Twenty three years.
That’s how long it’d been since Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts last saw his father, Jan Maarten Bogaerts.
Maarten had left his family behind in Aruba when Xander and his twin brother Jair were just three years old. They, along with their older sister Chandra, were raised by their single mother, Sandra Brown, often referred to as supermom by the kids. Brown did her best to make a home for her children, filling in any gap left behind by their father.
“She didn’t make it feel like there was something missing,” Chandra said, per Bleacher Report’s Joon Lee.