The moment was uplifting on its own merits, Keibert Ruiz ripping an RBI double down the right field line in the bottom of the first Thursday night to drive in the Nationals’ first run of the game. But upon reaching second base, the 26-year-old catcher immediately looked toward the stands behind home plate, flashed a wide smile and waved at the group that was simultaneously cheering and crying at what just happened.

Jose and Leidis Ruiz have followed their son’s career every step of the way, providing him every opportunity they could in their native Venezuela to learn and play baseball, get signed by the Dodgers as a teenager, then make his major league debut in Los Angeles in 2020, get traded to the Nationals in 2021 and sign a $50 million contract extension in 2023.

But Thursday, remarkably, represented the first time they had been able to watch him play any ballgame, at any level, in person since 2015 when Ruiz first began as a professional with the Dodgers’ Dominican Summer League club.

“I can’t believe it,” Ruiz said following the Nats’ 8-7, 10-inning win over the Braves. “They had to wait for, what, maybe 10-11 years to see me play for the first time, even here in the big leagues. That’s amazing. I can’t describe it.”

It’s not like the Ruiz family hadn’t been trying all this time to watch him in person. They applied for travel visas on five separate occasions over the last decade and were denied each of the first four attempts. Finally, last week they got the news they worried they might never receive and made preparations to fly to Washington for the first time.

When the Orioles were in Seattle last weekend, several of their players and coaches watched intently the pregame ceremony on Saturday night when former team great Félix Hernández was inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame. 

A career winner of 169 games with 2,524 strikeouts – all with Seattle over a 15-year career – it was a special night at T-Mobile Park.

He’s known simply as the “King” in Seattle. He was a six-time All-Star who won the 2010 AL Cy Young Award and was a runner-up twice. He pitched a perfect game against Tampa Bay on Aug. 15, 2012.

When he took the mound at home, the “Kings Court” would fill the leftfield stands with gold shirts and K cards. 

Like Hernández, the Orioles’ Anthony Santander is a native of Venezuela. When Santander was tearing it up this spring in the WBC, Hernández was a visitor to the Team Venezuela clubhouse. When he was 13, scouts compared a young teenager pitcher Santander to Hernández. In the spring of 2021, Hernández signed a minor league deal with the Orioles and the two countrymen were briefly teammates.