At 6-foot-3, an 18-year-old Fernando Tatis Jr. towers over his 5-foot-11 father, a veteran of 11 big league seasons. He reached Double-A three years earlier than his father. By all accounts of those who watched both play Little League in the Dominican Republic, the younger Tatis is faster than his father ever was as a kid. He’s stronger. He’s going to be flat-out better than pops ever was.

The razzing goes on and on during get-togethers in the Tatis’ living room on their farm in Juan Dolio. The last word inevitably belongs to the elder Fernando.

You’re not a big leaguer yet.

Everybody laughs.


Pops, too.

“We make a lot of jokes, but of course it makes me proud,” Fernando Tatis Sr. said. “That’s what I want – for him to be way, way better than my career.”

PADRES ON DECK GAME

When: 5:40 p.m. Saturday at Petco Park

5:40 p.m. Saturday at Petco Park What: Top prospects from the Padres’ instructional league – including Fernando Tatis Jr. – will face prospects from the Texas Rangers. Gates open at 3:30 p.m. in time for Padres batting practice.

Top prospects from the Padres’ instructional league – including Fernando Tatis Jr. – will face prospects from the Texas Rangers. Gates open at 3:30 p.m. in time for Padres batting practice. Go: Visit Padres.com for complimentary tickets.

Fernando Tatis Jr. | By the numbers

Low-A: .281 avg., .390 OBP, .520 SLG, 21 HRs, 69 RBIs, 78 runs, 29 steals, 124 Ks (117 games)

.281 avg., .390 OBP, .520 SLG, 21 HRs, 69 RBIs, 78 runs, 29 steals, 124 Ks (117 games) Double-A: .255 avg., .281 OBP, .327 SLG, 1 HR, 6 RBIs, 6 runs, 3 steals, 17 Ks (14 games)

The younger Tatis is off to a good start, too, with his recent selection as the Dominican Republic Winter League’s No. 1 overall pick capping a whirl-wind first full year in the Padres organization.

First, Tatis was assigned to the Midwest League as the circuit’s fifth-youngest player. Then a 22-game on-base streak helped him into a midseason all-star game as a shortstop. A second-half surge pushed him toward low Single-A Fort Wayne’s homer record. His combination of speed and smarts made him the league’s youngest 20-20 producer in minor league baseball’s modern era. Finally, 11 games into his stint as the youngest player in the Double-A Texas League, Tatis Jr. collected a career-best four hits as ESPN scouting guru Keith Law anointed him a “top 10 prospect in baseball.”


Tatis’ parent organization sees even bigger things on the horizon.

“Fernando has the ability to play at the highest level,” Fort Wayne hitting coach Doug Banks said. “He was a young professional to start the year, so he had to learn more about himself. Once he started to figure out what he can do on a baseball field and believe that he has the ability to do be one of the best players in the game, that’s when this league – and any other league in my opinion – slowed down for him.”

His pedigree has certainly helped.

The elder Tatis turned 24 the day before his wife, Maria, gave birth to his first son in January 1999 as he prepared for his third major league season, the year he went down in MLB record books as the first player to slug two grand slams in one inning.


A career that spawned in Texas via an $8,000 signing bonus eventually moved to St. Louis and then to Montreal. It resumed in Baltimore after a two-year hiatus and continued in New York, the younger Tatis often in tow the way he might have dreamed of tagging along for his own father’s career.

You see, another Fernando Tatis also made his to America decades earlier to pursue baseball. He, too, was 24 years old when he became a father. He’d climbed as high as Triple-A. He’d even played his way onto the Astros’ 40-man roster only to have the disappointment of a fizzling career keep him from returning to his family and 5-year-old son in the Dominican Republic.

Seventeen years passed before an emotional reunion toward the end of Tatis’ rookie season with the Rangers.

He’d become a man without his father. Spurred on by stories of father’s pursuit of the big leagues and an island’s love for the game, Tatis Sr. made his own way in baseball. He was determined to lay out a different path for his sons, starting with Fernando Jr.


“It was very difficult for me to grow up without my father,” Tatis Sr. said. “It was very difficult because I loved to play baseball and I would have loved to have had my father around me. I think that’s why I take every day, every moment I can to be with my children.”

That desire picked up steam when Tatis – with 113 major league home runs, albeit the blasts leaving the yard far less frequently – walked away from his career to focus on his son’s.

That ultimately started with Fernando Jr. learning both Spanish and English in school from the time he was 4 years old. He’d picked up a bat much earlier in his life.

“I always had a bat in my hand; One day I hit my grandma in the head when I was 3,” the younger Tatis said with a laugh.


His father home for good from his career, the two spent hours in the cage and on diamonds.

They worked on technique.

Day after day after day, the two talked, lived and breathed baseball until the White Sox offered Tatis’ oldest son, just 16 at the time, an $825,000 signing bonus to start his professional career.

“I’m not going to lie,” Fernando Tatis Jr. recalled. “It was kind of hard at times. Being a dad and a coach at the same time, sometimes we’d start arguing and bring it into the house because I didn’t want to work hard enough. I was growing up. I was maturing a little bit more. I learned a lot.


“It was great in the end, but in the beginning it was not easy.”

It’s not always easy today.

The two talk about the cows, horses and sheep on their farm when Tatis Sr. phones from the Dominican Republic. They talk about how his younger brothers – Elijah, 15, and Daniel, 11 – are coming along in the game. The conversation without fail lands on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s latest swings.

“I watch on my phone – every pitch, every inning, every at-bat,” the elder Tatis said. “If I see something wrong, something I don’t like, I call him right away.”


With a laugh, Tatis Sr. added: “Sometimes he doesn’t want to hear it. That’s baseball, but we’ve got a very good relationship. I say, ‘I’ve got to tell you. It’s the only way you’re going to get better. There’s things you’re not doing right.’

“That’s the way it is and that’s what it’s going to be.”

Of course, Fernando Tatis Jr. – the Padres’ chief return from the White Sox when ownership OK’d eating $27-31 million remaining on James Shields’ contract – is doing plenty right.

He hit his way out of the rookie-level Arizona after the Padres traded for him last summer. His game in Fort Wayne heated up along with the weather. By the time he’d penned an otherworldly 1.108 on-base-plus-slug mark the second half of the season in the Midwest League, he’d accomplished everything the Padres put before him.


“If the league is small for you,” Padres field coordinator Luis Ortiz said, “then you have to destroy it. What he did, even though he knew he was a lot better than the league, was work like he wasn’t. That’s why he continued to improve.”

Said Fernando Tatis Jr. “I learned a lot from the first half. In the second half, I just felt like I had control of it. At the end of the season, it started to get – I don’t want to say easy because the pitchers are still good – but I had a lot more confidence and I was very good at the plate.”

Indeed.

In his first full season of pro ball, Tatis Jr. led all Padres minor leaguers with 242 total bases. He walked (75) more than anyone else in the system. Yes, he had more strikeouts (141) than games played (131), but paired that deficiency with 22 homers, 32 steals and the necessary tools — a strong arm and quick feet — to excel in the middle of the field as a shortstop.


In short, for an organization short on homegrown star power in recent years, Tatis provided the kind of season the front office can dream on.

With that comes expectations as Tatis climbs the ladder toward San Diego, presumably with a return trip to Double-A San Antonio to start 2018.

As always, pops will be there every step of the way.

Whether he likes it or not.


“This isn’t going to be easy,” the elder Tatis said. “It’s going to take time, but I believe in the mind he’s got, the talent he’s got. I was a smart guy. He’s a smart guy.

“He’s going to figure it out. I’m not worried about that.”


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