When Jose Trevino stepped to the plate at Yankee Stadium with the winning run on base in the bottom of the 10th inning, the situation felt like a familiar and comforting one as a first-year Yankee.
It had been the exact scenario his father had prepared him for when he was growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Joe Trevino was always a big Yankee fan, and like any big baseball fan, mentally transported himself to the biggest stage in heroic situations, like in the Bronx at baseball’s cathedral. He passed that down to Jose, who stepped up to the plate on Monday with his father in his mind, and heart, on what would have been his birthday.
“He would always put me in these scenarios,” Trevino said after lining a walk-off single down the left field line to win it for the Yanks. “He’d always say ‘Ninth inning, down one, you need a base hit here to tie the game or win the game at Yankee Stadium.’”
It was almost a carbon copy of the scenario Joe would draw up for Jose when he was a kid and learning how to hit in the family's backyard. It was the same scenario Jose kept in his mind when he dunked in a walk-off single with the Rangers back in 2018, on Father’s Day, his first one as a father himself. He had become a dad just a week before.
Four years later, on his late father's birthday, Trevino felt his father with him once again, this time in the same venue they had dreamed up when Jose was learning the sport.
“Definitely a special moment. That’s why the tears were there,” Trevino said. “It would have been awesome for him to be here, but I know he was watching.
“He never forced me to play baseball. But when I wanted to, he was always there. It’s just crazy that he would put me in that scenario. He’d say ’I’m preparing you to be a Yankee.’”
Thanks to Joe’s help, Trevino was more than prepared on Tuesday night, and even while dealing with the emotion of his beloved father's birthday and the tragic mass shooting in Uvalde happening just 90 minutes from his hometown, Jose was able to come up big for the Yanks, with his father, and the people of Texas, on his mind.
“I woke up this morning and had a good cup of coffee in one of his favorite mugs,” Jose said. “It was definitely a fun one, but he influenced a lot of it, and he helped me a lot.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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