Camilo Doval was three pitches and one batter into a major league career he spent almost six years envisioning from the time he signed as a skinny teenager in the Dominican Republic. He had thrown a 97.5 mph fastball, an elevated slider fouled back and another slider that dipped beneath Jesus Aguilar’s bat.
A day earlier, Aguilar had the game-winning hit for the Miami Marlins. He owns a 35-homer season in the big leagues. He runs 6-foot-5 in his spikes and his 280-pound frame passes the WWE eye test. He puts the grande in Las Grandes Ligas.
Doval struck him out on three pitches, and in the airplane-hangar acoustics of a sparsely populated ballpark in South Florida, Aguilar’s audible reaction couldn’t have sounded any clearer to the television viewer if he had been wearing a headset in the booth.
Could Doval make it out?
“Sí,” Doval said.
