The son of a minor league player, Fernando Tatis smashed a total of 113 homers in 11 years with five big league teams, including 34 in one breakthrough season as a raw 24-year-old out of the Dominican Republic. Two of those blasts – grand slams – famously exited Dodger Stadium in the same inning in April 1999, long before Tatis refined the approach that would one day prop up the start of his own son’s professional career.

“In those times,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said by phone from Fort Wayne, Ind., “he was basically going off his talent and not knowing much about baseball. He was only learning about hitting – not too big, not too small.