Team’s ballpark 2nd home for sports fan
Rios helps out around Fort Marcy Ballpark, always making friends
The passion for sports runs deep in Jose Rios, deeper than it does most anyone else.
He can, without much hesitation, rattle off the World Series champion from the year of your choosing.
1991: “Easy. That’s the year I was born. Minnesota Twins.”
1970: “Orioles. Black and orange.” 1947: “Yankees, my favorite team.” Similarly, he can debate with unflinching passion the merits of the Transformers, the importance of Thomas the Tank Engine and who should be batting where in the lineup for the Santa Fe Fuego.
NASCAR? Don’t get him started. A motorhead at heart, he’s got his favorites and and can provide scouting reports on several drivers.
Dallas Cowboys? You betcha. From Roger to Dak, Tony D to Zeke, he’s as up to date as anyone with a passion for the star.
A 26-year-old with an intellectual disability since birth, Rios has been a fixture at Fort Marcy Ballpark since the Fuego were founded six years ago. On most game nights, he’s there long before the lights come on, helping his mother, Donna, set up the ticket booth and merchandise counter or giving his sister, Consuelo, a hard time any chance he gets.
He also spends time down on the field with the players, taking a few minutes each day for batting practice. During the games he fulfills various tasks, ranging from selling raffle tickets to collecting donations for the pass-the-hat promotion after each Fuego home run. If you’ve been to a game, you’ve seen him. Similarly, if you’ve been to a handful of base-
ball games at Capital and Santa Fe High, or football with the Demons or even sports at Desert Academy, he’s there. His collection of Demons-Jaguars-Fuego gear is impressive, as is the list of people he chooses to call friends.
“All these guys are nice to me,” Rios says, looking into the Fuego dugout before a game last week. “I like being here.”
The Fuego like him, too. Enough so that the team’s unofficial photographer created a postcard showing him in a bright red team jersey, a photo that’s available on a limited supply at the team’s ticket booth.
“He’s been such a good boy,” Donna Rios says. “If he says I’m hard on him, it’s because I have to. I’ll have him clean or do things he might not like, but it’s good to keep him busy.”
So busy that Jose was as wrapped up with Capital’s baseball team a few years ago as he has been with the Fuego these days.
He even had then-Jaguars head coach Joe Moulton appoint him as honorary head coach one day during practice when Moulton left Jose calling the shots.
“And the players listened to me,” he says. “Coach let me make all the decisions, and everyone listened.”
Rios’s formative years weren’t always rosy. Growing up in Santa Fe’s public schools system, he crossed paths with kids who weren’t always agreeable with his condition. Same, too, for some of the players he’d come to know when volunteering for various teams.
“He has the memory of an elephant,” Donna Rios says. “He never forgets the people who’ve been mean to him, but he always remembers everyone who’s nice. You can always tell because those are the people he’ll give hugs to.”
Getting a hug from Rios is a powerful thing. As he makes his way through the grandstand at Fort Marcy, he’ll run across a well-wisher every now and then, one who will get one of his memorable bro-hugs accompanied with his toothy grin.
The fastest way to his heart is with a smile and maybe a word or two about NASCAR or his favorite baseball player of all time, Mickey Mantle.
“Mickey because that’s my dad’s favorite player and the Yankees are his team,” Rios says.
He’s so passionate for sports and the few things that matter that any deviation from the norm elicits the kind of response you’d expect from anyone with a heart as big as his.
The day the Intimidator hit the wall and died in the final stages of the Daytona 500, the emotions flowed.
“He had the TV on the day Dale Earnhardt crashed and he cried for two days,” Donna says. “There’s four things he cares about and those things matter the most to him.”
His likable persona has made him a favorite with the Fuego. Rios has always fancied himself as a baseball player, starting a seven-year run as a Special Olympics infielder as a third baseman and, later, as a catcher.
“I want to hit one over the fence one day,” he says. “Like Mickey Mantle.”
If that day comes, you can rest assured knowing it’s a memory Rios won’t soon forget.
Sports, after all, are the passion that drive him.