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Sitting in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ dugout a few hours before he would walk out on to the mound in front of a crowd of 53,000 and pitch against the San Francisco Giants, Peter Moylan had AFL on his mind.
“Franklin is back this week, right?” the heavily tattooed, Perth-born Moylan asked AAP.
The location was as American as apple pie – the dugout in Dodger Stadium with LA manager Don Mattingly and elite players Clayton Kershaw, Andrew Ethier and Yasiel Puig off to the left and a concessions seller in the stands above yelling “popcorn, popcorn, get ya popcorn” – but if you get two Aussies together in September, talk turns to footy.
Moylan was happy to hear his beloved Hawthorn would have forward Lance Franklin back for Friday’s preliminary final against the Geelong Cats.
If the Hawks beat Geelong, Moylan’s good mate and rabid Cats fan, professional golfer Aaron Baddeley, would be receiving a Hawthorn jersey in the mail.
“We talk a lot of smack,” Moylan laughed.
The 34-year-old has a lot to laugh about.
If the red hot Dodgers keep up their record-breaking regular season form and demolish opponents in the post season, Moylan will be pitching in October’s World Series.
“It’s obviously very exciting,” he said.
Moylan has endured plenty of ups and downs while attempting to cement a Major League Baseball career.
It began with the Minnesota Twins in 1996, but two years later he was released and returned to Australia where he took up a job as a pharmaceutical salesman.
He hit a hurdle in the form of multiple back surgeries, before working on a new sidearm pitching style and then caught the eye of MLB scouts while playing for Australia at the 2006 World Baseball Classic.
The Atlanta Braves signed him and it was his home for six years.
Braves fans loved his larrikin sense of humour, which included shaving a bald patch in his hair and posting a Tweet in 2011 of himself in his fiancee’s tight black dress.
In January the big-spending Dodgers signed Moylan and he endured stints in New Mexico with the team’s Triple A affiliate, the Albuquerque Isotopes, before getting the call to come back to LA on September 1.
He never let the demotion get him down and, enjoying his first injury-free season in two years, has his sights set on the rest of the regular season and then the playoffs.
Moylan had a taste of the playoffs while playing for the Braves.
“If you think pitching in a regular game is intense, well, when you get to the playoffs the intensity level jumps threefold,” he said.
The Dodgers will start next year’s MLB season in Sydney with two games against the Arizona Diamondbacks and his teammates have been peppering him with questions about kangaroos, Vegemite and poisonous snakes.
“They ask ‘Do you have Outback Steakhouses over there?’ and ‘Do you drink Foster’s?’,” he laughed.
There is a chance Moylan, who will become a free agent at the end of the current season, may be with another team in 2014 if a better offer comes up.
But if he does remain with the Dodgers and leads the team to Sydney next March it will be a dream come true.
When Kershaw, Puig and the rest of the Dodgers touch down in Sydney don’t be surprised if they are decked out in Hawthorn jerseys, scarves and beanies.
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