Former UNC teammates square off in Carolina League

After they're drafted, professional baseball players are often shipped away to an obscure minor league outpost and introduced to a group of strangers who become instant teammates.

Some are a little luckier.

Kinston Indians outfielder Tim Fedroff, a former star at the University of North Carolina, is not only playing close to where he went to college; he's sharing the field this weekend with an old friend.

Like Fedroff, Salem catcher Tim Federowicz played for the Tar Heels through 2008. Fedroff started this season, the first full pro year for both players, with Kinston, while Federowicz was assigned to low Class A Greenville.

Fedroff, as he does with all his former teammates, kept an eye on his friend's numbers, knowing he could soon see him in the Carolina League.

When Salem's parent Boston Red Sox pulled the trigger and promoted him over the All-Star break, the two players with bizarrely similar names were thrilled.

"Fed has been doing real well," Fedroff said, employing the nickname they - and everyone else - use for each other. "So I was hoping sooner or later they'd bring him up to Salem and I'd get a chance to play against him."

He got his first chance Friday, when Federowicz was in Salem's lineup to make his high Class A debut against the Indians. The promotion came after Federowicz destroyed South Atlantic League pitching in the first half, hitting .345 with 10 homers and 34 RBIs in 55 games.

It was enough to make leaving almost bittersweet.

"I wanted to stay down there, as well as I was doing," Federowicz, an Apex resident and seventh-round draft pick last year, said. "But it's great to get this promotion and be able to come up here to a new team and an older group of guys so I can learn new things."

Fedroff, a New Jersey native who left UNC after his sophomore year when he, too, was picked in the seventh round of the draft, entered Friday hitting .256 with three homers and 17 RBIs through 46 games. A hamstring injury kept him out for more than two weeks in May, and his average has fallen from .286 at the time of the injury as he's worked to shake off the rust.

Both players said it seems like just yesterday when they were plugging away in Chapel Hill, taking the Tar Heels to one of four straight College World Series appearances. Federowicz (pronounced Fed-er-O-wich) called watching UNC's recent CWS appearance on television a "different" experience.

Fedroff, meanwhile, has brought the Tar Heels to him. Several current UNC players have come to watch him play at Grainger Stadium this season, making his days in Chapel Hill seem even more recent.

Tar Heels stars Garrett Gore and Dustin Ackley, the No. 2 overall pick in this year's draft, were in the stands for Thursday's series opener between Salem and the K-Tribe, though Federowicz wasn't in the lineup.

Fedroff and Federowicz, who were close friends during their college careers, can't help but have fun with their almost identical names, which have been the source of both confusion and humor.

It started as soon as Fedroff stepped foot in Chapel Hill. When he visited UNC on a recruiting trip, the older Federowicz was his host. Chad Holbrook, then an assistant at UNC but now an assistant at South Carolina, had the strange task of introducing them to each other.

"Tim Fedroff, this is Tim Federowicz. Tim Federowicz, this is Tim Fedroff," Holbrook said.

The "Oprah-Uma" moment caught the players off guard.

"We were just like, ‘Ah, dude, we almost have the same name,' " Fedroff said, laughing. "It was pretty funny."

They've been friends ever since, and their careers are starting to look as similar as their names. Against long odds, the game has brought them back together again - if only for a few fortunate days. 

David Hall can be reached at (252) 559-1086 or at dhall@freedomenc.com.