The first round of the MLB draft is a showcase of the conventional path to a first-round draft pick. They’re either high school standouts who thrived in college or kids who did well enough in high school to get taken that high in the draft. The White Sox took one of both in the first round on Saturday.

But as their number one overall pick (UCLA’s Roch Cholowsky) and their 34th overall pick (Nazareth Academy’s Landon Thome) were in attendance for Sunday’s 9-1 win over the Athletics at Rate Field, they saw an All-Star in Tristan Peters whose journey to the majors didn’t follow a path like theirs.

“The theme going through my life has been having to prove myself,” Peters told CHGO.

He was one of the best players in his small town in Alberta, Canada growing up, enough to be invited to play at Okotoks Academy for the last two years of high school. But when he got there, they had two teams, black and red, and the goal was to get on the higher-ranked black team.

Peters was assigned to red, at least until the two teams played against each other.

“I kind of went off [in that game], and the next day I find myself on the black team,” Peters said. “I don’t want to say I was the best player there. We had a ton of talent, and I had to prove myself.”

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