Rangers Third Baseman Talks To Dad He Never Knew

Rangers third baseman Fernando Tatis on Tuesday spoke to his father.

It represented the conclusion of a search that required nearly two decades.

“This feels so great,” Tatis said. “I can’t believe it happened. I just couldn’t believe it today when I talked to him over the phone.”

Tatis’ parents divorced soon after his birth, and his father remarried. However, that relationship dissolved, and Fernando Sr. departed the Dominican Republic.

The New York Times published an article Monday by Murray Chass regarding Tatis’ desire to speak to his father. A Sarasota, Fla., newspaper published the story on Tuesday and received a phone call from an unidentified person with the location of Tatis’ father.

A person at the Sarasota newspaper made a phone call to Chass, who then called Omar Minaya, the Rangers’ director of professional and international scouting.

Minaya, who signed Tatis as a free agent during 1992, dispatched Victor Ramirez to talk to the third baseman’s father. Ramirez, who serves as a coach in the Rangers’ minor-league system, was Tatis’ coach with the Gulf Coast Rangers and played against his father.

“My mother told me that he gave me a little baseball bat when I was a little kid and said that I was going to be just like him,” Tatis said.

Tatis on Tuesday called his father in Sarasota about 5 p.m. after the Rangers’ early batting practice.

“I couldn’t even talk,” said Tatis, who went 1 for 3 on Tuesday night and drove in one of the Rangers’ two runs with a sacrifice fly. “I couldn’t believe I talked to my father.”