This story was excerpted from Sonja Chen’s Dodgers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox. MLB digital content fellow Perla Paredes pinch-hit on this edition.
MIAMI -- Josue De Paula worked out on the infield and took batting practice prior to his Major League debut on Friday, and his father, Josue De Paula Sr., could not take his eyes off of him while watching from the stands.
De Paula Sr. got on a plane in New York and landed in Miami at 10:30 a.m. that morning to take in a moment that had been years in the making, fueled by a love of baseball he helped nourish since his son was 4 years old.
“This is a moment,” De Paula Sr. said in Spanish. “This will always be unforgettable and I am excited. I am still in shock right now. My brain has not processed everything, but I will just try to give myself to the moment.”
Long before De Paula became the top-ranked outfield prospect in baseball and No. 6 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 Prospects list, his father saw something special in him.
“He started playing baseball when he was in his mother’s womb,” De Paula Sr. said, laughing. “He was born with that gift. … The growth that he has had as a person and as a player -- that has impacted me a lot because it was something that I was not expecting.”
De Paula called his mother and father first after learning he was getting called up to The Show while with Double-A Tulsa. He became the first L.A. position player since 2014 to jump directly from Double-A to the Majors, filling a roster spot after Shohei Ohtani landed on the injured list.
His Little League coach, Nelson Santiago, also made the trip to South Florida. Santiago started coaching De Paula when the outfielder was just 7 years old, and he has watched him remain grounded despite the attention that has followed the Dodgers’ top prospect.
“He is very humble,” Santiago said in Spanish. “Centered in his game and he wants to be better. He worked really hard to get here.”
The special bat that helped De Paula produce a .303/.401/.547 slash line with a .948 OPS and 27 homers across 124 games in Double-A this season. De Paula always had a childhood obsession with swinging a bat, but as he matured, Santiago saw a desire in De Paula to improve every part of his game.
“The way he batted was special,” Santiago said. “He had a natural swing, he made the game look easy offensively. He was a natural, I always told everyone that he had the ability to bat at any level.”
It was as if it were destiny that De Paula’s first Major League home run would be a three-run homer into the upper deck at loanDepot park on Sunday.
“Ain't no way I'm taking that [ball],” De Paula said on Sunday. “It’s going straight with dad. Going home for sure.”
Baseball also connected De Paula to his father’s Dominican roots. De Paula Sr. used to sneak out to play baseball while growing up in the Dominican Republic, but the timing and circumstances of his life didn’t allow him to pursue the sport.
Years later, De Paula moved to the Dominican Republic to live with his uncles while he was still in high school because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With schools shut down in his hometown of Brooklyn, one of the only places where baseball was being played was in the Dominican Republic. That’s where De Paula trained with El Niche Baseball Academy in Santo Domingo before signing with the Dodgers in 2022.
“It’s a great honor to represent [my father],” De Paula said. “I have his complete name. I know he feels proud of me and I feel proud to bear his name and last name. All of it.”
De Paula also grew up visiting his paternal grandmother, Sixtra Brito De Paula, who remembers spending a lot of time with him and feeding him mangú, a traditional Dominican dish made from mashed plantains.
“Like we say, the Dominican flag,” Brito De Paula said in Spanish. “Rice, beans and salt.”
She was the second person to arrive to watch her grandson, and when she looked at him, all she could think about was the image of him always holding a bat when he was little.
“This is of God,” Brito De Paula said. “What my son wasn’t able to do, his son is doing it.”
Brito De Paula was also struck by how eager her grandson was to learn Spanish when he visited during vacations. Part of that, she said, came from De Paula not wanting people to be able to trick him when he couldn’t understand what they were saying.
“It was important for me to be able to communicate with my people, with Latinos,” De Paula said. “In New York, I had friends that spoke Spanish, but when I would go to [the Dominican Republic], I liked to know what they were talking about and I learned with time.”
“He just has shown that he loves being Dominican, he embraces it,” Brito De Paula added.