After successful debut, La Stella settling in

BOSTON — Braves second-base prospect Tommy La Stella was back in the lineup for his second game Thursday night against the Red Sox, after having a late dinner with his family following his Wednesday and spending a good part of his morning responding to friends, former teammates and other congratulatory well-wishers.

He was called up from Triple-A Gwinnett on Wednesday and went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles in his major league debut at Fenway Park.

“I spent a lot of time returning text messages,” said La Stella, who estimated that he had 200-300 text messages during and after Wednesday’s game. “I knocked out about half of them last night, knocked the rest this morning.”

His parents, brother and sister all got to Boston by Wednesday afternoon and were at the game, a 4-0 Braves loss. Afterward they had a family dinner to celebrate what La Stella called his dream come true.

“It was awesome,” he said of the dinner, which followed a debut game experience that he said was “everything I thought it was going to be. To be out there in that environment, in that atmosphere at Fenway, was a dream come true. It’s a cliché but there really is no other way to describe it. Obviously it would have been a lot better if we had won.”

La Stella did his part, putting the ball in play all four times he came up – he was one of only two Braves in the lineup not to strike out at least once – and also handling a couple of groundball double-play situations without a hitch. La Stella is in the majors for his bat, but his defense appears to be at least adequate.

“He had two double plays,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “He had a 4-6-3, then he had a 4-5-3 that wasn’t an easy double play. The feed was down and (Grady) Sizemore was coming in pretty hard, and he stayed in there and turned it.