Carlos Delgado on facing his biggest adversary: Hurricane Maria

Carlos Delgado never faced a tougher adversary than what he encountered when Hurricane Maria tore through his native island of Puerto Rico.

If you remember Delgado, he was a stout slugger. He was 6-foot-3 and a chiseled 215 pounds. When I met him in Puerto Rico this past December, he was ailing. He occasionally flexed one of his arms and grimaced. This injury wasn’t from throwing a baseball or from taking swings.

This ailment was from months of lifting supplies onto the back of trucks and then offloading them in inland communities across Puerto Rico.

Delgado had come through when it counted. This time it wasn’t for a big league team. This clutch performance was on a much greater stage. It was for his island, for his people.

A Hurricane Like No Other

The scene as he looked out his window as the hurricane began to whip across the island in September 2017 remains etched in his mind.

“Oh man, I don’t wish this upon anybody,” Delgado thought.

Maria tore through with a vengeance to make a direct hit.

“For the longest time we’d been lucky,” he told La Vida Baseball. “You know, (in the past) they announced a hurricane in Puerto Rico, and at the last minute it will go north or at the last minute it’ll go south. This one, it was coming right at us. We knew.”

Hurricane Maria revealed a lot. It exposed that there was a lot of poverty beneath the island’s beautiful tropical trees and greenery. Recovery efforts were likewise revealing.

The recovery showcased the resilient spirit of Puerto Ricans who were ready to help neighbors and the less fortunate.

“It was such a humbling experience, and it showed that Puerto Rico needed a lot of help before the hurricane,” Delgado said. “You saw a lot of the poverty that you see in Puerto Rico, and I guess it was masked behind the vegetation. When Maria blew everything out, it was worse than what we thought.”

Moving into Action

The devastation across the island was unknown for days after Maria made landfall. Power was out. Communication lines were down. Delgado and his neighbors initially only knew about the impact they could see personally.

The devastation was so unimaginable, it seemed out of a fiction novel. Delgado remembers thinking that it seemed as though a giant had stepped on everything.

“Vegetation was gone,” he said. “All the green was gone.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’”

Those days were anxious ones for millions of Puerto Ricans on the island and in stateside communities. No matter where they lived, Puerto Ricans could not get on the phone and talk to their relatives, friends, and business partners. The inability to communicate and to find out about the safety and well-being of those throughout the island made everyone anxious.

Delgado knew he had to do something to help his island and aid his people. He mobilized the full force of his Extra Bases Foundation.

Upon reflection, Delgado chuckled at the audacity of what the organization and volunteers set out to do. He marvels at what they accomplished.

Up to the Challenge

The Extra Bases Foundation, which was established in 2001, is not in the business of distributing humanitarian relief. Yet that is precisely what the organization’s core mission became in the aftermath of the destructive hurricane.

The challenge was logistics, determining how to get relief supplies to people in towns without power and seemingly cut off by impassable roads.

What Delgado witnessed in these communities encouraged him. The people’s spirit could not be broken.

Countless people joined the relief effort. They prepared meals to distribute. They loaded trucks with water. Delgado and a group of volunteers then transported the food and water to the communities in desperate need.

A Long Haul

As the weeks went by, things eventually started creeping back toward normal in San Juan and in coastal areas. People began to return to their jobs. Then Delgado wondered how his foundation would continue transporting relief supplies with fewer volunteers.

In the first months Delgado could count on 10 to 12 volunteers to distribute relief supplies. The number of volunteers dwindled with the restoration of power in some communities.

Now supported with two or three volunteers, Delgado kept going even as he was beginning to feel the physical toll.

Puerto Rico’s New Dream Team

For nearly six months, he was part of Puerto Rico’s most important team ever. They were committed to making sure relief supplies got to the people in need in Moca, Arecibo, Hatillo, Corozal, Morovis, Adjuntas and other towns.

Delgado was quick to recognize his “teammates” in that effort.

“There was no surprise that I saw Yadi Molina doing stuff in Utuado the day we were in Adjuntas,” he said. “There was no surprise that Carlos Beltrán was coordinating bringing an airplane from Houston [and] running trips in different towns. A lot of the guys did fantastic work, and that’s great.”

Delgado was not out in front of cameras trying to gain attention, but his people noticed his steady presence.

Organizations recognized the Extra Bases Foundation’s contributions. Several foundations based in the United States called Extra Bases to donate money to assist their ongoing efforts. Others asked Delgado’s foundation to run relief projects for them in Puerto Rico.

Delgado had never delivered more in the clutch for Puerto Rico.

Featured Image: La Vida Baseball

Inset Image: Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images Sport