Dodgers’ Sergio Romo remains optimistic despite bumpy homecoming

Sergio Romo lay in the corner of an L-shaped black leather couch in the Dodgers’ clubhouse three hours before the night’s first pitch.

Clubhouse attendants watched, and Dodgers president Andrew Friedman occasionally glanced over, as Romo scrolled through more than 100 video games on a console connected to a television.

“Look!” he hollered to no one in particular. On the screen, RBI Baseball from the original Nintendo system was loading. A minute later, Romo beamed and giggled as his team hit a home run and the pixelated crowd cheered.

Just a 34-year old kid playing a version of the game he loves.

If only pitching for the Dodgers came that easy.

Through 19.2 innings this season, Romo’s earned-run average has soared to a career-high 6.41. The month of April was particularly cruel, when he allowed five runs in one-third of an inning at Arizona and five days later gave up two runs in one-third of an inning at San Francisco.

At one point, he was giving up an average of more than an earned run per inning, and some Dodgers fans might have wondered if his one-year, $3-million deal with the club was a year too long.

“Statistically it doesn’t look that great right now,” the veteran right-hander conceded.

Romo grew up in Brawley, a desert community 3 1/2 hours southeast of Los Angeles and 20 minutes north of the Mexican border, and he anticipated a happy homecoming after nine years with the San Francisco Giants.

He turned down more money from other organizations so that he could play closer to his parents, siblings and three sons, and so that he could fulfill a dream that began as a child growing up listening to Vin Scully call games on the radio.

It’s been a bumpy start, but Romo’s goals are still in front of him: a 10-year big league career culminating in a fourth World Series ring.

“Just give me the baseball and I look at every game as an opportunity to pitch, not compete against my numbers,” Romo said. “I’m still competing against the other team.”

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Growing up in Brawley, Calif. Sergio Romo learned to pitch on a makeshift baseball diamond that his dad built in the backyard.

Family members call the home where Romo grew up “The Fort.” That’s because it’s now surrounded by a tall wooden fence, installed after a Giants World Series win to dissuade curious onlookers.

It was in the backyard that Sergio and younger brother Andrew honed their baseball skills under the supervision of their father, Frank, himself a player in Mexican amateur leagues. There are remnants of those workouts, which took place after Frank arrived home from working as a mechanic in the agricultural fields.

Where Sergio’s mother, Leticia, wanted a flower garden there is a lump of dirt with a chunk of battered wood stuck in the middle — the pitching mound and rubber. About 60 feet away, where Leticia wanted trees, is home plate. A hole in an old tire dangling from a pole forms what was the strike zone. And in another corner of the yard, a string with fragments of a battered baseball clinging to the end hangs from a pole. Hit properly, Andrew explained, the ball and string would loop perfectly all the way around the pole.

“That is just what we would do all the time, if we weren’t playing video games,” said Andrew, who played five seasons in the minor leagues before becoming a sheriff’s deputy in Yuma County Arizona.

“It was like training camp back there,” Leticia recalled.

“It was hardcore,” remembered the boys’ older sister, Leti, laughing. “They broke my window!”

While Sergio and Andrew were busy with baseball, riding bikes and playing video games, Leti always had a book or a baseball scorecard in her hands.

“Back when they were little, Frank would always put them in sports,” Leticia said. “And I was always there for them.”

The attention helped steer the Romo children away from other more sinister influences that pervaded a community where the median annual income is just over $37,000 and the temperatures of summer routinely top 105 degrees.

Three of Sergio’s closest childhood friends died because of drug use. Another is serving time in prison. Yet another made a career out of the Navy, a path Sergio almost chose when he had no scholarship offers out of high school.

“I was this close away from signing,” Sergio said, pinching his fingers together. “But I just looked at my dad and said, ‘Dad, remember that promise I made you?’ And I was like, ‘I think I can do it.’”

Romo wasn’t tall — he’s listed at 5 feet 11 — and was slightly built. But his coach at Brawley High, Pedro Carranza, believed in him and called around on his behalf. What came next was a baseball odyssey — stops at two junior colleges and two universities, followed by a phone call late in the 2005 Major League Baseball draft.

“Everyone always criticized him for his size,” Andrew said, or that he “didn’t throw hard enough. But watching him play … [I] just loved that fire that he had.

“And he still has it.”

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Romo was the 852nd player chosen in 2005, and his selection prompted a phone call to his grandfather.

Evaristo Romo, was a lifelong Dodgers fan who made his way to Brawley from Mexico and always had a ballgame on the television or radio. “He told me he was proud of me, that I got a foot in the door,” Sergio said.

But moments after they hung up, Evaristo called back. His grandson hadn’t told him which organization he’d be playing for.

“Anybody but the Giants!” Evaristo said.

As it turned out, the Dodgers’ archrival was a good fit for Sergio. Within three years, he was promoted to the big league squad.

The call-up surprised almost everyone in Brawley — except for Romo’s family.

“Nobody else believed it because, yeah, he was a little troublemaker at times and the whole, ‘You’re too small and you don’t throw hard enough,’” Andrew said. “But he pushed through it. The more things you told him he couldn’t do, the more he wanted it and the more he did it.”

Romo won three World Series rings with the Giants, throwing the final strike in Game 4 of the 2012 World Series — a fastball when everyone expected a slider.

Afterward, Evaristo was spotted in Brawley walking to church in 100-degree heat wearing a Giants jacket.

Before Evaristo died last summer, he requested that he be buried in his grandson’s World Series jersey and a Giants cap. “It was just an example of how proud he was,” Romo said.

Romo became a free agent after last season, and was hopeful he would have the opportunity to stay with the Giants.

“It’s been one heck of a ride and I’ve been very appreciative of the whole thing,” he said. “Twenty-nine teams didn’t draft me, but the Giants did. Growing up a Dodgers fan … it wasn’t necessarily a hard pill to swallow, but I was kind of like, ‘Wow, the sheer irony of life.’”

Now, toward the end of his career, the tables have been turned again.

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From Eddie West Field at the high school to Johnny’s Burritos, a local favorite Mexican restaurant, all of Brawley buzzed with the news that Romo would sign with the Dodgers.

“You should have seen the number of texts I received,” said Carranza, the high school coach. “Just, ‘Sergio is a Dodger! Sergio is a Dodger!’”

Romo called his father first, Carranza shortly thereafter. Leticia went for a fresh manicure, making sure her long nails were painted a Dodgers’ hue of blue.

“I was a ball of tears,” she recalled, crying again at the memory.

Leticia cries a lot when recounting family memories and Sergio’s accomplishments. Tears of laughter about Sergio progressing from driving the family “Mazda-rati” to his own McLaren are followed by tears of sadness when she recalls him leaving home.

Now, watching him perform at Dodger Stadium, she said, “I can’t help the feelings watching him there and I can’t believe that’s my son.”

With Romo’s return to the area, Leti began to make plans for him to repay old favors. She oversees the Cross-Cultural Center at Chapman University and it was Uncle Sergio’s turn to provide free babysitting for his niece and nephew.

After all, it was Leti who often provided Romo the starving college student with food when he was hungry. She said he would call her when he was at Colorado Mesa University and she was living in Florida. Before long, a pizza delivery person would be on his doorstep, compliments of his compassionate sister.

Romo never doubted that his family would be happy when he signed with the Dodgers, especially since it meant the ban on wearing blue would be lifted. “I joked around with all of them,” he said, “telling them they could take the Dodgers stuff out of the closet now.”

Said Andrew: “Blue fits him so much better. He looks so good in a blue uniform!”

Romo said he is happy to be a Dodger and, moreover, “thankful that I have a spot in the big leagues, that I am able to keep counting the days.

“I am thankful for having this opportunity here,” he added, “because not only do I have a spot at the table on a team, but I have a spot at a really, really good table.

“I just want to win.”

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