Rafael Devers was wearing a radio headset just outside the Red Sox clubhouse on Wednesday. His microphone was picking up the sound of teammates celebrating that night’s win against the Astros while, on the other end of the line, play-by-play man Will Flemming opened the WEEI postgame show by asking on-air whether Devers wanted to conduct the interview in English or Spanish. Devers said Spanish.
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Then the darndest thing happened. Devers started answering the questions in English.
“Both Joe (Castiglione) and I kind of looked at each other like, how cool is this!” Flemming said.
For a little more than three minutes, Devers talked about his two hits, Nick Pivetta’s complete game, and the importance of winning a series against a good team. He used Spanish to deliver the finer details, but his English was plenty good enough to say what he needed to say. Devers was casual and funny. He was himself, and for a mostly English-speaking audience, the interview was a fresh window into one of the game’s great young talents and one of its most likable personalities.
“It doesn’t matter if he is speaking Shakespearian English or not,” Flemming said. “What happens when he speaks in any language is that people get to know his spirit and what kind of a kid he is. … In any language he is effervescent, and the fact it translated in English was the coolest part of all of it.”
Rafael Devers punctuates a memorable night by conducting his postgame on @SoxBooth in English https://t.co/Tu8p60tt8O
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) May 19, 2022
Manager Alex Cora literally pumped his fist on Thursday when he was told about Devers’ unscripted, unexpected postgame conversation. Since spring training, teammates — especially J.D. Martinez and Alex Verdugo — have been encouraging Devers to speak to reporters in English, a language the 25-year-old Dominican-born third baseman has been learning bit-by-bit, season-by-season. For a while now, Devers has been able to speak English conversationally one-on-one — I once talked to him about cows and chickens — but he has rarely felt confident enough to use his second language in a more formal setting. In that sense, Wednesday was a spur-of-the-moment breakthrough.
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“It makes me proud,” Cora said. “I do believe this kid is going to be very special. He is special, but I think with time people are going to be talking about him (as one of the greats), and for him to take that step, it’s very important.”
It wasn’t important for the media. Flemming was in an immersive Spanish language program in high school and studied Spanish literature in college. He didn’t need the help on Wednesday night. The rest of us English-speaking reporters would be better served learning to speak Devers’ native language, not expecting him to learn ours.
But teammates and coaches — and, yes, broadcasters and reporters — see Devers as one of the emerging faces of baseball, an elite talent with a personality to match, and his star will burn brightest when it’s not filtered through an interpreter.
“He’s one of those guys,” Verdugo said. “I’ve always said, he reminds me of another David Ortiz. That type of player. So, for him to be able to be bilingual, speak English and do more things in English, it’s only going to further him on the off-field stuff and put him closer to everything that he wants to do. It just opens up every opportunity.”
It surely helped that Devers heard Flemming’s voice on Wednesday. Those two have known one another since 2017 when Flemming was calling games in Pawtucket and Devers was making his way through the minor league system. At Devers’s introductory Triple-A press conference, Flemming served as translator, and the two have since done dozens of postgame interviews together, always with Flemming asking questions in both Spanish and English, then translating Devers’s answers on-air. That’s what he assumed would happen on Wednesday.
So, why did Devers break the routine?
“Because nobody could see me,” Devers said, in perfect English, laughing as he said.
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“Nobody was watching me, so that helped me a lot,” he continued, through Red Sox translator Carlos Villoria Benítez. “But just trying to gain confidence and work on my English. Every time I have an opportunity, I try to do it.”
Devers sees English as a connection to his American teammates. It makes him a stronger presence in the clubhouse as he becomes an irreplaceable piece of the lineup. Martinez is eligible for free agency this offseason, Xander Bogaerts is almost certain to opt out, Dustin Pedroia already is long gone. If Devers continues on this trajectory, he may soon become the face of the franchise and, almost by default, the most outspoken voice in the clubhouse.
“I don’t have that in my mind right now,” he said. “I think if they’re gone, there will be other veterans who can help. But also, I’m going to be there for anybody who needs my help or needs some advice. For me, it’s not something that is in my mind right now, but for sure it’s something that in the future I need to think about.”
Teammates and coaches are already thinking about that future, and it’s telling that Cora, Verdugo and Flemming — unprompted — each compared Devers to Ortiz, another otherworldly talent who gradually learned English and became a transcendent icon.
“Arguably his most famous moment is an expletive in English,” Flemming said, referring to Ortiz’s this is our F-ing city speech. “And Raffy’s been doing that for a long time in the batter’s box (famously cursing at himself after bad swings), but not into a microphone.”
J.D. mic'd up for BP. What more could you ask for?
Check it out 👉 https://t.co/ogjDegLhIk pic.twitter.com/dxmMMPS90V
— Red Sox (@RedSox) May 12, 2021
Occasionally, mic’d up players have caught snippets of Devers speaking English, and the results have been occasionally hilarious because Devers is funny. Teammates flock to laugh with him (and sometimes at him). Unquestionably the best part of Wednesday’s postgame interview came when Castiglione asked Devers about his first-inning triple and Devers answered with a joke.
“The first inning!” he said. “I’ve been tired all game!”
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The booth laughed while Devers called Castiglione, “bro.”
“He’s the warmest personality,” Castiglione said Thursday. “He’s just warm, fun, and he loves baseball. He loves people!”
The more people see that and hear that, the better.
“You saw it with (Ortiz). I saw it with Adrian (Beltre),” Cora said. “Those are Hall of Famers. I’m not saying Raffy is going to be a Hall of Famer, but I saw how they grew into this. David is retired and doing commercials, (and) not only salsa commercials! It’s a step that is needed. Hopefully (Devers) can play here the rest of his career, and he’s going to be very important in the community. Not only the Latino community but everybody here.”
For this story, Devers conducted most of the interview with a translator, interrupted only by Bogaerts, who stepped in to jokingly demand to know why anyone would want to talk to Devers, who only “talks shit all the time.” Devers belly laughed and did not retort right away, but give him time.
“It’s a cycle,” Devers said. “The English that I learn during the season, it goes away when I go back home (to the Dominican Republic). So, it’s a cycle. Every time I come back, I learn a little bit, and then it goes away again. When the season starts, I start my English too.”
We’re just beginning to see — and hear — what he can do.
(Photo: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
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