Former Swimming World Up & Comer Seth Beer Hits Home Run in Major League Baseball Debut
On Friday night, Seth Beer made his major league debut for the Arizona Diamondbacks and hit a solo home run while pinch-hitting in the eighth inning. Beer played baseball at Clemson and was selected by the Houston Astros in the first round of the MLB Draft in 2018 before he was traded to Arizona one year later, but many years before that, Beer was a swimmer, a National Age Group record-setter and even a featured “Up & Comer” in the Junior Swimmer section of Swimming World Magazine.
Back in 2009, Beer set National Age Group records in the 50-yard backstroke (SCY) and 50-meter backstroke and 100-meter backstroke (LCM). Most notably, his 100 back record of 1:01.35 broke the previous record of 1:02.68, set one year earlier by a swimmer named Ryan Murphy. Beer would hold those long course records until 2017 and 2014, respectively, and he is still the fourth-fastest performer in U.S. 11-12 boys’ history in the 100 back behind Ronald Dalmacio, Vinny Marciano and Destin Lasco.
Before he began his college and professional baseball career, Beer had focused mostly on swimming and considered baseball his second sport. A story in The Athletic from October 2019 details how Beer came to the decision to focus on baseball when he realized he had major league potential. He stopped swimming regularly when he was 13, but he would later swim for his high school team and come close to his best marks from his younger days despite not training regularly.
Prior to choosing baseball as his primary sport, Beer had set a goal for himself to compete in the 2016 Olympic Trials. But Beer still had a chance of competing in Omaha in June 2016 as Clemson competed for a spot in the College World Series. The Tigers came up short when they lost to Oklahoma State in a regional matchup, but he traveled to Omaha anyway to accept the prestigious Dick Howser Trophy.
“No joke, three hundred feet from the place I thought I was going to be at the time,” Beer told The Athletic in 2019. “To some extent, I achieved that goal I set as a 12-year-old. It just was for a different sport.”