BOSTON — What were the odds that two Rhode Island natives would already have done something significant in this series?

You tell me.

This isn’t southern California here, isn’t some warm-weather place where players go off to professional baseball as though it was on some assembly line. This isn’t some place where kids grow up with every baseball advantage. This is Rhode Island, where the springs are brutal and the major leagues are as far off as the dark side of the moon.

This is what both Dan Wheeler and Rocco Baldelli had to overcome.

This is what they had to overcome to both be in the big leagues in the first place, never mind do anything significant.

Not that they are the first Rhode Islanders to do so, mind you. Baseball Almanac lists more than 70 people born in Rhode Island who have played in the major leagues, going back to the late 19th century, and Google lists 78 players with Rhode Island connections, so you can take your pick. And you can’t have a Rhode Island history badge without knowing that Nap Lajoie, one of the early greats of the game, came from Woonsocket.

A half-century ago, the names were Clem Labine of Woonsocket, who was a relief pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers teams immortalized in the book The Boys of Summer, and pitcher Chet Nichols of Pawtucket. Then it was Davey Lopes, the former La Salle Academy star who played on some great Dodgers teams of the ’70s and Warwick’s Billy Almon, who had been the number-one pick in the country in 1974.

There were others, certainly, including Westerly’s Dave Stenhouse and his son Mike, the only father-son team I can recall. Recently, we’ve sort of adopted Paul Konerko, the White Sox slugger who was born in Providence but didn’t stay around here very long, lending credence to the rumor that if you did anything significant and even drove through Rhode Island once, we’ll make you one of ours.

Now the names are Baldelli, Wheeler and Chris Iannetta, the former St. Ray’s catcher now with the Colorado Rockies.

The bottom line?

We have our local links to the major leagues, but making it from here should never be taken for granted, for it’s always an uphill climb, always takes overcoming great odds.

We all know Baldelli’s story. He was one of those kids who all but grew up on the sports page around here, the great athlete at Hendricken who burst like some supernova across the sky in his senior year to become the sixth pick in the draft. The same day he was playing in the state tournament against St. Ray’s.

Three years later, he was with the Rays, a 6-foot-3 kid with great speed, someone who in those first couple of years was even likened to a young Joe DiMaggio, as hyperbolic as that sounded. The point is, he was on the fast track to a great career, before injuries stalled it all.

That’s just the baseball part, as cruel as that was.

The last year or so has been the life part. The mysterious ailment that robbed him of his energy and made him severely fatigued, to the point that even playing catch seemed like running a road race. The uncertainty. The fear. The endless trips to the endless list of doctors. This was Baldelli’s life, before he finally was diagnosed with something called metabolic mitochrondial disorder, before he finally started getting treatment and slowly began to get his life back.

So to see him hit a three-run homer Monday night, to see his baseball redemption on this big stage, is to believe in things more important than which team wins a playoff game. And to realize that it came here, in this area where he grew up and first started chasing his baseball dreams, is to realize the transcendent power of sport.

“I never could have imagined that I’d be back here, playing in the postseason and playing in Fenway and having a chance to go to the World Series,” he said Monday night.

Who can’t root for that?

In a sense, Wheeler is the flip side of Baldelli.

He didn’t even make first team All-State at Pilgrim, one of those kids who flew beneath the radar in high school, good certainly, but not the kind of kid anyone ever thought he was going to end up in the big leagues, never mind now being in his ninth season. He also was a product of the very successful Shields Post, one of those American Legion teams that do so much to keep the game alive around here, even if it’s often in relative obscurity.

But he was drafted in the 34th round of the ’96 Draft by Tampa Bay and three years later was in the major leagues. But it wasn’t until 2004, in Houston, that Wheeler found his moment, establishing himself as a hard-throwing reliever for the Astros, one of those blue-collar guys who comes out of the pen and throws strikes, like he did in Game Two when he gave the Rays three great innings in a game they all but had to win.

“He’s a jack of all trades,” the Rays’ Troy Percival said of Wheeler last week. “He’s a great set-up man, he comes in and gets some big outs in the ninth inning. He’s a stabilizing guy down there because he throws strikes.”

Can a relief pitcher have any better praise?

In short, Wheeler has become the unofficial patron saint for every Rhode Island kid who never really got the attention he deserved, the one who went further than any of us ever thought he would.

So both Baldelli and Wheeler are two guys who overcame a lot of odds just to be here.

Two guys who already have seen their sandlot dreams come true.

Being in this series is just the frosting.

breynold@projo.com