Fischer finishes first professional season

BY JAMES O'HARA

     After a whirlwind year, Wall High School alumnus Andrew Fischer finished up his first pro season with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, the high-A farm team of the Milwaukee Brewers and is now currently training at the team’s spring complex in Arizona.
     On the night of July 13, Fischer’s family got the call from the Brewers, selecting the third baseman 20th overall in the Major League Baseball draft. He signed 10 days later for $3.5 million.  
     “It's a testament to a lot of the other work that other people put in to help me out,” Fischer said about how it felt to be the highest-ever draft pick out of Wall.
     “That day was just indescribable,” said Fischer’s father, Wall special education teacher Mr. Brian Fischer. “The feelings that it had for us were just surreal, but it was full of joy and excitement.” 
     In his first 19 Minor League Baseball games, Fischer hit .311, with 23 hits, including his first home run as a professional. He even added an element to his game, stealing eight bases.  
     Fischer grew up in Manchester and moved to Wall right before he started high school. He didn’t play for the varsity baseball team as a freshman and missed out on his sophomore season in 2020 due to the pandemic. But Fischer parlayed just two years of playing varsity to springboard to Duke University in 2023. After one season with the Blue Devils, he transferred to the University of Mississippi and a year later to Tennessee.
     “It was more like ‘Wow, I-really-did-that kind of moments,’” Fischer said of his journey. “I always believed it was possible but, when it actually happened, it hit me.”
     Not only was Fischer drafted, but his Tennessee roommate and former Ole Miss teammate Liam Doyle was selected fifth overall by the St. Louis Cardinals, along with two other Vols’ players before the second round. Additionally, their head coach at Tennessee, Tony Vitello, was just hired as the new manager of the San Francisco Giants, making history as the first college coach hired into Major League Baseball without any professional baseball experience. 
     Ironically, the journey might have gone differently. Mr. Fischer said he was worried that leaving behind a Duke education would be too good to pass up, but he eventually realized that the transfer from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Southeastern Conference, or SEC, was an important one. 
     “Well at first, I was a little skeptical,” he said,” “but Andrew seemed to always have good instincts for what he needed to do to better himself as a player.’’ 
     After leading Ole Miss in home runs, Fischer entered the transfer portal a second time and went to SEC rival Tennessee where he had a breakout year. He earned first-team All-SEC honors as a Volunteer and set the second-highest single season home run record in program history.
     Getting drafted was the culmination in Fischer’s hard work throughout high school, when he would wake his father to take him to the gym at 4 a.m. He said he feels that drive was an important aspect to achieving his dream.
     “[My father] told me, ‘If you’re disciplined enough to wake up and tell me to drive you, I’ll take you but I’m not setting my alarm to wake you.’ So it was on me. Some mornings I’d oversleep, and he wouldn’t wake me. That accountability taught me a lot — it’s a big reason for my success now.”