Liam Hendriks was never supposed to play Major League Baseball.
Growing up in Perth on the west coast of Australia, he was the son and grandson of Australian Rules football stars, both of whom played in the Western Australian Football League.
It was the family game, and Hendriks took to it. He was named to the All-Australian football team. The trouble was, he was also a pretty good baseball player. It’s a fringe sport in Australia – cricket is the summer game – but he began playing Tee-ball when he was 5.
“To play cricket it was going to be a six-hour drive away,’’ Hendriks said this week before leaving his home in Florida for the Bay Area where he will be part of Sunday’s A’s FanFest at the Coliseum.