Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pitcher relief: NSU players help teammate
DAVIE — For once, the smile was gone. Since joining the Nova Southeastern University baseball team in September, pitcher Ronny Orta had always flashed a grin. Then, for one brief moment, that everlasting beam disappeared.
Orta was stunned after a recent practice when his teammates presented him with the perfect Christmas gift: a plane ticket to Venezuela so he could spend the holidays with family.
“I had no emotions,” Orta said. “Everything just went black. I just started crying tears of happiness.”
What he thought would be teammates pulling a prank turned into one of the most surprising twists in a journey that has taken him from surviving a notorious slum, to nearly giving up his baseball dreams, to gaining an extended family nearly 1,800 miles
from home.
He realized that the moment he heard pitcher and roommate Gilberto Torres say, “We’ve got Ronny a ticket to go home.”
“It was the first time I had ever seen him not smile,” pitcher Matt Hardy said. “He was shocked. He was like, ‘Whoa.’ ”
Spearheaded by Torres, the Nova Southeastern players pooled $1,100 for a round-trip ticket. It is something Orta and his family, who he hasn’t seen in more than two years, could never afford. Starting Monday, he will have three weeks to spend with his mother and two brothers before returning for the spring semester.
The reason for the generosity toward a person they had only known a few months was simple.
“At Nova, it’s always important to take care of each other and take of the team,” Torres said. “The way he struggled and how hard it was for him to get out of Venezuela. The way he smiles, you’d never know his story.”
A junior who has yet to play in a game for the Sharks, Orta left Venezuela for the United States in the summer of 2013 to chase his baseball dream. The combination of a low-budget, recruiting video and a bit of luck allowed him to escape the small town of Petare in Venezuela.
Petare is a suburb of Caracas, recently named the world’s most violent city according to the Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Last year, the homicide rate was almost 120 per 100,000 inhabitants.
As a teenager, Orta had one rule.
“After the sun comes down, you just want to be home,” said Orta, who posted a 1.93 ERA in 14 relief innings in the collegiate Florida League last summer. “I was home early every night.”
Growing up, baseball was his safe haven. He played in neighborhood games and for teams equivalent to travel programs. He nearly quit out of fear he was getting too old to become a prospect. Time was running out for him to get the attention of an American recruiter.
With the help of a friend, Orta produced a self-made highlight video. It only showed him throwing pitches, but somehow it landed in the hands of a talent evaluator. Weeks later, Faith Baptist Christian High School in Brandon, Fla., offered a scholarship.
“I didn’t even get to meet the coach,” Orta said. “I just jumped on the plane. We didn’t talk until I got here. I didn’t even know how to speak English.”
Orta played one season at Faith Baptist and two more at State College of Florida (a junior college) before landing a scholarship at Nova Southeastern, the defending NCAA Division II national champions. After his arrival in Davie three months ago, teammates soon learned his story.
When they heard how long he had been away from family and that he could not afford a trip home, Torres immediately took action. The players didn’t need to be persuaded to pitch in, because Orta had made a strong connection with them in a short time. Teammates joke of him telling stories about singing Taylor Swift songs in the shower to help him learn English (he is now fluent). They sometimes refer to him as the “Energizer Bunny” because of his seemingly endless energy. Most importantly, the decision to assist was a way of welcoming him to the Nova Southeastern family.
“There are no cliques or anything on this team,” Hardy said. “It’s just one clique, all of us. We’re a group and he’s part of our group.”
The unity is a direct product of Nova Southeastern coach Greg Brown’s philosophy. He emphasizes there is more to life than batting averages and strikeouts.
One of his favorite messages to the team is: “Baseball is a game. It’s going to be taken away from you at some point. It could be 20 years from now, or it could be now.”
“My focus is coaching them from the inside out,” Brown said. “If the only thing they do here is win a national championship, then they haven’t accomplished much. My goal is for them to become more than that, develop as people, develop as baseball players and become successful in life. Part of our philosophy is worrying about our kids 20 years from now.”
When NSU posted video on its website of Orta receiving the plane ticket, it quickly caught the attention of the Hillsborough Community College baseball team, which decided to do the same for an international player.
When alerted of the news, Brown tweeted “Goosebumps” and congratulated the Hillsboro program.
The act of kindness has Orta, who had originally planned to spend the holidays with a friend in the Tampa area, looking forward to his favorite homecooked meal — chicken, rice and beans, and arepas — and playing dominoes with family.
“When I told my mom I was coming, she went quiet for like five minutes,” Orta said. “She was crying. She’s excited. It’s going to be awesome to spend time with them as much as I can.”
“The way he struggled and how hard it was for him to get out of Venezuela. The way he smiles, you’d never know his story.” Gil Torres, teammate