Gerardo Parra brings Baby Shark to Wings, now hopes to get back to Nationals
Parra #Parra
Every time Gerardo Parra makes his way to home plate at Frontier Field, two things happen.
The kids in the crowd get their groove on because playing on the ballpark loudspeakers is Parra’s walk-up song, Baby Shark. And the adults, at least those who were paying attention to the Washington Nationals run to the 2019 World Series title, say to themselves, “Ah, that’s where I heard this silly song.”
Parra joined the Nationals in May 2019 just after being released by the Giants where he was hitting .198. Little did anyone know at the time the unique role he was going to play in the winning of the franchise’s first championship.
In mid-June, looking for a way to break out of his season-long slump, he decided to change his walk-up music. “I tried merengue, reggaeton, hip-hop,” Parra told reporters. “Then I said, ‘You know what, I want to put in Baby Shark.’ I’m happy for that.”
That’s because his then 2-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, loved the song. Almost from the moment the tune began playing at Nationals Park, the team adopted it as their theme song, and whether it was coincidence or not, the Nationals began winning.
They turned a dreadful 19-31 start into a postseason berth and went on to beat the Brewers in the one-game NL wildcard, the Dodgers in the divisional round, the Cardinals in the NLCS, and then the Astros in the World Series. Parra hit .250 for Washington, but by the postseason he was a bench player and made only seven pinch-hit plate appearances.
Now, Baby Shark has made its way to Rochester because after spending the 2020 season playing in Japan for the Yomiuri Giants, Parra signed a minor league deal to return to the Nationals this year, and he was assigned to the Red Wings where, at 34 years old, he’s the senior citizen on the roster.
While no one on the roster comes close to the 1,466 major league games Parra has on his baseball card for the Diamondbacks, Brewers, Orioles, Rockies, Giants and Nationals, manager Matt LeCroy stops short of saying his primary role in Rochester is to be a mentor to the young players.
“They’re here to try and help our big-league team,” LeCroy said of Parra and another veteran, 30-year-old Yasmany Tomas. “We signed these guys like Parra and he was willing to come down to Triple-A. We don’t ask them to coach, we just ask them to be professionals and go out and be an example just by the way they play and the way they prepare. Obviously people gravitate towards him for advice, but the biggest thing for me is to lead by example and those guys have been great.”
Parra, who leads the Wings with a .387 on-base percentage through Thursday, was signed by the Diamondbacks as an amateur free agent out of Venezuela when he was 17 and five years later he debuted with Arizona and batted .290 with 60 RBI and finished eighth in the 2009 NL rookie of the year balloting.
The outfielder put in five solid seasons for the Diamondbacks, but he was traded to the Brewers at the deadline in 2014, and so began his hopscotch around the majors. Now, after missing the early portion of spring training with a knee injury, he’s trying to get his overall game in shape in Rochester in the hope that he can get back to Washington at some point this summer.
LeCroy said that process isn’t easy, and he used himself as an example. After spending parts of six years with the Twins and one with the Nationals, the Twins re-signed LeCroy in 2007 and he was sent to Rochester. He struggled terribly and his career ended after he played eight games for Minnesota during a September callup.
“When I came back to Rochester I had five or six years in the big leagues and initially I thought I’d be fine, and then the next thing you know, this league kind of tore me up,” LeCroy said of the old International League. “It was a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be and I had to refocus and try to get my body ready to play and prepare my mind every day to play.”
That’s what Parra is trying to do now. Yes, he’s there for his younger teammates, but he’s trying to resurrect his own career.
“He was part of the World Series team in ‘19 and when you play in the big leagues for a while, you know there’s no other place to play,” said LeCroy. “He’s trying to do whatever he can to get back to that environment.”
► Right-hander Sterling Sharp made his Triple-A debut for the Wings in Thursday’s victory. He was drafted by the Nationals in 2016 and spent two stints with Auburn in the New York-Penn League, but never advanced past Double-A Harrisburg. Then he went to the Marlins in the 2019 Rule 5 draft and made his major league debut in 2020, pitching four games in relief for Miami.
Sharp was designated for assignment in late August and returned to the Nationals. After three strong starts at Harrisburg where his ERA was 2.45, he was called up to the Wings as part of a series of moves announced Thursday by the Nationals.
He only lasted 3 2/3 innings because of a laborious third that saw him give up two runs on three hits and two walks, the last hit an RBI single by opposing starting pitcher Akeem Bostick that tied the score at 3-3.
► Bostick, whose brother Brandon Bostick played tight end for four seasons in the NFL with the Packers and Jets, made his Mets debut. A 2013 second-round pick of the Rangers, Bostick has never made it to the major leagues. He spent time in the Rangers and Astros systems, but since the summer of 2019 and he had been pitching in unaffiliated independent leagues.
Now, at 26 years old, he has new life with the Mets. The 6-foot-6, 240-pounder struggled early as the Wings scored three runs on five hits and two walks including a two-run single by Adrian Sanchez, but he was bailed out by a pair of double plays.
Bostick settled down over the next two innings, but then collapsed in the fifth as he did not record an out and was tagged for a Carter Kieboom double, a Daniel Palka walk (one of four he drew), and an RBI double by Jake Noll that tied the score at 4-4. Trey Cobb relieved and yielded Blake Swihart’s go-ahead sacrifice fly.
► Noll had three two-hit games in the season-opening series against Lehigh Valley, but had cooled off since then and went into the game hitting .254. But with two outs in the sixth, Noll took Cobb deep for a grand slam to left to give the Wings a 9-4 lead.
► The Wings made four errors which cost them three runs. In the top of the first, Sanchez airmailed a throw from shortstop to first on a routine play that would have ended the inning but instead allowed a run to score. With two outs in the fifth, reliever Bryan Bonnell walked Quinn Brody, and he raced home when Palka dropped a fly ball in the right field corner hit by Drew Jackson who wound up on third.
And in the seventh, after fielding a bloop single in short right, first baseman Noll threw the ball away trying to nab a runner at second and Jackson came around to score. That was part of a four-run rally for the Mets that got them within 9-8. The Wings have 27 errors in their first 21 games.
► Reliever Justin Miller continued his outstanding season as he pitched the final two innings, retiring all six men he faced with four strikeouts. He lowered his ERA to 0.84.
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Gerardo Parra brings Baby Shark to Wings, now hopes to get back to Nationals