Kentucky native Lile displays love of horse racing for Players' Weekend
MIAMI -- Before the Nationals’ game Friday, Kentucky native Daylen Lile sat in his locker in the visitors’ clubhouse at loanDepot park, getting one of his two Players’ Weekend bats ready.
He carefully put a swirled blue, white and black grip on it.
The weekend served as a perfect time for players to showcase their personalities and histories with custom bats, cleats, belts and gloves. For the Nats, most opted for a bat that allowed them to see their visions come to life.
“It's great for the game,” said manager Blake Butera of the weekend. “For the fans to get a look under the hood of what these guys are about, what they enjoy, what makes them, them.”
For Lile, that started with his love of horse racing and his Kentucky roots.
His bat had a red handle that faded into a bright blue, with the words, “RUN FOR THE ROSES” written in red covering the face of the bat. The phrase is an alternate name for the Kentucky Derby.
“It’s one of the big races for the Triple Crown,” Lile said. “I love horse racing and live like 20 minutes away from it, so yeah, it’s awesome.”
Under the words, the bat also had a figure of a jockey on a horse with a dark blue flame around it.
The other bat he received was one he knew he would never use in a game. It also had a red handle, with black words that read, “FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE.” The famous phrase by legendary boxer Muhammad Ali.
“He’s from where I am from, so I had to represent the hometown a little bit,” Lile said. “Pay tribute to him.”
The bat faded from red to black to more red, with art of Ali in black at the end of the bat.
“I am fine messing [the blue one] up, because it doesn’t have much detail,” Lile said. “But this one, it really hits different.”
Lile also wanted to honor the two people who helped him get to this point: his parents, Deborah and Danny.
“My dad, he can be very hard on me, but he just wants the best for me,” Lile said. "He wants me to do something different with my life than he did, and he wants me to just make a name for myself.”
In honor of his mother, Lile wore pink cleats on Friday and Saturday.
“She’s the one that holds us all together,” Lile said. “She’s very strong, and I can’t thank them enough for everything they’ve done to get me to this point.”
Lile has followed horse racing for years, getting really into it when he was at Trinity High School. He started learning more about the horse racing world, and his interest has stuck with him.
“At some point, I tell people all the time when I retire, I want to have my own horses and race them too,” Lile said.
To Lile, the atmosphere is what makes being at a horse racing derby so special. It almost feels as if everybody knows one another as they anticipate which horse’s nose will cross the finish line first.
That passion is something Lile was happy to share with his teammates during Players’ Weekend.
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Lile took a walk to José Tena’s locker, where Tena showed him his Spider-Man-themed bat. Lile held it up in admiration for a while.
“‘Spider-Man’ is my favorite movie,” Tena said in Spanish. “I loved it, because ever since I was a little kid, they call me the spider, because I used to put my hair in dreadlocks.”
He was most notably called “La Araña” by his mother, which means the spider in Spanish.
The Marucci bat had the face of the Spider-Man mask at the top, with the Spider-Man emblem in the center in silver. Most of the bat was in the character’s classic red, with a blue handle, and the whole bat had a shimmer gloss to it.
Even with the new Spider-Man movie coming out recently, Tena’s favorite movie is the one that was released in 2002 with Tobey Maguire. The Green Goblin in his glider was most memorable.
His other bat was for his home country, the Dominican Republic. The bat had “Tena” written in gold in the center, with the colors of the flag and the classic wood in the center peeking out where the white in the DR flag would be.
It represented where he is and how he got to the Majors, with the help of his father, Manuel, and a coach he had back in his hometown whom he calls “Rafaelito.”
The trip to other players’ lockers continued, with Tena going over to see CJ Abrams’ five alien-themed bats, Harry Ford’s England-themed bat and Dylan Crews’ SpongeBob and Patrick bats, inspired by one of his favorite shows growing up.