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Oakland A’s Signed a Guy Who Threw a 96 MPH Fastball for Fun

©Instagram,njpatterson12

You better bring your A Game no matter what you’re doing, because you never know when your moment to be discovered might arrive. That’s exactly what happened when a fan rose to the occasion at a speed challenge contest at a baseball game.

23-year-old Nathan Patterson went to a Colorado Rockies game on July 15 with his brother Christian to kick back and relax – but fate intervened when Patterson decided to step into the speed pitch challenge at the stadium…and he threw a 96 mph fastball.

https://twitter.com/cpatterson_7/status/1150829879476260864

Let’s get him signed, indeed.

Two weeks later, Nathan Patterson was signed by the Oakland A’s.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0os3aFFSy7/?utm_source=ig_embed

Patterson hadn’t played baseball for a few years and last year he surprised himself by throwing a 96 mph fastball at a pitching booth at a minor-league baseball game in Nashville. After that night, he began training. Patterson experienced a setback when he hurt his non-throwing arm in a car accident and had to wear a cast. But he continued to train in the meantime. Here’s a video from January 2019 when Patterson was still wearing his cast.

Patterson began talking with the Oakland A’s back in February, and he got a call from the organization a few days after his brother’s Twitter videos of him throwing fastballs in Colorado went viral.

Let this be a lesson to all of us: when you are given an opportunity, grab it! It’ll be interesting to see how Nathan Patterson’s story evolves. Let’s hope we see him on the mound in Oakland sooner than later.