Having this new spirit in his life inspired Mike to return to the game he had long abandoned. He started coaching the Barstow Community College team, and of course Aaron came along whenever he could. “He would bawl and cry if he couldn’t be up there,” Mike says. “He rode on the buses with me. He learned a lot of bad language on the buses. But he loved it. He would rather be with me than with the other kids. If that car started up, he was grabbing anything so he could he could hurry and get in. At practice, I would stick a college guy’s catching gear on him [so he wouldn’t get hurt] — the shin guards went up to his hips — and I would send him into left field and say, ‘Don’t turn sideways.’ He would do that every night.”

That kid, who would grow up tall and wiry, turned out to be an athletic prodigy. He played a bit of football and a lot of basketball, but baseball (of course) was his game. As he approached his teenaged years, it was clear that Aaron’s talents were going to outstrip Barstow, that he had a real shot at succeeding in the world beyond.

“Mike probably saw more of Aaron’s talent than I was capable of understanding,” Lynn says. “I knew he was good. But I had no concept of the draft, professional ball. I think Mike saw that long before I did and knew what he was capable of. I just trusted him. I trusted Mike wouldn’t put my children in danger and that he was doing the right thing when he took him to play ball outside of Barstow.”

When Aaron was 10, Frank Sanchez died of liver failure. He was 48 years old. When he’s asked about his biological father, Aaron typically demurs, especially when it comes to the details of his death. “He knows it was because of his tortured lifestyle,” Lynn says. “He knows that. I just think that he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“It did hurt a little bit,” Aaron says, “but it didn’t feel like I lost a father figure in my life because I didn’t. I always knew who Dad was in my heart. No offence to my real father. But I grew up with Mike as someone who had raised me from day one.”

At one point, Aaron considered changing his last name to Shipley, but Mike and Lynn told him that if he was going to do that, he’d have to talk to the Sanchez family about it. Lynn and Mike had made sure that Aaron and Andrew retained a connection with the extended Sanchez clan, and Aaron’s paternal grandmother, Lydia, remained an extremely important figure in his life until her death during spring training last year.

Aaron thought long and hard about it, and then decided he didn’t want to have that conversation with his grandmother, that he would remain a Sanchez. “Does it hurt Mike that it doesn’t say ‘Shipley’ on the back of Aaron’s jersey? No,” Lynn says. “Does it bother him that he’s sometimes called Mr. Sanchez? No. It’s just who we are. Everybody knows who got Aaron where he is. Everyone knows where the credit goes.”