Family and Respect for Molina

Believe it or not, there was a time no one wanted the Molina Brothers on their team. Except for one person, their father, Benjamin Molina Santa.

“Nobody wanted to have us,” says Bengie Molina, who has recently authored Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty to share the story of the real dream of their father.

“We couldn’t make it on other teams,” he continued. “We didn’t have a team. So if my dad doesn’t make a team, we don’t play. We were so proud of that. And we weren’t good for many years, but we were learning the game of baseball. We were learning how to play, we were learning how to back up bases, or hit, or bunt. That it is what it was about.”

The former St. Louis Cardinals former assistant hitting coach, Molina spent 13 years in the big leagues and won a pair of Gold Gloves and two World Series championships. Besides his own stories, Bengie shares plenty about younger brother Jose–who also has two World Series titles on his resume, and youngest brother Yadier, who of course has won a couple of rings with the Cardinals.

As you read story after story, it’s almost easy to forget exactly which Molina brother you’re reading about as the similarities between the three are so striking.

Like his brothers, Bengie is good-natured the large majority of the time. But in the book, he does recount a situation where his blood boiled when teammate questioned his pitch-calling.

“I was mad,” admitted Molina. “I put so many hours in the video room trying to do the scouting reports on the hitters and trying to set them up and get them out and all that. And here we go, every time I call a pitch there’s the shortstop making a face or making like a why did you call that pitch kind of movement.

“And I’m like, what? Are you serious, you’re going to do that? So I told him, you’re going to call the game, go ahead man. I’m going to sit here and whatever you say–1 is fastball, 2 is curveball, and I told him you give me the 1, 2, or 3 and I’ll call it. And I did. Because I wanted him to understand you are shortstop–you catch the ball. You try to position yourself where you need to be and then I’ll do my job here in catching. If you want to do my job, just put everything on and we’ll switch.”

Between innings, Angels manager Mike Scioscia was able to calm Molina down.

“He came to me and goes ‘B’mo, ‘you’ve gottta ease up, man. This is baseball. He’s your teammate, he’s trying to win too,’ and I said ‘but he’s showing me up, Sosh’ He goes, ‘I’ll talk to him and he won’t do it again’.”

It was pointed out that Yadi has show that sort of emotion from time to time as well–like a few years ago when he took issue with some comments from Brandon Phillips.

“First of all, he plays for St. Louis–he doesn’t play for a Yadi Molina team,” explained Bengie.  “He plays for the city of St. Louis, the team of St. Louis–and that’s a lot of people. And he takes pride in that. He defends St. Louis with his heart–you guys have seen that and I don’t have to make any points about that, you guys have seen it all these years. And that’s how he is.

“If Brandon Phillips wants to say something bad about the team or players, he’s going to take it personal and let’s go at it–c’mon, me and you. I’m a man, you’re a man. But that’s the how he is, that’s the kind of person that Yadi is. Same way with Jose, same way with me. That’s why we did so good in the Major Leagues, because we care for our people. In this case, wherever we were playing that’s what we were defending with all of our hearts.”

And while the three brothers are central to the book, the main character–or rather the central figure behind it all is Benjamin Molina and how Bengie eventually became to understand what was truly important to his father.

“I thought I knew him, but it was the opposite,” says Molina. “The story of this book is more about teaching kids and inspiring and motivation–all that stuff that we can do to the parents for the kids to keep playing ball or find a way to keep going in life and be a better person.”

photo credits: Jeff Curry, Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports