UVA Baseball alum Andrew Abbott pitched a perfect 1-2-3 sixth inning in the 2025 MLB All-Star Game last night. I’m sad that Tucker McLaughlin wasn’t with us to see it.
Tucker, the long-time sports editor of the South Boston News & Record, started in on how great Abbott was when the lefty was a sophomore at Halifax County High School.
I had the great fortune to be Tucker’s seatmate at a number of ACC games over the years.
Tucker shouldn’t have gotten the fringe media treatment, because he was everywhere – he regularly covered Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, in addition to his media seats at the Final Four and the BCS national title game.
I think it was because we were the two one-man sports departments on media row that we were stuck down there on the far end together.
I got the scouting reports on South Boston and Halifax, in exchange for, grabbing Tucker a Mountain Dew and whatever was left from the tray of snacks.
Because I’d come to learn that Tucker talked up all of the athletes that he covered down his way as being The Second Coming, I took the praise he had for Andrew Abbott, initially, with a grain of salt.
It was only when Abbott put up video-game numbers in his senior season in 2017 – 9-0, 0.28 ERA, 158Ks and just four BBs in 76.2 innings – that I had to concede, OK, maybe.
But his fastball topped out at 90, and Abbott wasn’t a big guy – six feet, 170 pounds.
Didn’t exactly project, to me, big-leaguer.
The word during Abbott’s freshman season at UVA was that he was going to play summer ball in the Valley League, and Tucker wanted me to write a feature or two for him.
The plans to that effect got scuttled when Abbott, on the strength of a solid Year 1 in college ball – a 3-4 win-loss record, 3.18 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 78Ks/16BBs in 51.0 IP – got an invite to the Cape.
Abbott was used out of the bullpen in his first three years in college ball, but after his name didn’t get called in the COVID-truncated 2020 MLB Draft, Brian O’Connor moved Abbott into the weekend rotation for his senior season.
Abbott’s 2021 season – 9-6, 2.87 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 162K/32BB in 106.2 IP as the ace for a team that earned a berth in the College World Series – got him selected in the second round of the 2021 MLB Draft by the Cincinnati Reds, and he’d make his fast-track MLB debut in 2023, going 8-6 with a 3.87 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 120K/s44BBs in 109.1 IP that summer.
Two years later, Abbott earned an All-Star spot with an 8-1, 2.07 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 83Ks/24BBs in 91.1 IP first half.
As he was retiring the AL side in order on 13 pitches, I was thinking of Tucker McLaughlin, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 67, after a four-year battle with brain cancer, which he somehow worked through until the final months.
ICYMI
The only reason he would have missed seeing Andrew Abbott go 1-2-3 in the MLB All-Star Game would have been something else going on in South Boston – a local Babe Ruth all-star tournament would be one thing among many that would have gotten his attention.
He lived for the job – and not just the big names, the Andrew Abbotts of the world.
Tucker talked up kids in South Boston and Halifax who he projected as tennis phenoms on their way to Wimbledon, soccer stars destined for the Premier League, future Olympians in track and field.
He knew them all because he was somehow there for all of their games, matches, meets.
The thing that always comes to mind with Tucker was the standard greeting when you’d catch him at a UVA game.
“Tucker, how’s it going, Big Dog?”
“I’m working like a dog, Dog. I need to be cloned.”
I wish he could have been around for last night.
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
