Bryan Palacio/contributing writer
The sensational sound of Latin-Caribbean music blares over the speakers, her fans and teammates start yelling out “Puerto Rico!” and her mom, calling her by her nickname, screams out encouragement in Spanish. It’s just about impossible to not notice when softball freshman Aleima Lopez walks up to bat.
“When I was 13, there was a scout who came out for the Puerto Rico national team and they told me that they wanted me to play and ever since then, my whole life has been all about Puerto Rico,” Lopez said.
Her nationality is just a portion of her story, though. The 19-year-old catcher from Puerto Rico comes from a long line of ball players. Her father, Juan Lopez, played Double and Triple-A for the Houston Astros and coaches for the Cincinnati Reds. Her brother, Jack Lopez, plays for the Kansas City Royals Single-A farm team.
“I love it,” Lopez said. “They’re always helping me out. My brother is actually more supportive than anybody. He just tells me to have fun and do what I know how to do.
Lopez said when she was younger and played baseball, her brother was a pitcher.
“Nobody wanted catch for him,” she said. “So I used to volunteer and that’s how it all started.”
With big shoes to fill, the catcher has been working on a legacy of her own. After starting baseball at 7 years old and continuing onto the national team, Lopez kept playing with club teams and in high school. She posted superb batting averages all four years, her highest a .565 mark in her senior year, and helped her school become three-time district champions. She now plans on adding a successful collegiate softball career to her resume.
“I’ve said it before, she might be a freshman but she doesn’t play like it,” said softball Head Coach Jake Schumann. “I don’t consider her a freshman.”
Although not heavily recruited, she was still well known to the team.. Lopez was surprised when she arrived at FIU and all of her fellow players knew about her and were even excited to have her on their team. Her teammates raved about her and she was one of the players Schumann was the most excited about. Even other members of opposing schools have come to know who she is, one referring to her having a “vacuum for a glove.”
She has already started to make even more of a name for herself in her short time here, starting as a freshman and having her first collegiate at-bat end in a home run.
“It felt really good but I couldn’t have done it without my teammates,” Lopez said. “They kept telling me I was going to do that my first at bat, especially Jessy [Alfonso] and Brie [Rojas]. I was like, ‘No, there’s no way,’ and it happened.”
She has made game-defining plays with her bat and with her defense and she has been a menace for other teams. The catcher is a significant position, liaison between coach and pitcher, as well as the anchor on defense; she keeps runners honest and makes them pay for anything less than perfect base running. But her combination of skill and nationality is nothing new.
Following in the footsteps of the ever-growing trend of Hispanics in baseball, she is the epitome of the new America.
Even down to her favorite baseball player, she doesn’t choose Babe Ruth or Jackie Robinson, but Cuban native Livan Hernandez.
She is modeled in the essence of the universal mix of sports and heritage.
Emerging from a line of professional athletes and the captivating heritage of a proud nation is a softball player who simply loves the game she’s played since she was a child. Playing ball is in her blood as much as the country she was born in is. She embraces both aspects of her life and, luckily for FIU, she embraces them here.
