When did Danny Rodriguez fall in love with baseball? That’s hard to say.
“When? A long time ago,” he said with a laugh.
It goes back to when he was a kid in Puerto Rico who then went on to be a pitcher in the Army and a director of baseball and softball leagues in Hartford. All the while, he passed that love of the game onto his son.
“The love of baseball, I think I was born into it,” said Danny’s son Derik Rodriguez.
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They share that love most summer nights over the 1120 AM airwaves from the broadcast booth at Dunkin' Park. The father-son duo bring Hartford Yard Goats baseball to the Latino community through their Spanish language broadcasts.
“[The Yard Goats] call me and they offer me the opportunity to be with them but I told them I wouldn’t do it without my son,” Danny said.
“So that’s how I got dragged in right?” joked Derik.
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But he knows he was dragged in well before then.
“When we were in Puerto Rico I was calling games, little league games,” Danny said. “I used to give him the mic from time to time.”
They’re a long way from little league games in Puerto Rico now. Not just in the booth, but in an exhibit at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.
“It's quite an honor to see yourself in an exhibit in a place like this,” Derik said.
The exhibit, called Pleibol!, is a traveling display of national stories from the Smithsonian, but Danny and Derik’s panel is a unique Connecticut addition.
“Every exhibition we do we really try to bring in local stories and people from the community that have some sort of connection to the history,” said Ben Gammell, the museum’s director of exhibitions.
When it comes to connections, Danny and Derik have plenty.
“Shows how old I am now being able to see people that I knew a long time ago,” said Derik, who knew more than a few of the names on display. “I sent pictures to a couple of them so that they can see that they are on display.”
From sharing pictures to sharing a moment - Danny and Derik visited the museum to see their exhibit together for the first time.
“I do it because it allows me to spend those couple of hours with him in our favorite pastime,” said Derik, who still works another full time job. “It’s the game that he’s taught me how to love…It’s something we can always share, and now we have something on display here ate the museum that we will always be able to look back at."
