The best story of this World Baseball Classic is not the baseball overdogs, the absurdly talented Team USA or Dominican Republic squads that mix next-level baseball talent with bloodless execution.
Nor is it – at least not yet – Shohei Ohtani, who blasted a pair of home runs as Japan quietly prevailed in its pool in Tokyo. And never mind the goofy upstarts from countries we weren’t sure played baseball – though Italy may make its biggest WBC mark yet.
No, the most remarkable group once again hails from an island of 3.2 million, a fraction of the population in the Dominican or Cuba and a miniscule slice of humanity relative to the global superpowers that count their citizens in the hundreds of millions.
For the sixth time in as many iterations of the WBC, Puerto Rico is on to the quarterfinals. That’s a claim the Dominicans can’t make, having once failed to escape group play. And it may seem ho-hum, given the island of Clemente and Beltran and many Molinas established its hardball bona fides several generations ago.
Yet the baseball-mad territory has been dealt setback after setback going on decades, be it subjugation to the Major League Baseball draft, to a series of hurricanes pounding the island to now, this strange situation involving insurance coverage and the terrible misfortune that it just so happened to befall nearly a dozen Puerto Rican ballplayers, thinning a strong yet already compromised talent pool.
Certainly, you’ve heard about the holy trinity of Puerto Rican shortstops, that Francisco Lindor was denied insurance (he’d end up fracturing a hamate bone, anyway), and the actuaries wouldn’t come near Carlos Correa’s medical charts, and that Javy Baez was sidelined for a years-ago marijuana violation that wouldn’t have cost him any games in Major League Baseball.
But the insurance monster wouldn’t stop until ace Jose Berríos was knocked out, along with useful reliever Alexis Diaz and, perhaps most importantly, switch-hitting catcher Victor Caratini.
All this coming on an island that hasn’t been the same after it was ravaged for eight days in 2017 by Hurricane Maria, dealing long-term setbacks to its infrastructure while its leader tossed paper towels at the problem.
It’s been nearly a decade since Maria. Perhaps you tuned into the Super Bowl halftime show and appreciated the Puerto Rican struggle.
If not, Puerto Rico manager Yadier Molina can fill you in on the baseball end of that equation.
“Here in Puerto Rico, there are a lot of parks that haven’t been repaired since Maria,” says Molina, the former St. Louis Cardinals great and youngest of the Molina catcher troika, before the team’s colossal pool play showdown against Cuba. “We need to give a little TLC to the sport. Everyone talks about education and health, but we need to talk about the sports, also.
“We need to help it, and we need to move it forward.”
Yet help or no help, the Puerto Ricans always seem to move it forward.
Minus Caratini, the Boricua once again summoned 39-year-old Martín Maldonado to put on the gear and squat behind the plate. One of the major leagues’ most respected backstops, Maldonado might have played his final MLB game, and besides, he was just a .204 career hitter, anyway.
Yet you don’t last 15 years in the major leagues without something special. And so when Puerto Rico trailed by a run, bottom of the ninth against Panama in a March 7 game that could have jeopardized its hopes, Maldonado simply rolled an opposite-field single to right field that keyed the tying rally.
An inning later, Darell Hernaiz hit a walk-off home run that generated roars in San Juan that probably endured through the team’s off day.
Against Cuba, it was Maldonado’s spot that came up in a scoreless game, second inning, bases loaded. And the .204 hitter smoked a first-pitch slider into the left field corner. Three runs scored.
Maldonado handled the five-pitcher relay with aplomb; Puerto Rico held Cuba to two hits. The 4-1 victory ensured their spot in the quarterfinals.
Logic would suggest this is where the Boricua get in over their heads. Yet history suggests otherwise: Puerto Rico advanced to the championship game in both 2013 and 2017 – as many WBC finals appearances as Team USA, and one more than the Dominicans. Sure, the Puerto Ricans haven’t yet won it all, but they’ve nonetheless punched above their weight significantly.
It’s easy to laugh off the immaculate vibes that always surround this squad. Team Rubio and all that, and court jester Kiké Hernández – another injury casualty this time around – keeping it all loose.
Yet the 20,000 fans who jam Estadio Hiram Bithorn and the many thousands more watching elsewhere create an expectation for the squad.
“We as Puerto Ricans take that very serious,” veteran catcher Christian Vazquez said before the Cuba matchup. “We see there’s a lot of children looking up to us, and they’re going to step into our shoes when there’s another Classic, and we’re going to have to keep on being a role model.
“So, it has a weight, and we do take that very seriously.”
Consider the tradition upheld. Even if the odds seem to get longer every single time.