Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
In a brief interview, Mauricio Dubon said four times, “It’s just another game.”
With all due respect, he was wrong four times.
After 609 minor league games and two major league appearance with the Brewers in July, the 25-year-old finally was penciled in to his first major league lineup, batting eighth and playing second base Thursday.
Dubon, a 2013 Red Sox draft pick who’s been traded twice to arrive here, will become the first born-and-raised Honduran to start a game in the major leagues. An entire country will be watching the slick fielder and contact hitter as he is introduced to a team he grew up rooting for after arriving in Sacramento at 15.
“No nerves,” he insisted to KNBR a few hours before game time. “My family is more nervous than I am.”
He said he expected about 15 friends and family in attendance — down from the 60 who were at his first game at Triple-A Sacramento — including his host family. His birth parents will make the trip to the United States at some point, he’s said, to watch him play.
There wasn’t a heart-to-heart with Bruce Bochy or anything of the like; he looked at the lineup the Giants posted on the wall, and his wait was over. He would be double-play partners with Brandon Crawford, whom he grew up idolizing.
“That’ll be the craziest thing about the whole thing, playing next to him,” said Dubon, called up Tuesday. “It still hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Dubon’s versatility is part of what made him so attractive to the Giants. While Bochy didn’t mention center field as an option yet, he’s played it in the past, and he has a sure glove at both spots up the middle.
“I’m going to mix him in. Mix in at short and second, and once we get to the lefties, I’ll give Craw a day,” Bochy said, with southpaws Joey Lucchesi and Eric Lauer the opposing Padres pitches Saturday and Sunday.
Bochy said he didn’t feel he had to tell yet another rookie anything specific before a day Dubon knew would come.
“Just go out and be yourself,” Bochy said.