I Am
Mahki
Backstrom

Hi, my name is Mahki Backstrom, and this is my Baseball journey. I started playing baseball when I was around the age of 4, casually throwing things around the house and having fun with my dad. This innate love for the game of baseball was first spotted by my father who quickly signed me up to play at Ladera Little League in Los Angeles, California. From ages 5-12, I ate, slept, and bled baseball at Ladera Little League. This time is filled with some of the best memories of my childhood. From my first home run on a big boy field at just 9 years old to my HELLACIOUS knuckleball…. I always knew baseball was my calling.

I attended St John Bosco High School, where I learned that discipline, hard work, and dedication were the only way to become better. I struggled and struggled and struggled until I met a coach named Derron Spiller, and he changed me. He changed everything about me, from the way I ate, to how I slept, worked, and carried myself.

Fast forward a year, I am now a junior in high school and transferred to Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, California. I had now transformed myself mentally and physically.  I was no longer the awkward boy that everyone saw having “some potential”; I was a prospect and I was ready to play with the best of ‘em.  I made a name for myself on the travel ball circuit and got major looks from companies such as The Baseball Factory, Perfect Game, and Prep Baseball Report (PBR). I had really started to take off now. I became a high school household name and quick. It was as if one day I was this local nobody and the next, a national recruit. It was beyond crazy to experience all the love I had gotten in just a short few months. I posted one of the highest exit velocities (108 mph) of my class, and some of the furthest balls hit too. I had nothing to lose, and I was having fun.

Now it is my senior year, and it’s the draft day, a day that I had been waiting for my whole life (all 17 years of it). I had been receiving tons and tons of messages and calls and they all had one question. Where do you think you’ll end up in the draft? I had no idea what was in store for me, but I know there was a master plan behind it, and I let God do his work. I was chosen in the 18th round, pick number 547. Five hundred forty-seven is a number that drives me. It is a number that will always motivate me and fire me up because teams took 546 guys before me. Every day I live and breathe, I fight to prove that 546 people are not better than me. This is my story.