Royals right-hander Jeremy Guthrie, who starts Friday against the A's, has made baseball history in two ways.
● Guthrie, who was 23 when the Cleveland Indians selected him 22nd overall in the 2002 draft, is the oldest first-round pick to reach the majors this century, according to STATS LLC. (Ariel Prieto, who debuted with Oakland in 1995, was 25 when the A's drafted him.)
● Last October, Guthrie became the first Major League Baseball player who had been a Mormon missionary to appear in the World Series, according to research by Doug Andersen of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Guthrie, now 36, started and earned the victory in Game 3 before taking the loss in Game 7.)
The two aspects of Guthrie's biography are very much related, as the start of his professional baseball career was delayed by the two-year mission in Spain. Guthrie spent his freshman year at BYU, served his mission and then pitched at Stanford for two more seasons before the Indians drafted him.