After years of injuries, Brendan Beck makes major league debut with Yankees at age 27

NEW YORK (AP) — Brendan Beck received a call from his minor league manager, telling him to meet in the hotel lobby. A short while later, the 27-year-old pitcher hopped into a car for a ride to the big leagues.

“You always want it to happen and you think it’s going to happen, but it’s when it actually does, it’s kind of just still a dream,” Beck said Thursday after tossing three innings for the New York Yankees in his major league debut, a 9-2 win over Texas.

“Now it’s something that I’ve done and I can picture that moment and being out on the field and out there with the guys and take that back and now really get to work.”

Beck learned Wednesday before Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's 11 a.m. game at Worcester that a call-up was possible but not definite, getting word from manager Shelley Duncan, pitching coach Spencer Medick and bullpen coach Pete Larson. Beck had to cope with the uncertainty.

“Just a lot of sitting around and trying to keep my mind distracted,” he said.

New York waited until evening to make the decision, and Duncan summoned Beck to the lobby at about 8 p.m.

“`Hey, pack your bag,'” Beck remembered the manager telling him.

Beck left at around 9:30 p.m. and reached The Opus Westchester hotel in White Plains, New York, about midnight.

“So many moving pieces, yeah, and just phone calls and texts,” he said.

Beck pitched at Stanford just after brother Tristan, a 29-year-old righty who made his major league debut with San Francisco in 2023. Their mom, Lucy, is a Stanford graduate as is their sister, Meghan.

Selected by the Yankees on the second round of the 2021 amateur draft, the California native signed for a $1.05 million bonus, then had Tommy John surgery and didn't make his professional debut until June 2023.

He missed 2024 because of another elbow injury that required surgery, started 2025 at Double-A Somerset and was promoted to Triple-A last June. Beck finished 13-5 with a 3.36 ERA in 24 starts and two relief appearances, striking out 123 and walking 36 in 131 1/3 innings.

He pitched for Britain in this year's World Baseball Classic along with his brother. Brendan Beck went 2-2 with a 5.11 ERA in seven starts at Scranton this season before the call-up.

“Been through a lot of stuff, but I think everyone kind of has obstacles that they have to overcome,” Beck said. “Luckily, I was able to overcome mine.”

When he walked into the Yankee Stadium clubhouse, he was greeted by infielder Max Schuemann, a Scranton teammate this season.

“It’s awesome to see a familiar face in Beck,” Schuemann said. “I understand what it’s like to be called up. I know there’s a lot going on.”

Beck's mother and father, Ryan, took a red-eye to get to New York and watched his debut along with his sister and his wife, who drove from Scranton and beat him to the Big Apple. The Giants gave a day off to his brother, who is assigned to Triple-A Sacramento, and Tristan also was at Yankee Stadium.

Beck entered to start the second inning following opener Paul Blackburn, who made an emergency start because Ryan Weathers got sick this week and lost nine pounds. Beck allowed two runs, two hits and three walks in three-plus innings, throwing 28 of 52 pitches for strikes.

“I definitely wish I could have commanded the zone a little better,” he said.

Beck averaged 92.1 mph with 29 four-seam fastballs and threw 18 sliders, three curveballs, one splitter and a sinker.

“Walked a few guys and some of the hard contact found gloves, which was good,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “But he looked in control out there and gave us just what we needed.”

Beck was optioned back to Scranton after the game and didn't travel with the team to Milwaukee. He planned to have dinner with family and friends.

“If everyone’s willing to have me,” he said.

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New York Yankees' Brendan Beck pitches during the third inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers Thursday, May 7, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

A system that thousands of schools and universities use was offline Thursday during a cyberattack, creating chaos as students tried to study for finals and underscoring education’s dependence on technology.

The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Instructure, the company behind the learning management system Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the system was taken down as a precaution or because the hackers knocked it offline.

Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said.

Screen shots he provided showed that the group began threatening Sunday to leak the trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.

Rich in digitized data, the nation’s schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files that not long ago were committed to paper in locked cabinets. Past attacks have hit Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Instructure has not posted about the attack on its social media.

Connolly said the Canvas attack is strikingly similar to a breach at PowerSchool, which also offers learning management tools. In that case a Massachusetts college student was charged.

Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to a other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary.

Universities and school districts quickly began notifying students and parents.

“This is being reported as a national-level cyber-security incident,” the University of Iowa's director of information technology wrote in announcing that the school's online system was down. “Hopefully we will have a resolution soon.”

Virginia Tech acknowledged in a notice to students that the administration was aware of the effect on final exams and other end-of-semester activities.

“Additional guidance will be shared soon via email and posted on the university status page,” the school wrote.

The student newspaper at Harvard reported that the system was down there, too. And public school districts also sought to reassure parents, with officials in Spokane, Washington, writing that they aren't “aware of any sensitive data contained in this breach.”

FILE - People take photos near a John Harvard statue, left, on the Harvard University campus, Jan. 2, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)