Tommy Pham

Tommy Pham (1988-    ) is an American professional baseball player of Vietnamese and African-American descent.

Born on March 8, 1988 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tommy Pham and his sister were brought up by his mother in a single parent household.  While attending Durango High School in Spring Valley, Nevada he excelled in sports and played in varsity baseball as an infielder and pitcher with a throwing rate of 93 miles per hour and a batting average of 0.633.  During his senior year, he was given recognition by the Reno Gazette-Journal as the Class 4A All-State Player of the Year.  The following year, Tommy Pham relocated to Southern California where he would attend Cal State Fullerton and embark on his brief career in college baseball.  Later that same year, he was picked by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2006 Major League Baseball Draft and was offered a contract signing bonus which totaled $325,000 USD.  On September 9, 2014, Tommy Pham made his Major League Baseball debut with the St. Louis Cardinals as pitcher and outfielder.

Since turning professional, Tommy Pham has had to face a series of challenges resulting from physical injuries which have included a broken wrist, a torn ligament, a couple of torn labrums and a serious quadriceps injury that had placed him on the disabled list of players for a total of two months during his second season playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in major league baseball.  In addition to such physical injuries, he also suffers from karatoconus, a rare, degenerative eye disorder which requires him to rely on the usage of contact lenses in order to correct his vision while playing professional baseball.

From 2006 until 2014, Tommy Pham played professional baseball in the minor leagues for such teams affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals like the Johnson City Cardinals, the Batavia Muckdogs, the Quad Cities River Bandits out of Davenport, Iowa, the Memphis Cardinals, the Palm Beach Cardinals and the Memphis Redbirds.  In 2015, Tommy Pham was named best defensive outfielder by the Baseball America Pacific Coast League.  He currently earns an impressive annual salary of $500,000 USD.

Tommy Pham is the third American athlete of Vietnamese descent to play in major league baseball following Danny Graves and Jim Parque.