“My family tried to make me play but I didn’t enjoy it. “As a boy, the first thing you get as a gift is a bat and a ball,” said Baker-Mazara, whose cousin Nomar Mazara played MLB from 2016-22. Eleven percent of the 945 players on opening day rosters in 2023 hailed from the small country with a population of 11 million. One statistical analysis shows players from the Dominican Republic are five to eight times more likely to reach the big leagues than those from the United States. “In class, I pay extra attention to details because it’s not like having a conversation,” he said.īaseball is the national pastime in the Dominican Republic. When he encounters new words in class, Baker-Mazara asks professors to explain material again, which he appreciates. “One day I hit them with a give back and after that, it’s been pretty good.” “What really motivated me was my friends making fun of me all the time,” he said. “And I got tired of it, so I started really listening to people talk.”ĮSL, or English as a second language, classes helped, too. “They were roasting me the whole time and all I could do was smile and say yes,” he said. Not because they taught him, but because they teased him. “I wanted some more looks and I had to get my grades up, too,” he said.īaker-Mazara credits his high school friends in New Jersey for his thorough command of English. “Now I’ve been speaking English for so long I’m a little more fluent but sometimes people will say something and I have no clue you’ll see me sitting there so confused like, what in the world?”Īfter arriving in the United States in 2017, Baker-Mazara learned a new language and graduated from high school in New Jersey in 2019 with only one mid-major D-I scholarship offer in hand, so he attended a prep school in Ohio. “To this day, everything is Spanish,” Baker-Mazara said of his thought process. – A native of the Dominican Republic, Auburn junior Chad Baker-Mazara thinks in Spanish, speaks excellent English and is fluent in the universal language of basketball.
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