I feel proud because throughout my career I have reached successes that I never set and that, obviously, never imagined.

This week I learned that I was inducted to the Venezuelan baseball Hall of Fame where I started my professional career back in 1981, at just 18 years old.

It’s a great honor for me. I played 13 seasons, all them with the Tiburones de la Guaira, the only team I have in my heart and the only jersey that I have said I’d like to wear when I die and am buried.

My Venezuelan baseball experience was one of he greatest of my life because the level of ball played there is very good. There, you play to compete and to win, and at the end of the day that is what makes one go the extra mile and to develop more or faster than the others. I enjoyed myself in that league so much that after my MLB career, I went back there to play for free. Nobody else has done that.

With the Tiburones I was champion three times, though we went to five finals. We did not win any of the Series of the Caribben titles, but we were very close.

Even though many do not believe it, and I myself didn’t know it at first, to enter the Venezuelan baseball’s Hall of Fame they do not only take in account the participation that you had in your country, but also what you did outside of it as a representative. I think that was what helped me the most and now my name is immortalized along with our nation’s great baseball figures, like Alfonso “Chico” Carrasquel and Luis Aparicio, who also wore a White Sox jersey.

I think I was inducted ...