Yangervis Solarte, first and foremost, is a husband and a father.

So, of course, he was angry when he learned his wife, Yuliette, hid the true nature of the complications that led to an emergency labor two falls ago. He was ready to forgo camp last spring to tend to her failing health and their three daughters. Then Solarte listened to his wife, remembered the plan they drew up long before doctors discovered the cancerous tumors that claimed Yuliette’s life last September.

Fight for the family, for their girls.

As he had through eight long years in the minors.


As he had in winning a job with the Yankees and then winning over the Padres upon his trade into the National League.

As he continues to do so with a new contract in hand and his place in baseball secure enough to represent Venezuela next week in the World Baseball Classic.

Fight.

“I said that because she said that,” Solarte said through an interpreter. “She said I’m going to fight as hard as I can to stay strong, stay healthy and to stay alive. Now you need to go fight for your daughters. You can’t worry about us – because I know you worry about us.


“It was all very calculated.”

***

That more thoughtful side of Yuliette was there from the start.

Yet it was the lighter side of her persona that continued to draw Solarte toward Yuliette after a chance meeting at a get-together put on by an English teacher during his rookie ball days with the Twins.

Then they ran into each other at the mall. Then again out one night.

Soon enough the two were dating.


“She was serious in some regards, but she was also a jokester like me,” Solarte said. “A clown – always happy, always joking around. We were similar in that regard and we always loved to dance. … You can see her in our girls. My girls always dance.

“Hey, my whole family can dance.”

Solarte’s family also has a knack for baseball, his uncle Roger Cedeno blazing the trail from the same house in Valencia, Venezuela, to the majors 14 years before a 17-year-old Solarte signed with the Twins in June 2005.

Bouncing between the Dodgers, Mets, Astros, Tigers and Cardinals, Cedeno mostly heard of Solarte’s emergence as a prospect from afar.


The trials and tribulations, as they do for most minor leaguers, stacked up from there.

There was the shoulder surgery that limited Solarte to 16 games in 2009. There was becoming a father twice over toward the end of six long years in Minnesota’s system, none above Double-A ball. There were the back-to-back productive years at the Rangers’ Triple-A affiliate in Round Rock, Texas, without a sniff of the majors.

Yet Solarte’s sights remained unchanged. His budding family was the reason.

“I thank God for Yuliette because she gave me my three daughters,” Solarte said. “That changed how I lived my life. Before I had my daughters, there was a moment when I was playing when my shoulder was hurt, I was thinking, ‘Why play anymore?’ I was down and out. When I had my daughters, there wasn’t that excuse. It was – ‘OK, I have to take care of them. I have to give them a future.’


“Every year I got better and better and better.”

Somewhere along the line, Cedeno convinced his agent, Peter Greenberg, to take on Solarte as a client after getting a look at his swing in person.

Cedeno, like his nephew, was a switch-hitter.

“I couldn’t believe how good his swing was,” said Cedeno, who played two more winters with Caracas after finishing his major league career with the Cardinals in 2005. “I know I really liked it. With that swing, I thought he had what it takes to make it to the majors.”


Eight years into the grind, Solarte’s versatility became something of a hot commodity among minor league free agents. He’d driven in 75 runs for the first time in his career in 2013 and hit a career-high 12 homers while seeing time at shortstop, second and third base.

Having lost Robinson Cano to free agency and Alex Rodriguez to a year-long suspension, the Yankees were among five teams bidding for Solarte’s services in the winter of 2014. Undeterred by their propensity to sign established players to fill big league roles, Solarte signed with the Yankees and then hit .429 that spring in Grapefruit League games to book a ticket to New York.

Before that flight, Solarte married Yuliette under a big tree in Cape Coral, Fla., with 2-year-old Yanliett and 1-year-old Yuliett by their side.

“I always said when I got to the big leagues, we’d have our house and get married,” Solarte said. “Little by little, we got the car and rented a house and right before I got to the big leagues we got a house. That was the plan we made early on.”


***

Something was very wrong.

Yangervis Solarte gathered that much in the fall of 2015 as his wife gave birth to Yulianna 10 weeks early as he finished his second season with the Padres.

Between repeated trips to the Fort Myers hospital upon returning home — to visit his newborn in her incubator and check-ups for his wife — Solarte learned the truth behind the burst blood vessel that led to an emergency labor.

Doctors had discovered several tumors in Yuliette’s liver – Stage 3 cancer at the rate they were growing and multiplying.

“I was mad at first when she said she wanted me to finish my season strong and not worry about things,” Solarte said. “But that didn’t last long, because I had to shift immediately to taking care of her and taking care of my daughters.”


That meant shuttling his oldest girls to school in the mornings, getting his wife to chemotherapy treatments during the days and fitting in workouts with whatever time he had left.

Sometimes that was at 2 or 3 in the morning, Solarte said.

His mom flew in from Venezuela to help. He also leaned heavily on support from aunts and uncles in Miami, but Solarte was prepared to skip spring training until Yuliett reminded him of the plan.

Their plan.


So Solarte left for Peoria, Ariz., for the start of his second spring training with the Padres. Back home, Yuliette was given three months to live.

“She has to fight, fight for her life, for our babies,” Solarte said last spring. “I have to be strong for her because you never know what happens in life. I can learn from my wife. That’s the example of my wife. Fight all the time. I love this game. I love my family. I want to come here to fight because she fights every day.

“You can see when somebody wants to live.”

The couple talked daily. He FaceTimed with his oldest girls. With the season as a welcome distraction, some days were easier than others.


“She told me I needed to go drive in as many runs as I can; you have to hit as many home runs as I can,” Solarte said. “She enjoyed it. Whenever I’d go and perform, we’d talk about it. We’d laugh. We’d cry. We’d enjoy it. She’d say you’re going to hit a home run tonight and then boom – home run.

He added: “There would be times when I was really down. I don’t have the strength to play. But when I come (to the park), it changes everything. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Few do.

“I wouldn’t be functional; I’d probably walk away from my job to be with my family,” said Padres manager Andy Green, also a father of three young girls. “I can’t imagine going through what he went through, but Yuliette really wanted him to play, play for his family, play for his daughters’ future. He honored it well, playing with passion and still having that smile on the field. I’m sure that gave her a great measure of comfort watching her husband play that way.”


That way saw Solarte amass career-highs in home runs (15), RBIs (71), batting average (.286), on-base percentage (.341) and slugging percentage (.467) despite losing six weeks to a hamstring injury early in the season and leaving the team twice to be at his wife’s side.

Yuliette Pimentel Solarte was 31 years old when she died of complications related to cancer on Sept. 17, 2016 – four months before the Padres signed her husband to a $7.5 million contract that could be worth as much as $13.5 million if both team options are exercised.

The precursor to that deal was agreeing to a $3.15 million pact with Fantex in April 2016 — with Yuliette’s blessing — in exchange for 11 percent of Solarte’s future earnings.

“She said she could die happy,” the 29-year-old Solarte said of the Fantex deal, his first big payday. “We knew that the girls were taken care of. This contract was for her and for them. It was a way that we knew they would be fine.


“I know she’d be happy with everything I’ve done because we’re taken care of now.”

***

Team Venezuela had come knocking before, back in 2013 when Solarte was fighting for a spot with the Rangers.

His plan couldn’t allow him to give up camp time – time to make an impression – to the World Baseball Classic then. Today, the invitation is a source of pride for a minor league journeyman turned big leaguer, for both him and his family overlooking his three girls — now 6, 5 and 1 — until they can join him in San Diego in June after the school year ends.

Solarte has made it.

His story – his family’s story – can even be an example for fellow countrymen who see Solarte’s name alongside the likes of two-time AL MVP Miguel Cabrera, AL Cy Young-winner Felix Hernandez and four-time All-Star Jose Altuve when Team Venezuela begins pool play in Jalisco, Mexico, next week.


Not because he’s a name. But because of how far he’s come.

“My message to them is nothing is impossible,” Solarte said. “Eight years in the minors, going to three different teams, signing with a team like that Yankees that I wasn’t supposed to make. The way I did it was to think about my family first. I was always trying to provide for my family, I was always working … and I believed in myself.

“It’s not so much about who I am or look at me. It’s know yourself and know what you have inside you.”


Padres Videos × On Now Padres pitcher Chris Paddack on start vs. Mariners and possibility of making rotation On Now Meet the Padres: Ian Kinsler 5:18 On Now Catching up with Padres OF Franmil Reyes 5:18 On Now Meet The Padres: Greg Garcia 5:11 On Now Catching up with Padres reliever Craig Stammen 5:33 On Now Meet the Padres: Logan Allen 6:23 On Now Meet The Padres: Manny Machado 9:08 On Now Meet The Padres: Chris Paddack 5:08 On Now Three things that stood out from Machado's first day with the Padres 1:53 On Now Padres manager Andy Green on Machado joining his roster

jeff.sanders@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutSanders