![]() I was with Dad and Mom in the room and I said, ‘I got this guy. He was still untested in the major leagues when he came to bat to open the bottom of the third. Rosario did not get a chance to make a play in the outfield in the first three innings. Official attendance was only 18,866, but that’s not counting the hundreds of family, friends and neighbors listening and watching the game back home. It was a blustery Wednesday night at home in Target Field against the Oakland A’s. “Of course I do,” Rosario said immediately. The kid from Guayama hit eighth and started in right field. Two days later, on May 6, 2015, to be exact, manager Paul Molitor gave Rosario his long-awaited break. It took only a month before the Twins called him up. He was promoted to the Triple-A Rochester (N.Y.) Red Wings for the start of the following season. Rosario served his suspension at the start of the 2014 season and survived a rocky campaign to finish the year with the Double-A New Britain (Conn.) Rock Cats. After playing in three different levels in 2013, Rosario received a 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s recreational drug policy. His path to the majors, however, was not without a hiccup. He signed with the Twins for $200,000 after being drafted in the fourth round of the 2010 draft. He grew up to be 6-foot-1, turning into a good-hitting outfielder with outstanding bat speed and plate coverage. ![]() Little Eddie learned to hit left-handed and throw righty while playing every position. “My dad gave me a bat, I started swinging it. “I would always have a bat and a ball and be playing all the time,” Rosario said. Every Sunday, the father would go play, taking his gifted child along with him. Rosario’s father, Eddie Sr., never made it that far, instead fulfilling his passion for the game in Clase A, the island-wide amateur league that is the oldest organized baseball in Puerto Rico. ![]() Their lineups boasted Negro League legends like Satchel Paige, Juan “Tetelo” Vargas (Dominican Republic) and Alejandro Oms (Cuba) as well as a legend who did not play in the States, Pedro “Perucho” Cepeda, father of future Puerto Rican Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda. Those “Warlocks” could have cast a spell on any major league team. Rosario was raised in Guayama, a town in central Puerto Rico that used to be the home of the Brujos, one of the founding teams of the island’s winter league and winners of the first two championships, way back in 1937-39. “I already knew how to swing a bat,” Rosario said in Spanish in an interview with La Vida Baseball at the Twins’ spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla. ![]() He began playing baseball 22 years ago, at age 4. Rosario, who will start in left field for the Minnesota Twins on Opening Day for the third straight season, was a precocious child. I called it way before, before getting to The Show,” Rosario said.īut we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Eddie Rosario is among the blessed few - one of 30 players in history to hit the first pitch they ever saw in the major leagues out of the park. ![]()
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