Gonzalez joins hometown team, signs minors deal
The Miami Marlins have signed Hialeah native and 13-year MLB veteran Gio Gonzalez to a minorleague deal with an invite to MLB spring training, a source confirmed to the Miami Herald on Wednesday.
He will have to go through the COVID-19 intake process before reporting to camp, so it will be a few days before he begins working out with the club at their spring training complex in Jupiter.
Once he clears intake, the Marlins will have 73 players in camp.
Gonzalez, 35, is a twotime All-Star with a career 3.70 ERA over 344 games (328 starts). The left-handed pitcher made at least 27 starts over nine consecutive seasons from 2010 to 2018 while playing for the Oakland Athletics, Washington Nationals and Milwaukee Brewers.
He missed time in 2019 because of left-arm fatigue, making 17 starts for the
Brewers, and played in 12 games (four starts) for the Chicago White Sox in 2020.
Prior to being drafted by the White Sox in 2004 and making his MLB debut for the Athletics in 2008, Gonzalez won two state high school baseball championships with Hialeah High and finished his preps career at Monsignor Pace.
DUVALL HOMERS
It took Adam Duvall two spring training games to show the Marlins what he can do with his bat.
Duvall, who signed a one-year deal just before the start of spring training, turned on an Erick Fedde cutter and sent it to the berm in right-center field for a no-doubt three-run home run in the first inning of Wednesday’s 8-5 win over the Washington Nationals at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.
“I was just trying to get something up that I could drive there,” Duvall said. “Early on, I’m trying to be able to establish some plate discipline so I’m working on trying to get good pitches
to hit. There, it was a good one.”
The Marlins are hoping to tap into Duvall’s power potential this season as a middle-of-the-order threat. He has 113 career home runs and 329 career RBI over seven big-league seasons.
HERNANDEZ RETURNS
For the first time in more than six months, Elieser Hernandez took the
mound in a live baseball game.
There were some rough patches but he got the job done.
Hernandez held the Nationals to one run in his two innings on the mound. He gave up two hits and struck out two batters with no walks.
But of his 45 pitches, just 25 went for strikes. Five of eight batters he faced went to either a 3-1 or 3-2 count.
Former world No. 1 Kim Clijsters, twice retired and now a 37-year-old mother of three, accepted a wild card to play in the Miami Open tennis tournament, which begins March 22 at Hard Rock Stadium.
It will be her first time back since 2012. She won the event in 2005 and 2010.
The affable Belgian, one of the most popular players on tour and a fourtime Grand Slam champion, made her return to the tour last February after a seven-year hiatus, but her comeback was interrupted by the pandemic.
She initially got the itch to come back while playing exhibition matches with fellow TV commentators and other retired players.
“A few years ago, Martina [Navratilova] said to me, `You shouldn’t be playing with us. You should still be on tour.’ And I was like, ‘Hmmm … maybe I should give it a try,’ ” Clijsters said by phone Monday from her home in New Jersey, where she lives with her husband Brian Lynch, a former pro basketball player, and their children Jada (13), Jack (7) and Blake (4).
LOVES THE GAME
“I’ve always loved to play tennis. Every time somehow a little bit of that competitiveness on court got triggered. It would go away when I would go home and be with the kids. I’d talk about it with my husband and he’d laugh. And then he said,
‘If you want to really do it, you should start now. Don’t wait too long.’ ”
She kept her comeback plans to herself for six to eight months to make sure she was mentally and physically ready. Clijsters was also determined to keep her family routines as intact as possible.
“It didn’t really affect my family because all my training was during school hours,” she said. “I wasn’t traveling much. It didn’t impact anyone’s life but mine.
“The kids see me in the morning when they go to school and they see me when they come home from school. Their afternoon snack is prepared.”
She resumed her career in February 2020 in Dubai, where she lost a close two-set match to Australian Open finalist Garbine Muguruza. She also lost her second match to a top-20 player, Johanna Konta, in Monterrey, Mexico.
Despite the losses, she was encouraged by her level of play and thrilled to be back on the court. Clijsters had great success during her first comeback in 2009, when Jada was a year old. She won three
Grand Slam titles over the following year and a half — the 2009 and 2010 U.S. Opens, and the 2011 Australian Open. She is one of just three moms to win a Grand Slam, joining Margaret Court (1973) and Evonne Goolagong (1980).
She retired again in 2012.
DIFFERENT MENTALITY
Clijsters said she has a completely different mentality now than she did in 2003, when she held the No. 1 ranking.
“Back then I only worried about myself,” she said. “Now it’s the kids, like ‘Oh, before I leave, I want to make sure I have the freezer filled with a bunch of food so when I’m not here, Brian can take out the soups.’
“Back then I played as if my life was depending on it. Whereas now, this is something I want to try to do, but if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. I just want to give it a shot
and see what is the most I can get out of it. I would love to get to the second week of a Grand Slam. I have friends in Belgium who say, ‘Before I’m 40 I want to run a marathon.’ This is the same for me, a challenge.”
Miami Open tournament director James Blake is delighted she is back.
“She is a tremendous player and an even better person,” Blake said. “Plus, it’s not often you get the opportunity to see someone who has been inducted
into the International Tennis Hall of Fame compete at an event of this level.”
Clijsters said she always loved the energy on Key Biscayne, the longtime tournament site before the move to Miami Gardens in 2019. Asked if she can still do her trademark splits, Clijsters laughed and replied: “Yes, but getting up might be a little harder than it used to be.”