HOUSTON — It was demolished a few months ago, the old stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr. once trained in the early spring. It was crumbling when one final star added his name to the list of legends.

Legend is too strong a word to describe Juan Soto, the left fielder for the Washington Nationals, at least for now. Soto does not turn 21 until Friday, when his team will host the first World Series game in Washington since 1933. He helped lead the Nationals there with one of the best seasons ever for a player his age: 34 homers, 110 runs batted in and a .949 on-base plus slugging percentage.

He signed with Washington when he was 16, in 2015, agreeing to a $1.5 million deal in a musty old batting cage at Fort Lauderdale Stadium, the former spring home of the Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles. He had been playing in a showcase event at the park, and the Nationals — who had already seen Soto in the Dominican Republic , his home country — pulled him away for a private evaluation.

“It was really nasty in there,” said Johnny DiPuglia, the Nationals’ vice president for international operations. “It smelled like urine. We had to kick a guy out of there, gave him 10 bucks.”