Recently graduated Hampden-Sydney College baseball standout Reggie Johnson joined the ranks of professional baseball players last week when he signed a minor league contract with the Houston Astros.

He is the third baseball player in school history join a Major League Baseball organization and the first during Head Coach Jeff Kinne’s tenure to sign with an affiliated team.

“It’s been great, dream come true,” Johnson said on Saturday of his signing, noting that terms of the agreement were still being hashed out.

Kinne said he and Robbie Bailey, Tigers pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, were excited for Johnson and pleased to be present on June 14 when he got the call.

“It was a really exciting day,” Kinne said. “We were actually in the car driving back from a workout when it happened.”

The day started with Johnson participating in a workout for three different MLB teams in Hanover County.

“When we went there, the Yankees, the Marlins and the Astros were there,” Kinne said. “We thought that the Yankees were going to sign him, and the scouts of the Yankees really wanted to sign him and put a lot of time and energy into getting Reggie, but the front office never gave him word to pull the trigger.”

Kinne said the workout might have been the only time the Astros had seen Johnson throw, but they liked him and worked quickly to get him.

Johnson said that after the workout, the Astros scout “called back about an hour later asking if I wanted to (be) a Houston Astro, and I said, ‘Heck yeah.’”

It was the fulfillment of a goal he has had since he started playing baseball around the age of 4 in Tappahannock, where he later played for Essex High School.

He affirmed that the process of vying for an opportunity on an MLB team has been an experience like no other in his life.

After not being selected in the 2016 MLB Draft, Johnson had been waiting to see what team might make him a post-draft free agent signee.

“It’s definitely been kind of hectic, and it gets to you but just got to be patient and everything will work out,” he said.

Pointing to what helped him reach this level of achievement, Johnson said, “Definitely coaching, and I’d say hard work and self-determination. Definitely had to be self-motivated.”

He finished his pitching career at Hampden-Sydney with a 9-8 record, a 2.60 ERA and five complete games. He pitched and started 36 games, threw 173.1 innings, and ended up seventh all-time in program history with 133 strikeouts, while allowing 48 walks.

Kinne said Johnson’s signing “is big for all of us. It’s obviously really important and big for Reggie as a person, and it’s important for us as a program because now we can promote and show that you can go on from our program, and it’s also important to Robbie Bailey, our pitching coach, because he has shown that he can develop players that are professional quality players.”

Johnson reported to Kissimmee, Fla., on June 15 and will play for the GCL Astros in the Gulf Coast League.

Kinne noted Johnson could compare favorably to his fellow minor league pitchers looking to advance in the Astros organization.

“He’ll give himself a chance because he doesn’t walk a lot of people, which at the lower levels, sometimes you can get the hard-throwing high school kids or maybe foreign guys, but they’re all over the place,” Kinne said. “He’ll throw strikes, and he has a little maturity to his game.”