Dodgers sign NFL veteran Jarrad Page
The Dodgers signed NFL veteran Jarrad Page to a minor league contract Saturday.
Page, 27, played football and baseball at UCLA. He pursued an NFL career and played for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2006-09, for the New England Patriots in 2010 and for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings last season. He was not expected to be retained by the Vikings.
Page, an outfielder, attended the Dodgers’ open tryout on March 1.
He played baseball at UCLA in 2004-05. In 2005, he hit .149 with one home run and 48 strikeouts in 101 at-bats.
In this Times story from 2005, as he prepared to leave baseball behind for the NFL, UCLA baseball Coach John Savage said Page had the skills to reach the major leagues but had not developed them because of the commitment to football.
At that time, Page said he did not envision himself wondering five years hence what might have happened had he chosen baseball.
“I never really ask what-if because I feel like I know what-if,” Page said then. “I feel like if I played baseball all the time, I’d be really good at it. And I was really good at it. I just didn’t have a great season.”
Page was drafted by major league clubs three times. In 2002, the Milwaukee Brewers selected him in the second round and offered him $750,000 to sign out of high school.
“I couldn’t see myself coming straight out of high school and going to the middle of nowhere to do that right away,” Page said of signing a baseball contract that probably would have entailed reporting to a remote minor league outpost. “I didn’t want to miss the college experience.”
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