Puerto Rico trip emotional for some
GURABO, PUERTO RICO » Cleveland star Francisco Lindor held a baseball in his hand, ready to pitch, and asked the young boy standing at home plate if he knew how to swing a bat. The kid said no. The kid might have been fibbing. Lindor’s soft-toss pitch became a line drive, and the kid at Escuela Villa Marina — the same grammar school that Lindor attended years ago — looked at the All-Star shortstop and grinned as onlookers applauded.
“This is what it’s about,” Lindor said.
Cleveland and Minnesota are in Puerto Rico to play a two-game series in San Juan starting Tuesday night. But the Indians and Twins also know they’re serving a larger purpose on this trip, which is why many of the players from both teams ventured out among the Puerto Rican people Monday to give back to an island that was robbed of so much by Hurricane Maria last September.
Lindor went back to his first school in Gurabo, his hometown. Minnesota’s Jose Berrios, who will start on the mound for the Twins in his homeland on Wednesday night, visited a children’s hospital in San Juan and was flanked by many of his teammates. Twins outfielder Eddie Rosario, like Lindor, also went home — he was headlining a clinic in Guayama, the city where he grew up.
“It’s an honor. It’s a privilege,” Lindor said at the school where some local residents were standing outside the chain-link fence more than an hour before he arrived, hoping to just catch a glimpse of Gurabo’s favorite son. “I’m blessed to be here. It’s a dream and I’m excited. Stuff like that is something I always wanted to do. As soon as I was a professional baseball player, I always wanted to come back and do something like this special for the kids — not for me, for the kids, for the community.”
Berrios knows exactly what Lindor is feeling. On Wednesday night, the right-hander from Bayamon — located just south of San Juan — is expected to become the second Puerto Rican pitcher to start a regular-season big-league game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. Javier Vazquez started four in 2003, when the park was used as an alternate home field by the Montreal Expos.
“It’s emotional,” Berrios said. “I feel it already. The stadium where we’re playing, Roberto Clemente played there. My dad watched him play there. Growing up, I watched baseball there. And now we’re going to play there.”