GLENDALE, Ariz. – About the job, then. Over almost a quarter century it becomes for him a calling, and so about raising ballplayers into catchers, and catchers into men, and men into good and generous human beings, and that’s when they become family too.

Not the hey-we’re-all-in-this-together noise either.

It’s a chair at the kitchen table, to his right, across from the wife who signed off on this, alongside his sons and daughter. The ballplayer becoming a catcher, a man, a good and generous human being even starts calling him “Papi” when he already has a Papi back home in Venezuela.

“I feel really fortunate I found someone like him,” the ballplayer says in careful English. “I don’t know how to repay him. They are like my family.”

Then he adds, to be sure he has it just right, “Mi familia.”

Travis Barbary is 46 years old. More than half his life he’s been a Los Angeles Dodger, including that one summer a long time ago when he was a minor-league catcher in Montana, and those four summers he managed 19- and 20-year-olds (and the occasional 31-year-old Dave Roberts) in Georgia and Utah, and those other four summers he toiled as a bullpen catcher in Los Angeles. He’s been with his wife, Raquel, for longer than he’s been a Dodger, and they have four children together near Clemson, South Carolina, along with two dogs and a cat. The cat is Lexie. The ballplayer is not too sure about Lexie.

“Weird eyes,” you see.

Barbary is the Dodgers’ catching coordinator, which means he travels the minor leagues adjusting, soothing, patching up and pointing in the right direction young men who, some days, probably wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into. One of those catchers was a delightfully skilled 16-year-old Venezuelan named Keibert Ruiz, a switch-hitter built strong and quiet and finding his way like the rest. They’d see each other in the Dominican Republic, in Ogden, Utah, in Glendale, Arizona. They’d talk, Barbary making do with the Spanish he picked up over the years, Ruiz following along best he could, sometimes nodding to be polite. Along the way they began to look for each other, and Ruiz became a prospect, and Barbary had an idea that wouldn’t just make Ruiz better, but make them both better.

“I just got a sense this is a special kid who’s got a chance to move quickly through the system,” Barbary said.

He talked to Gabe Kapler, then the club’s farm director. They spoke to Andrew Friedman.

What if Keibert, then 18 and fresh from hitting .374 in Rookie ball, came to live with him, in Clemson, during the winter? Keibert could learn English there. He could train in modern facilities. He could watch hours of “The Andy Griffith Show,” for which Barbary’s fondness is legendary. “It is the greatest show ever made for TV,” Barbary said with a laugh and absolute sincerity, having given no thought to the possibility the Dodgers’ catcher of the future might arrive at a mound not with the authority of Andy Taylor, but as a bug-eyed Barney Fife. When raising catchers, a man takes his chances.

“We thought it was a great idea,” Friedman said. “More than that, it would be interesting to see Keibert’s reaction. That would tell us something about him.”

***

When he was 14, Keibert left his home and school in Valencia, Venezuela, to become a baseball player. His father, Jose, played some softball, but otherwise Keibert’s obsession was his own. He attended a baseball academy in Puerto Cabello, only after promising his mother, Lady, that he would continue his education. Lady was an elementary school teacher. In the winters Keibert took online classes, and Lady would help with his homework.

At 16, Keibert signed with the Dodgers, showed up to play in the Dominican summer league, and began the not uncommon journey to discover whether he was good enough to do this. He would soon be in America, a place new to him and many of his teammates. The baseball was manageable. The culture was different, but exciting, and Keibert tried to keep up. The language barrier was real, however. By nature shy, he yearned to stand on a pitcher’s mound and hold a regular conversation, to sit on a bench between innings and rebuild a teammate’s confidence. The Dodgers preached communication between catchers and their pitchers, and Keibert, like many of the Latin players, was at a disadvantage.

Story continues