Buzz Saw by Jesse Dougherty

Author:Jesse Dougherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

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It took 494 plate appearances for Soto to become one of the best teenage hitters ever. His final statistics of 2018, at nineteen years old, were a bright spot of the Nationals’ playoff-less year: 77 runs scored, 121 hits, 22 homers, 70 RBI, 79 walks against 99 strikeouts, a .292 average, and .406 on-base percentage. His 22 home runs tied Harper’s total when he was nineteen and fell two short of the teenage record set by Tony Conigliaro in 1964.

Soto walked more than any other teenager in history. His three multi-homer games, including one at Yankee Stadium, were the most ever by a teenager. He became the youngest player to finish a game with three steals. There seemed to be a new milestone every day, and more reasons to list him with Hall of Famers such as Mel Ott and Griffey, or established stars such as Harper and Mike Trout.

In September of his rookie year, after he had slipped into a slump and shaken it off, he was asked to explain. Soto did his interviews alongside Octavio Martinez, the club’s interpreter, but always answered in English. Martinez was only there if Soto needed a confusing question translated to Spanish. Soto smiled a bit at this one, thinking of how to describe his approach, and chose four words that soon splattered across the internet.

“Just Juan Soto things,” he said with a grin, and a half dozen reporters rushed to punch the quote onto their Twitter feeds. It immediately went viral and was on T-shirts by the next morning. That was a Juan Soto thing in itself, a snapshot of his climbing influence, and that’s what it took to get buzzed by Canó that next offseason.

He was sitting at home in Santo Domingo, wasting time, when his iPhone vibrated on his lap. Soto didn’t recognize the number. He was a bit weirded out that they, whoever they were, wanted to FaceTime. But he decided to answer, anyway, swiping his thumb left, and his screen filled with Canó’s smiling face.

Soto didn’t know what to say. The two had never met before. The voice saying “Heeeeey, Juan!” was familiar from interviews Soto studied as a kid. Now he had so many questions to ask. The first was why Robinson Canó, a Dominican legend, was calling him, Juan Soto, who had fewer than 500 plate appearances to his name?

A friend of Canó’s and Soto’s had reached out to Canó for a book she was writing on Dominican baseball. She mentioned to Canó that he was Soto’s favorite player as a kid. So Canó asked for Soto’s number, dialed it on that quiet January afternoon, and did most of the talking. Canó had just been traded from Seattle to the Mets, and told Soto to reach out if he ever needed anything. Canó told him they would catch up more on Opening Day. Canó told him it would get harder, that pitchers would form a plan, that he was on everyone’s radar after what he did as a rookie.

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