ANAHEIM — David and Dominic Fletcher had dreamed about the moment they would share a major league field together.

When it finally arrived on Friday, it was bittersweet.

Their father, Tim, had died suddenly less than three weeks earlier. He was 60.

“This would have been one of his proudest moments,” said Dominic, an Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder. “Every night he turned on the TV and had both of our games going on simultaneously. To be able to be here and watch would have been one of his favorite things.”

The Fletcher brothers grew up in Orange County and attended Cypress High School. They went to Angels games with their dad as kids, sitting “up there at the top,” Dominic said, motioning to the upper deck. They attended the parade after the Angels won the 2002 World Series.

David, 29, and Dominic, 25, played together for one year in high school. David went to Loyola Marymount and was drafted by the Angels in 2015. Dominic went to Arkansas and was drafted by Diamondbacks in 2019.

During one wild June in 2018, Tim saw David make his major league debut in Seattle and Dominic play in the College World Series in Omaha.

The two finally got a chance to play together for Italy in the World Baseball Classic, which was a nod to their mother’s birthplace.

Since then, the two of them split the season playing at Triple-A and in the majors. They had played against each other in Triple-A, but the chances of them meeting in the big leagues shrunk as each was still in the minors a week before this series.

David was called up to the Angels last Saturday, and Dominic got the call from the Diamondbacks on Friday, just in time to report to Anaheim.

David was starting at shortstop and batting ninth on Friday; Dominic was in left field, batting sixth.

“It’s awesome,” David said. “It’s something that we kind of thought would happen one day and could be a special series.”

Angels manager Phil Nevin, who has two sons playing professional baseball right now, said he had a special appreciation for how the family was feeling this weekend.

“As a parent, I couldn’t imagine being in the stands watching your boys play against each other, which is happening tonight,” Nevin said. “It’s got to be really a special moment for their family and what’s going on with them over the last couple of weeks. It’s a tragedy in the family, but then for them to get together like this, it was like it was meant to be.

“Heck, I’ll probably have some emotions with it tonight as well. I know both of them already have. I’ve talked to David yesterday. He mentioned after the game that his brother might be coming. You could hear it in his voice when he said it, how excited he was.”

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