ARLINGTON, Texas — Fresh off his 18th birthday, Gunnar Henderson showed up to a new place and lived with someone not of his choosing. It wasn’t college, although that’s what it likely felt like — an experience Henderson never got as the Orioles’ 2019 second-round draft pick out of high school. He showed up to the La Quinta Inn in Sarasota, Florida — his living quarters for his first stop in professional baseball — but didn’t know who his roommate was.

“I had no prior knowledge,” he said with a laugh. “I opened the door and was like, ‘Well, what’s up?’” The person already standing in the hotel room was Adley Rutschman, the crown jewel of the 2019 draft class, a generational catcher, the future of the rebuilding Orioles — and Henderson’s first roommate. In five years, Rutschman and Henderson went from rookie ball roommates to All-Star starters, forming one of baseball’s best young duos for an Orioles team that has rapidly became one of the majors’ best in large part because of them.

It wasn’t a natural pairing — Rutschman a 21-year-old from the Pacific Northwest, Henderson barely a legal adult from Alabama — but the two hit it off. They only roomed together for a couple of weeks because Rutschman was quickly promoted, but that brief time laid the foundation of a friendship that led them both to Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, representing Baltimore as two of the best players in the sport. “Now you look back on all this so fondly be.