On Friday night, he was throwing at the closest thing to a home field he’s seen since his days at Cary High.

Nelson, a 2000 Cary graduate, was the starting pitcher for the Richmond Braves at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

“It was pretty special,” Nelson said. “I lived in Cary for quite a while, and I grew up always going to Durham Bulls games and hearing about the Durham Bulls. After all these years, getting the chance to pitch at the Durham Bulls stadium was pretty fun.”

While Nelson’s showing Friday was not his best, Braves pitching coach Guy Hansen called the two-inning effort an aberration.

“Tonight is not indicative,” Hansen said of Nelson’s six runs allowed (five earned) on five hits in two innings. “He’s really kind of a true pitcher. He’s got a good feel for all of his stuff.”

Hansen praised Nelson for his “pitchability” and said he is pushing the starting rotation for Richmond, currently second in the International League’s South Division standings.

Nelson’s success for the Braves comes after years of moving throughout the organization’s minor league system. He’s spent time in Danville, Va., Pearl, Miss., Rome, Ga., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and now Richmond. He even had a spring training stint with Atlanta.

After graduating from Cary, Nelson spent a year at Brigham Young University before moving back to North Carolina and playing on scholarship at Lenoir-Rhyne College for two years.

Nelson was drafted by the Braves in 2003 and spent the year with the Appalachian League team in Danville. He had an 8-3 record and 4.15 ERA in his rookie year.

Nelson continued with the Braves in 2004, splitting time between Danville and Rome, of the Single A South Atlantic League. “It kind of turns out that since I’ve been with the Braves, I’m the kind of guy that can move around a lot,” he said.

In 2005, Nelson went to spring training with the Braves in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., but his stint there and season were cut short. He hurt his elbow and had to undergo Tommy John surgery — the procedure that takes a tendon from elsewhere in the body to replace the elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament — and didn’t pitch again until June 2006.

“I felt like things were kind of gonna end for me baseball wise, but I stuck through it,” Nelson said. “And ever since surgery in ’05, I’ve come back pitching a lot better than I did before surgery, that’s for sure.”

Nelson’s injury helped him in more than his professional life. He met his wife while spending time in Orlando, where she worked as Pocahontas and Princess Jasmine at Disney World. The Braves hold spring training at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex.

“It turned out that if I hadn’t hurt my elbow, I would have taken off the week after I met her, and who knows if we ever would have talked again,” he said. “But it happened the week after we met that I ended up having elbow surgery. So I had to stay there in Florida, where she was working at Disney World for the next year. We ended up getting engaged three months later.”

Now Nelson’s wife, Brittany, follows him as he travels the coast playing for the Braves franchise, their 14-month-old daughter, Lily, in tow.

“It’s been pretty fun getting to travel around. But now that I’m married and we’ve got a 14-month-old baby, it’s a little bit more of a different story,” Nelson laughed. “It becomes a little less of an exciting journey and a little more of a hassle.” Nelson has played with Richmond since 2007, when he made the leap from Single A Myrtle Beach, to Double A Pearl, to Triple A Richmond in only two months.

Promoted for the first time in May, Nelson returned to the Double A Braves for two months during the Richmond Braves’ offseason, then flip-flopped between the teams for the rest of the year.

He opened the 2008 season in Mississippi. After winning his May 8 start against West Tennessee — his first start of the year — Nelson moved back up to Richmond, where he has stayed ever since.

With eight games and three starts under his belt, Nelson has grown more comfortable in his role with the Triple A club. “As far as his success here, he’s been pushing our starting rotation,” Hansen said. “He is at worst a true organizational player who can really help out at the minor league level.”

And at best?

Hansen sees Nelson pitching in the big leagues.

“I think he has a chance, once he establishes his stuff at the highest level it can get to, to pitch in the big leagues some day,” he said.

Hansen compared Nelson to Jeff Suppan, currently a starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers.

“What makes [Nelson] is the overall package,” Hansen said. “The smarts, the repeatability of his delivery. All of his pitches do what they’re supposed to do, and when you put it in combination, it’s what makes him great.”

Nelson won’t say getting to the major leagues is his goal, but he can’t deny its appeal.

“You know, as much as I would like to say that I’d like to play a huge, long Major League career — which I’d love to do, honestly — but realistically the chances of that happening are slim. I’d love to have that chance just one time, to pitch in the big leagues. That one game, to be able to say that I’ve worked hard enough to get there. That would be unbelievable for me.”

Nelson did play one game for the big club. He got a spring training appearance with Atlanta in 2005, before the elbow injury.

“I know it’s just spring training, and to the major leaguers it’s the ho-hum, let’s-get-through-this-spring-training game. But for me, it was pretty special,” he said. “I was sitting across the bench from Tommy Glavine and Chipper Jones. You know, for a guy like me, growing up all about baseball, it was a pretty special moment.”

Whether he makes it to the big leagues or sticks around simply to coach in the minors, Nelson can’t see himself leaving baseball.

“It’s pretty much all I’ve ever done since I was little,” he said. “When you’ve been playing this long and getting paid for it now, it’s hard to see yourself going back and doing a regular job, sitting at a desk or whatever it is.”

While Nelson tries to get his 1-3 record back on track this year, he can look forward to a long road of baseball in front of him, in Richmond or elsewhere.

“It’s been a good road for me,” he said. “I’ve been struggling this year, but hopefully we can turn that around. It’s been a fun road.”