Todd Frazier whipped out his cell phone, punched a few buttons and said, "You have to see this. It's awesome."
It was a video he shot before the Rutgers-West Virginia football game and it showed Rutgers player Eric LeGrand being pushed onto the field in a wheel chair as the Scarlet Knights ran onto the field.
LeGrand was injured in 2010 in a game aginst Army and was temporarily paralyzed, but now is with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team for which Frazier now roots.
Frazier, now the occupant of third base for the Cincinnati Reds, also attended Rutgers and when the Reds were in New York last weekend he met LeGrand in person for the first time, "Just two old Rutgers guys getting together. It was special," said Frazier.
And there was another special moment for Frazier when the Reds were in Yankee Stadium. Back in 1998, when Frazier was 12, his Toms River, N.J. Little League team won the World Series. Later that year Frazier's team was honored at Yankee Stadium and the team stood next to Yankee players at their positions during the national anthem.
Frazier was a shortstop so he stood next to Derek Jeter and, of course, a photo was snapped. Frazier had that photo and last weekend he had Jeter sign it.
Things are in a whirlwind for Frazier these days, capped Wednesday night when he hit a ninth-inning walk-off game-winning home run to beat the Atlanta Braves, 2-1.
Frazier said he hit a walk-off home run at low Class A Dayton and high Class A Sarasota, "But it wasn't anything like this one. Dayton was pretty cool because I hit two home runs that day and there were 8,500 people in the stands."
But, of course, this was the big leagues. And as he did his postgame interview with FoxSportsOhio, pitcher Homer Bailey whacked him in the face with the customary shaving cream pie and a seven sequence photo display of the pie-in-the-face is lined up on a wall in the clubhouse.
"The greeting party of my teammates at home plate, that's the best," he said. "You see all those smiles and you know you've just helped everybody out and it's, wow, pretty surreal. You'd like to put everything in slo-mo right then and walk home to take it all in."
And then comes the dogpile.
When Scott Rolen went down with a shoulder injury, Frazier was summoned from Class AAA Louisville and has started 12 of the last 13 games at third base.
"I'm feeling really good over there," he said with a laugh. "But it's really weird. In all those games, I've had very few grounds ball, hardly any at all. It's almost like no news is good news, you know -- no ground balls to Frazier is good news."
To sharpen his tools, Frazier works every day with infield coach and former major-league shortstop Chris Speier, "Mostly on footwork to try to get ready for anything that comes my way down there."
Although Frazier, a supplemental first round draft pick in 2007, was signed as a shortstop, he has played everywhere but there -- second base, first base, left field and third base.
"The last couple of years I've played third base more than anywhere else and was playing most of the time in there in Louisville when they called me up."
Before taking over at third base during Rolen's absence, Frazier was mostly pinch-hitting and was ultra-successful, five hits in six assignments. But his overall average was .250 after his walk-off home run Wednesday, only the third Reds rookie since 1984 to hit a walk-off home run (Drew Stubbs, Jay Bruce).
Asked if his offensive focus took away from learning his defensive assignments, Frazier said it was bananas and pears.
"Not at all because it is two totally different things," he said. "When you are in the batter's box you are thinking about producing, what can I do to help our pitchers. It's two totally different thought processes."
For certain, with third base, walk-off home runs, pies in the face, football players in wheel chairs and photo with Derek Jeter, Frazier has no lack for things to talk about.
