04/26/24
December 16, 2014
Welcome to Middle Infielder Island: If you want your son or daughter to be a great middle infielder, move to Curacao, an island off the coast of Venezuela. From a population of only 150,000 have emerged some of Major League Baseball's current and future shortstops and second baseman: Andrelton Simmons, Jonathan Schoop, Didi Gregorius and Jurickson Profar. The secret is in the soil, which is hard and pebble-strewn even on the baseball fields: "[T]hose little rocks have helped produce some of the most talented middle infielders in baseball, softening their hands and honing their reflexes to react to the most unexpected of bounces," writes David Waldstein.
I won a bunch of defensive player awards up to college as a second baseman and I attributed it to the field right around the corner from us (we grew up in the hood) being a horrific mix of gravel, rocks and very little upkeep. My dad/friends would go with me to hit an hour a day's worth of unpredictable ground balls and one-hops.
There were a number of bloody noses from balls that bounced the wrong way, but come game time it made the traditional fields seem like carpet.
posted by dfleming at 01:53 PM on December 16, 2014
This reminds me of the town of San Pedro de Macoris, in the Dominican Republic.
It has about 190,000 people in it, but it's been the home of an unusually large number of successful MLB players.