Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, Soto will become the first rookie catcher to start an All-Star Game for the National League, and only the second overall. The other — Sandy Alomar Jr. of the Cleveland Indians in 1990 — also hails from the commonwealth of nearly 4 million residents.
Among Rodriguez, Alomar and the New York Yankees’ Jorge Posada, a Puerto Rican catcher started every All-Star Game for the AL in the last 18 years except in 2005. Soto might be merely swinging the trend to the NL, where compatriots Yadier and Bengie Molina, both hitting in the .300 range, play for the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, respectively.
I never noticed it before, but there are indeed a lot of Puerto Rican catchers, especially compared to the overall decline in the number of Puerto Rican players. (at least I think there’s been a decline…that’s what the anti-draft activists tell me)
Earning a midseason trip to the All-Star Game in the Bronx, where his family moved for three years when Soto was 3, was beyond his dreams.
Soto recalls going to Yankee Stadium to cheer for the Texas Rangers, his father’s favorite team, which featured such Puerto Rican stars as Ruben Sierra, Juan Gonzalez and, later, Rodriguez.
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Neither Molina nor his cohorts can explain why such a disproportionate number of their big-league compatriots toil behind the plate: nine of 29 at the start of this season, 13 of the 41 who played last year.
Posada says simply, “Just like there are Dominican second basemen and shortstops, you have Puerto Rican catchers.”
Some point to the success enjoyed by Alomar and Benito Santiago, the 1987 NL rookie of the year, as the launching point. Both went on to play in the World Series, where Puerto Rican catchers have performed in 10 of the last 12 years.
All three Molina brothers own World Series rings, as do Posada, Rodriguez and former major league catcher Javy Lopez. Considering the Cubs’ championship drought is going on its 100th year, it might be presumptuous to say Soto will be next in line, but he’s showing some of the traits exhibited by his crouching forebears.
I thought the Crouching Forebear was an endangered species of large mammal indigenous to the tundra.
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It took me three reads to figure out what this could mean aside from "second overall catcher to start the ASG for the NL."
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