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All American Game  | Story  | 8/10/2022

All-American Nod is Sweet for Tai Peete

Riley Sheppard     
Photo: Tai Peete (Perfect Game)
With the love for baseball instilled in him from an early age, Tai Peete laid the groundwork for his PG All-American status over a decade ago.

“I fell in love with baseball when I was about two or three years old,” Peete said. “At the time, I was golfing too, so I fell in love with those two things because I've always been into sports, but I think baseball just got laid on me to the point where at the age of seven I was like, ‘Alright, let's do this,’ so from then I've always had that dream of getting to the Big Leagues.”



What makes Peete's love for the game even stronger is that it came from both of his parents, especially his mother, Yuki, who represented Austria in the Little League European Region Championship in 1993 and 1994.

“They have been my number one supporters,” Peete said. “I need to go workout or hit, my dad's already there, if I’m hungry, Mom's already on it. It was one of those things where I kind of just fell for baseball because I loved it but they also loved it so it all just worked out.”

The Georgia Tech commit has been rising through the rankings over the past year and is currently ranked the No. 16 overall player in the 2023 class.



And for the job he has done representing his home state of Georgia, Peete, along with 60 others, will be playing in the 20th annual PG All-American Classic at Chase Field in Phoenix on August 28.

“I got a text and it said, ‘This is from PG, I need you to call me back ASAP,” Peete said. “So then I called him back, and he was like, ‘I just wanted to let you know that you're officially a PG All-American.' Immediately I was like, ‘Thank you so much,’ hung up and I just started jumping around and stuff. I called my dad and went and told my mom, it was really a breathtaking moment.”

And while he has had his memorable moments in his career, such as the aforementioned PG-All American nomination and the opportunity to represent the U18 Team USA National Team in September, very few compare to when he committed to play for the Yellow Jackets last year.

“Committing to [Georgia Tech] was a big deal for me, I would say it is one of my best achievements, baseball-wise,” Peete said. “It was definitely a relieving moment because the recruiting process is long and I'm a people pleaser. I was going to camp around July of 2021 and I was going into the [Georgia Tech] camp. I was like, ‘I'm coming here, I'm committing, I'm leaving.’ I had that plan.

“I asked Coach [James Ramsey] if it was cool if I just walked around the back, toured the field, toured the locker rooms. So I took me and my best friend back there, looked at all the stuff I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm gonna commit in like 20 minutes.’ So then we met all the coaches at the top and he was like, ‘Alright, thank you for coming,’ and I was like, ‘Nah, I'm committing.'”

With the next couple months being the busiest of his life, Peete is now entering the thick of a plan he sketched out a decade ago, even though when he set those goals he had to be taught about the baseball farm system.

‘‘I told my dad, we were watching a game or something and I was like, ‘I want to do that, I want to be in the MLB,’" Peete said. “But I didn't know how minor leagues worked, I didn't know you had to go through rookie ball, I didn't know you had to get drafted. I thought you just played in the MLB, so we had a conversation, he told me, ‘You have to go to minor leagues, you have to play with older guys, you have to go through the draft, you have to be good,’ and even then I was like, ‘I still want to do that, I'm gonna do that,’ so since then I’ve had it in my mind of I'm doing this, I've already set my goals, I'm not going back now.’’
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