Brito’s other signings include current Dodgers starter Julio Urias, who won 20 games in 2021; Mercurial outfielder Yasiel Puig, who is C...
Brito’s other signings include current Dodgers starter Julio Urias, who won 20 games in 2021; Mercurial outfielder Yasiel Puig, who is Cuban; pitchers Ismael Valdez, Joakim Soria, Antonio Osuna, Victor Gonzalez and Dennys Reyes; shortstop Juan Castro; and outfielder Karim Garcia. Another of his discoveries, Bobby Castillo, a converted third baseman known as Babo, taught Valenzuela how to throw a screwball.
“I’m not lying to you,” Brito told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “Within a week, Fernando was throwing the ball as well as Babo.”
“For many, many Mexican prospects, he was a God,” Jaime Jarrina Spanish-language Dodgers broadcaster since 1959, told Baseball America last year. “They loved him because he protected them.”
Mike Brito was born on August 21, 1934 in Cuba. As a catcher, beginning in 1955, he played three seasons in the lower tiers of the Washington Senators minor league system and then several seasons in the Mexican League.
After retiring, he moved to Los Angeles, where he found work as a truck driver and started an adult amateur league in which he also played.
Scouting became his way of staying in baseball. “Thank God I became a scout in the Mexican League,” he said in a short video profile, “The White Hat and the Wild Horse: The Scout Who Found Puig.” When Dodgers general manager Al Campanis asked him to work for the team, he recalled thinking, “It’s like finding a guy in the desert and asking him if he wants a drink. of water.
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