Ryan Beck

Jose Ramirez learned to hit on a dirt field across the river from his house, swinging a stick at bottle caps. Cleveland signed him out of there for $50,000. Tonight he hit a home run on a pitch that was under 9 inches off the ground, and the Cleveland Guardians are going to the American League Championship Series. Here is the whole thing. He grew up in Bani, in the Dominican Republic. The family house sat across the Rio Bani from the field where the kids played. His father could not find steady work. "He didn't have much work, we didn't have much money." His grandmother Santa raised him. "She taught me the values of helping the community." She died in 2023. The game they played in Bani is called Vitilla. A bottle cap for a ball, a stick for a bat. "I had to play with a glove that was too tight." Miguel Tejada, who is also from Bani, used to run a clinic that handed out food and equipment to kids who needed it. Ramirez remembers getting in that line. Then in 2009 he took some swings at a showcase in front of Cleveland scouts, and they signed him for $50,000. That was 17 years ago. He has never played for anybody else. In January he signed an extension through 2032 with a full no trade clause, and tore up a deal that still had three years and $69 million on it. Seven All Star teams. 285 home runs and 287 stolen bases. He has never won a World Series. Cleveland has not won one since 1948. And this was the worst year of his career. He had surgery on the hamate bone in his left hand and he never really looked like himself again. Then this series started and Cleveland lost the first two games at home to the Chicago White Sox. Down 0 and 2. One loss from the end of it. Game 3 he went 2 for 4 and Cleveland won. Game 4, facing elimination, he hit a two run home run and drove in three, and Cleveland won again. Game 5 tonight, facing elimination again. Fourth inning. Sean Burke throws him a 78 mile an hour curveball that crosses the plate 0.74 feet off the ground. He hits it 348 feet over the right field fence. Nobody has homered on a lower pitch in a postseason game since baseball started tracking where pitches cross the plate in 2008. He is also the first Cleveland hitter ever to homer in two straight postseason games while facing elimination in both of them. Those two runs were the only runs anybody scored. Gavin Williams struck out 12 and gave up one hit. Cleveland 2, Chicago White Sox 0. Now the honest part. He is 34 and he had a bad regular season, Cleveland lost five of six to the Tampa Bay Rays this year, and Game 1 is Monday night in Tampa. But a kid who learned to hit bottle caps with a stick just took a curveball off his shoelaces and ended a series with it.