The newest New York Yankee grew up in Massachusetts. The first baseman makes his MLB debut

Cohasset's Ben Rice is headed to The Show.

And that meant Dan and Sophie Rice were headed to The Bronx on Tuesday to watch their son make his Major League debut with the New York Yankees.

That's about as exciting as you would imagine.

"It's surreal," Dan Rice said from the road. "It's just amazing, especially for someone my age. You grew up with this idea of baseball being such a big deal. Looking at the Major Leagues, you never really imagine that (your son is going to make it). You dream maybe of playing there, but you never really imagine it could possibly happen."

Ben Rice, a former Dartmouth College star, has been called up from Triple-A by the Yankees with first baseman Anthony Rizzo expected to miss 4-6 weeks with a fractured arm suffered in a collision at first base in Sunday night's loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Rice, 25, grew up in Cohasset and attended Noble and Greenough School in Dedham. He was a 12th-round pick of the Yankees in the 2001 draft out of Dartmouth, where he was primarily a catcher. In Tuesday's debut he's expected to play first base and bat sixth in a big American League East showdown as the first-place Yankees (50-24) host the second-place Baltimore Orioles (47-24) at 7 p.m.

Rice, who bats left and throws right, broke the news to his family with a phone call on Monday night.

"We were all jumping up and down, beside ourselves," Sophie Rice said. "He was off-the-charts excited, for sure."

The Rice family will be out in force at Yankee Stadium. Ben Rice's younger sister Sarah piled into the car with her mom and dad for the road trip. Ben Rice's brother Sam, who just graduated from medical school, was scheduled to meet them at the stadium. It's an athletic family -- Sarah is a former All-Scholastic swimmer at Cohasset High, and Sam starred in the same sport at Thayer Academy and the University of Tennessee. His dreams of a spot on the Olympic swim team were sabotaged by the COVID pandemic.

Ben Rice has the same drive to succeed as his siblings.

"He's always got his head down," Sophie said. "He likes to work hard and be focused. He's got a goal in mind and he just keeps plugging away. That's what he's done his whole life, with everything, not just baseball."

Ben Rice stats ahead of his first game with the New York Yankees

Despite playing only one full season of college ball (again, due to the pandemic), Ben Rice has impressed at every level of the Yankees' minor-league system. Baseball America rates him as the club's 14th-best prospect, and MLB Pipeline has him No. 12. The 6-1, 215-pounder had a slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) of .267/.368/.442 in 2022, his first full season in the minors with Tampa of the Single-A Florida State League. He pushed those numbers up to .324/.434/.615 in 2023, advancing to Double-A.

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This season he hit .261 with 12 homers and 26 RBIs across 180 at-bats with Somerset of the Double-A Eastern League. He was promoted to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on June 5 and was slashing .333/.440/.619 (with 3 homers and 10 RBIs) over 11 games at the time of his call-up.

"It’s just continuing to see more pitching,” Rice told MLB.com's Bryan Hoch recently. “The more I got used to the stuff that guys had at this level or in pro ball in general, the more I was able to take that power I have in practice settings and see it translate to the game.”

What Ben's former coaches say about his style of play

Ben Rice grew up playing at the South Shore Baseball Club in Hingham. Frank Niles, who runs the show there, remembers Rice as a promising young player, first in the club's 5-7-year-old Rookie League and then later with the Seadogs travel team.

"He was good and solid," said Niles, who also is the Hingham High varsity baseball coach. "And then he just kept getting better. When he would do hitting lessons with me when he was a little older, he was very easy (to coach) and his swing was very good. All I had to do was kind of get out of his way."

Asked if he saw Rice as a future big-leaguer, Niles said, "I certainly thought of him as a prospect-type of kid. He was always a catcher with a live arm. He looked like a guy who would have a chance, if that's the way he wanted to go and if he was all-in."

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Dan Rice, who played against Niles in the Boston Park League, remembers Niles giving Ben his own uniform when Ben would tag along to Sam's travel-team games. Dan Rice made a point to text Niles on Tuesday morning to give him the good news about Ben's call-up.

"That's what I put in my text – thanks to the guy who gave him his first uniform. I've always been grateful for that," said Dan Rice, who calls Niles a "great advocate for baseball."

"When his father texted me this morning I had goosebumps," Niles said. "I was a little misty-eyed. It's an easy family to root for, and Ben was always an easy kid (to coach) - polite. Sometimes you get talent that's easy to root for. He was easy to root for and still is.

"He's going right into the heat, too. Yankees-Orioles, that's a big series. I hope he hits a couple of healthy fly balls to right field."

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Yankees vs Orioles: Ben Rice, #93, to play first base with Rizzo hurt