoreless.
Officially, it goes down as a ground into a double play, 8-6-2. Can’t dial it up any more Lexington than that.
“That’s a crazy play that hopefully we don’t see again,” Frelick said, slightly miffed he didn’t catch the ball. But if he did, Hernandez would have scored on the sacrifice fly, so best that fine fortune was on Milwaukee’s side.
And Frelick, who was selected in the first round of the 2021 draft after starring three years at Boston College, has enjoyed plenty of fine fortune in his first three seasons with the Brew Crew, all concluding in the postseason, with Frelick starting in each playoff game.
“I’ve been able to spray champagne three times,” he said. “Some guys go whole careers without making the playoffs.”
The Brewers led all of Major League Baseball with a 97-65 regular season. Having earned a bye in the wild-card round, they topped the Chicago Cubs, 3 wins to 2, in a National League Division Series before running into torrid pitching from eventual World Series champion Dodgers, who won the NLCS in four games.
Since his call-up midway through the 2023 season, Frelick has steadily progressed into a two-way threat in the National League. This past season, he entered September with a legitimate shot at the NL batting crown, finishing with a team-leading .288 batting average, and for the second year in a row, he was a finalist for the NL right field Gold Glove, winning the award last year.
Frelick’s work with Best Buddies in Milwaukee was cited in the recognition, but his involvement in the organization dates to his early days at Lexington High, when at a club fair in the LHS Quad, he signed up for the local Best Buddies International chapter and immediately began making a positive impact on many lives.
But perhaps the finest distinction Frelick has received to date came in September, when he was presented as Milwaukee’s nominee for the 2025 Roberto Clemente Award, given by Major League Baseball to the player who best represents baseball through his character, community work and philanthropy, as a tribute to the late, great Hall of Famer.
The honor also struck a special chord with Jeff Frelick, Sal’s proud dad who grew up in the greater Pittsburgh area.
“I was 7 when Clemente died,” Jeff Frelick said of the former Pirates great who died in a New Year’s Eve plane crash in 1972, while on a flight to deliver supplies following a devastating earthquake in Nicaragua. “He was my favorite player as I was just getting into baseball. I always looked up to him.”
During the Brewers’ series in Pittsburgh in April 2024, Jeff gathered Sal and other family members to visit the Roberto Clemente Museum, just down the street from PNC Park. “It was an incredible tour,” Jeff said, “making an impact on all of us.”
“I’m obviously honored and humbled,” Sal said of the nomination for the MLB award, which was presented to the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts during the World Series. “But it can be a little ironic — I didn’t do anything to get the award. I do this for the kids I see and get to work with.”
Frelick’s work with Best Buddies in Milwaukee was cited in the recognition, but his involvement in the organization dates to his early days at Lexington High, when at a club fair in the LHS Quad, he signed up for the local Best Buddies International chapter and immediately began making a positive impact on many lives.
B est Buddies brings together volunteers and creating opportunities for one-on-one friendships with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“He was always incredibly involved with Best Buddies,” said Gavin McDonough, a former All-Middlesex League third baseman who is a special education teacher at Clarke Middle School. “And it wasn’t something he did to put on the resume. He was making true connections. When the Brewers came to Boston (in 2024), reuniting with our Unified basketball team was what it was all about for him. The stands could be filled, but he genuinely loves those kids.”
Frelick, whose Brewers return in April 2026 for a series against the Red Sox, also maintains a relationship with the LABBB Collaborative, which serves students with a variety of special needs from Lexington, Arlington, Burlington, Bedford, Belmont and Watertown.
“The LABBB program is so big, especially in Lexington,” Sal said. “When I was in school, I was able to interact, form relationships. They were in school with us, part of us.”
“Volunteering with Best Buddies has turned into a passion of his,” said Zack Friedman, LHS baseball coach for the past 13 years who earlier shined as a middle infielder for the Minutemen. “It’s often hard to say these things about him without being hyperbolic, but he’s such a leader in the community. He continues to donate equipment to the Unified basketball team.”
“Best Buddies is more than a time investment for Sal,” McDonough said. “It is much more than that. It’s about making the kids feel included and important. He lives it.”
“The kids would take photos with him after every game, he’d go to lunch with them — he still goes to their birthday parties,” Jeff Frelick said. “That whole continuation is really sincere. He enjoys bonding with them.”
“Early in high school, Sal was in my neighborhood going door to door for a baseball program fundraiser, and he had no idea whose house mine was,” recalled former LHS assistant baseball and basketball coach Tom Sullivan., who starred in both sports at Lexington. “My wife Karen says to me later, ‘I just met the nicest kid.’ It happened to be trash day, and Sal offered to roll up the barrels. That tells you what kind of young man he is.”
Jeff and Patty Frelick moved to Lexington with their young family in 2005. They enrolled children Nico, Sal and Francesca (Frankie) at St. Agnes School in Arlington, and the three became young altar servers at that parish, before they enrolled in the Lexington public schools, with Sal arriving at Fiske Elementary in fifth grade.
The three also served on the altar at St. Brigid’s in Lexington, with Sal occasionally pulling on a cassock for Mass on weekends while attending Boston College.
All three carried their athletic careers to college — Nico to Northeastern baseball (bullpen catcher), Frankie to Duke softball (catcher). Yet service to others remained key in the Frelick household.
“You couldn’t find two better parents,” McDonough said, “and you can understand how the kids are. It’s a family that loves each other and holds each other accountable.”
Such a family was instrumental in helping keep Sal grounded while fashioning a storybook athletic career at LHS. His two-way dominance in football — as a record-setting quarterback and fearless secondary force —merited Gatorade State Player of the Year honors as a senior, then came more Middlesex League kudos as a hockey forward. His fourth year as the Minutemen’s starting shortstop culminated in an LHS trip to the Super 8 state tourney.
“I tell my friends and siblings that they have my permission to punch me in the nose if I change,” said Frelick, who last year established an offseason residence in Boston’s South End, still a relatively short car ride away from Lexington.
Frelick did travel a familiar lane to the majors, however unlikely it may have been to Minutemen folk. Like Sal, Chris Shaw followed the path of Fiske Elementary, Diamond Middle, Lexington High and Boston College, before the San Francisco Giants chose him late in the 2015 draft’s first round, and he progressed to two stints in the big leagues.
“Chris is probably the reason I went to BC,” Frelick said. “He showed that you could come out of a public school, go to a school that had great academics, and then succeed in college and progress toward the majors.”
While Frelick treasures his parents as true role models, he also followed the leads of Milwaukee Brewers veterans when it came to giving back.
“This part of the game is super important,” he said. “I’ve had super role models like Christian Yelich, Rhys Hoskins and Brandon Woodruff. It’s awesome to see how they manage the game with their social work.”
Aside from his work with Best Buddies in Milwaukee, Sal also has volunteered with, among other efforts, Ronald McDonald House, the Sargento Double Helping for Hunger and of course the ALS Foundation, honoring the memory of former BC and Lexington Blue Sox center fielder Pete Frates. Frelick has ALS inscribed on his fielding and batting gloves.
Friedman saw Frelick’s generosity with time firsthand when visiting Milwaukee for a September series with the St. Louis Cardinals.
“Right after one of those games, he’s heading off to volunteer at a coffee shop for a veterans organization,” Friedman said. “He just always makes the time to give back.”
Frelick also made the time to strike up a friendship with popular Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker, to whom the Brewers dedicated their NL Central title season after the former catcher/actor/humorist passed away last year at age 90.
Early in his MLB career in the 1960s, Uecker had occasions to catch former Lexington High ace right-hander Don Nottebart with the Milwaukee Braves.
“I got to know Ueck really, really well — he was one of the first people in met in Milwaukee,” Frelick said. “He was one of our teammates — you look back at the life he had, so fulfilling. He’d never bash a ballplayer, saying he’d never talk that way as a ballplayer.”
Milwaukee indeed has been a fine fit for Frelick.
“I couldn’t picture myself anywhere else,” said Frelick, who lives downtown in the city during the season. “Coming from Boston being a little bigger city took a little getting used to, but it’s been wonderful. And the fans are so passionate.”