Tommy Pham

A native of Las Vegas, Nevada, the Cardinals selected Pham in the 16th round of the 2006 amateur draft. He overcame a number of injuries and vision impairments related to keratoconus to make his major league debut nine seasons after being drafted. In 2017, Pham became the first Cardinals batter since 1900 to record at least a .300 batting average, 20 home runs, 20 doubles and 20 stolen bases in the same season.\n', ' Thomas James Pham was born on March 8, 1988, in Las Vegas, Nevada, to Tawana, aged 17 and Anhtuan, aged 19. He is the elder of fraternal twins, comprised with sister Brittany, whose birth occurred two minutes after his. At the time of their birth, Anhtuan was incarcerated, as he would be for most of their lives. Anhtuan was born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an African American father and moved to the United States with his mother, father, brother and sister. Anhtuan excelled at American football but became entangled in drugs and street crime. He was shot by an off-duty police officer in 2016 after he was caught stealing frozen crab legs from a supermarket.\n', ' Tawana\'s parents agreed to assist her in raising her twins with the condition that she work. She had not finished high school and got a job as a busser, then as a server. She also got a second job at a bakery. Between the ages of 2 years and ​3 1⁄2 years, Tommy wore leg braces; the pediatrician feared that he had contracted rickets. When Pham and Brittany were five years old, Tawana married an electrician named Fred Polk and they had a daughter named Mercedes.\n', '