NEWS EDITOR
Ralphie Henriquez, one of the top baseball players to come out of Key West High School, has signed a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Henriquez, who played last season with the independent Long Island Ducks, has been signed previously by the Houston Astros (who took him in the second round of the 2005 amateur draft), the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners. He will report in February to Pittsburgh’s spring training camp in Bradenton. For now, the Pirates have placed him on their Class AA roster at Altoona, Pa.
“I just want to show what I can do in camp,” said Henriquez. “They (the Pirates) kind of surprised me. A couple other teams (St. Louis and Detroit) had been interested in me, but the Pirates said they had seen me (with the Ducks) and liked the way I played.”
Henriquez, who will be starting his 10th season of professional baseball, said, “There’s a reason” he has had to wait so long to reach his goal of being a Major League catcher.
Once the Long Island season ended, he headed, instead of to Key West, to Gainesville to live and work out. A Long Island teammate had introduced him to Chantae “Tae” McMillan and, now that they’re “an item,” Gainesville is where he went, because that’s where the heptathlon athlete is training. McMillan is from Missouri, graduated from the University of Nebraska and competed in the 2012 Olympics at London.
“I think he’s been in Key West for a day and a half since the end of the baseball season,” laughed his father, Ralph Henriquez Jr., the new (and old) Key West High baseball coach.
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