SURPRISE, Ariz.
When Edinson Volquez called his father, Danio, on the eve of the 2015 World Series, they spoke first of his father’s health because he’d just visited a Dominican Republic hospital to be examined for ongoing issues with heart disease.
“I’m doing good; everything’s fine,” Volquez remembered his father saying.
Then the talk turned to baseball with the father Volquez later would refer to simply as “one of the greatest men,” a mechanic who had bought him his first baseball glove and spikes and nurtured his inclination to emulate Pedro Martinez by videotaping all his son’s starts.