James McCann played winter ball in the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago. He hadn't seen the country like he saw it last week.
As he and Tigers teammates Anthony Gose, Kyle Lobstein, Jefry Marte and Jose Valdez visited an orphanage about a mile away from the Tigers' academy in San Pedro de Macoris, one older kid introduced himself. He, too, was a catcher for the school's baseball team, and hopes to try out for a professional team one day.
He was one of more than 200 kids living in the orphanage, one of several run by Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos, a Christian mission to help orphaned and abandoned children across Latin America and the Caribbean.