Dad on the Brim

Gray writes Dad on the underside brim of his caps. The word is for Jesse, his father, who died in a car accident in August 2004, when Sonny was 14 and a freshman at Smyrna High in Tennessee. On the day his father was taken off life support, Gray insisted on playing in that night's freshman football game despite coaches urging him to stay with family. He told his coach his daddy would want him to play. He threw four touchdown passes in a win, then sat alone afterward and cried for the first time that day.

Six Clubs

On June 28, 2026, in a Boston Red Sox uniform, Gray recorded his 2,000th career strikeout — his sixth club in fourteen seasons. The number spans 357 appearances, nearly all of them starts, and more than 2,000 innings at five-foot-ten and 190 pounds. A 3.52 ERA and a 1.19 WHIP have followed him from Oakland to New York to Cincinnati to Minnesota to St. Louis and now to Boston.

The Cubs drafted him in the 27th round out of high school in 2008; he did not sign, choosing Vanderbilt instead. Coach Tim Corbin attended a performance while recruiting Gray — who had taken the lead role of Troy Bolton in the school's production of High School Musical — and later recalled that Gray could not sing well, though Gray thought he was good at it. Oakland took him 18th overall in 2011.

The Clubhouse

Three All-Star teams — 2015, 2019, and 2023 — and the Twins' Calvin R. Griffith MVP Award in 2023. In Minnesota, manager Rocco Baldelli praised how Gray enjoyed talking the game and pulling the pitching staff together, encouraging teammates to watch each other's bullpen sessions. In Cincinnati, coverage noted he quietly became a leader after arriving from New York. He keeps a ceramic cardinal in his locker.

As a Smyrna High quarterback, Gray also led the team to back-to-back Tennessee 5A state football championships in 2006 and 2007. Born in November 1989, he is 36 years old in his first season with Boston. The career total stands at 2,015.

Reporting: Yahoo Sports, Boston.com, Star Tribune, MLB.com, Wikipedia. Career and biographical data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.