



Editor's note: Sadly, the tale of Fernando Rodney's magical fruit was a tad exaggerated by the Dominican closer. But the legend will live on.

SAN FRANCISCO – The Magic Plantain arrived on a flight from the Dominican Republic at 2 p.m. Monday, special delivery for Fernando Rodney. He brought it to AT&T Park, threw on his uniform for the World Baseball Classic semifinals, shoved the fruit in his beltline like a holstered weapon and strutted around Dirty Harry style, packing some serious Vitamins A and C.

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It had a message for him, too, because what good is a piece of produce if it doesn't talk to you? "If you keep me close to you," the plantain said, according to Rodney, who did not indicate whether it spoke Spanish or English or maybe Fruitish, "you're going to get the win." And in this world of lies and cynicism, maybe what we truly need to bring us together is the Magic Plantain, a teller of great truths.

Rodney kept it close, except for when he had to go to the mound and pitch, because plantain might be considered an illegal substance, and a Magic Plantain definitely would trigger questions about illicit performance enhancement, which nobody wanted. Though, to tell another truth, this team from the D.R. needs no enchanted plantain nor a boost of any variety. Seven times it has taken the field in this WBC and seven times it has won, the latest a 4-1 victory against a plucky Netherlands team to reach Tuesday's WBC finals and set up a one-game showdown with its neighbor 80 miles to the east, Puerto Rico.

For a tournament that has looked more like the Caribbean Series, the wild crowds and in-game histrionics challenging stateside mores about the appropriate way to act at a ballpark and on the field, this is a dream finale. Granted, pitting Puerto Rico's Giancarlo Alvarado against the D.R.'s Samuel Deduno is like a Super Bowl with a pair of third-string quarterbacks. But that's not the point. This is, like everything about Latin American baseball, a celebration. And celebrate the Dominicans did.





[Related: Dominican Republic's loud and rowdy cheering section]

Rodney wielding his .357 Banagnum is a prism into how Dominicans treat baseball. Like the plantain, the sport is an export the country holds sacred. And yet to approach it with the seriousness of a major league game lessens the inherent joy Dominicans are taught to revere. The WBC allows Dominicans to act Dominican, to blow horns and jump out of the dugout after big plays and, sure, carry around a freaking plantain that arrived after a seven-hour flight.

"It's like you're playing winter ball," Robinson Cano said. "You play your way, go out there and have fun, something you don't do in the big leagues."

How novel: Baseball and fun intermingling. You'd think this weren't some novelty, that by dint of adults playing a kids' game fun would be inherent. Among the money and media and fans and pressure and everything else, though, fun gets beaten out of players, and the idea of a Magic Plantain gets laughed off as something they wish they could do.

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