You’ve heard a lot about how special this week has been for Rangers catcher Jose Trevino. You know his first child, his son Josiah Cruz, was born exactly one week ago. You’ve heard about him making his MLB debut on Friday, then registering his first hit and RBI on Saturday. He followed it up by celebrating his first Father’s Day on Sunday with his first walk-off to help the Rangers beat the Rockies 13-12, all with his son here in this world to experience it.
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But for Trevino, this ride – and especially this day – is about the person who isn’t here to experience the self-proclaimed best week of his life: His father.
When asked what he was thinking about on the on-deck circle before his number was called, Trevino was silent for nine seconds before choking out an answer.
“I mean, I knew I was going to have some help from an angel above,” a visibly emotional Trevino said. “I knew if it got down to it, he wouldn’t let me down.”
Jose’s father, Joe Trevino, passed away on Oct. 20, 2013 at the age of 60 following a long illness. At the time, Jose was at Oral Roberts University, still a little over seven months away from fulfilling his and his father’s dream of being drafted.
Baseball wasn’t just an activity in the Trevino household; it was the lifestyle. Joe was a volunteer baseball coach for over 35 years and coached for the International Little League, Westside Pony League and Southside Pony League. He established a select baseball team that placed third in the USSSA World Series in 2001 as an 8U team and won the 2005 USSSA World Series in 2005 as a 12U team and served as a baseball umpire. He was also a coach at John Paul II High School in Corpus Christi, Texas towards the end of his life when JPII won back-to-back state championships in 2010 and 2011.
Jose’s mother, Patsy, served as a team mom and his sisters, Joann and Sarah, played softball through their high school years. His brother, Victor, coached a select baseball team in Austin.
Jose was 21 years old when his dad died.
“He just taught me everything that I needed to know about baseball,” Trevino said. “Yesterday I got asked if I wanted to say something to my son on national television and I said the same exact thing, the last words my dad told me. I said, ‘I love you, man.’”
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Joe would watch Jose’s games while he was at ORU and would take him to MLB games. The final game Joe and Jose attended together was in 2011 at Globe Life Park.
The Rangers trailed coming into the bottom of the ninth inning in that game. Mike Napoli scored to tie things up, 4-4. Then, with Josh Hamilton at first and Craig Gentry at third, Michael Young stepped up to the plate and singled to deep right for the walk-off win.
“One of my favorite players, Michael Young, hit a walk-off to right field,” Trevino recalled. “Bounce on the warning track, bounce up against the fence – I remember it clearly. That was our last game together.”
Trevino hasn’t told Young the story yet, but Sunday, almost seven years later, Trevino hit a pinch-hit single to left center in the bottom of the ninth at Globe Life Park for his own walk-off, come-from-behind victory, this one by the score of 13-12 over the Rockies.
“This is just unbelievable,” Trevino said. “The backstory to this … Can’t write this stuff.”
A walk-off hit to cap off a comeback might seem like a pipedream for a guy who made his MLB debut less than 48 hours ago, much like a tying hit in the seventh inning to set up a win like Trevino had done the day before.
Instead, Trevino saw it coming the whole way. He told Blake, a security guard at Globe Life Park, in the tunnel before the game that he had a funny feeling about this Father’s Day affair. Trevino was asked if he looked at his family and his newborn son after the winning hit and reaching first base.
“I looked at the sky,” Trevino said.
In many ways, Rangers manager Jeff Banister can relate to Trevino. Banister also lost his father, Bob, in his early 20s when Bob died from a heart attack in 1988. Like Joe was to Jose, Bob was Jeff’s coach, friend and father.
“For me, my father, losing my father a number of years ago, I miss him every single day,” Banister said while holding back tears. “I think about the things that he did for me, how I’m the man I am today, the person I am because of who he was with me. I’ll never stop doing that.”
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“It was kind of the epitome of the game. If anybody ever thinks there’s no passion or emotion in this game, at the end there hugging a young man who’s Day 3 in the big leagues and he’s pretty emotional on Father’s Day, for a lot of different reasons.”
For Jose Trevino, it was a story coming all together. His father was born on a Sunday in May of 1953. Sixty years later, he died on a Sunday. A few years after that, Jose Trevino became a father, also on a Sunday and today, on Father’s Day Sunday, Joe Trevino helped his son to a walk-off win at Globe Life Park.
Kind of like the one they watched together from the stands seven years ago.
Top photo by Andrew Dieb-USA TODAY Sports
