LOS ANGELES -- Last guy legendary scout Mike Brito found by accident? He sits upstairs now, broadcasting the Dodgers games in Spanish. Fernando Valenzuela.
There is no way to tell whether Yasiel Puig will be doing the same in 34 years.
Simply, on a warm early summer's evening, the embattled Dodgers merely were content that for once in this brutal season, an incoming player actually was more notable than an outgoing player headed for the disabled list.
It was four years ago that Brito traveled to Canada to scout a Mexican team. He didn't see much he liked. Then he saw the team from Cuba.
"My eyes started blinking," Brito said, his trademark Panama hat protecting him from the afternoon sun. "I had never seen a young player with these kinds of tools."
Last summer, his phone buzzed. It was Brito's brother, Mario.
"My spy in Cuba," Mike said, eyes twinkling.
"That boy you like," Mario told him. "He just escaped from Cuba."
The Dodgers are not expecting a savior, not instantly and not even after bestowing $42 million upon that fellow last summer in a seven-year deal.
But what they got Monday in a 2-1 thriller against the Padres sure looked suspiciously like a savior.
"That was fun, huh?" manager Don Mattingly said. "Storybook, right?
"Pretty cool."
The story wasn't in Puig's two base knocks, though that was part of it.
No, the moment where legends are born arrived with one out and one on in the ninth, the Dodgers clinging to that 2-1 lead and Brandon League on the mound.
Kyle Blanks drilled a pitch deep into the night, and Puig streaked back, turned one way, then the other, then finally settling under it about a step in front of the right-field wall.
"I'm thinking that ball is going out of the ballpark, the way things have been going," Mattingly said.
As the ball thudded into Puig's glove, Chris Denorfia, the runner on first, slammed on the brakes just around second and started scrambling back.
Puig fired toward first pretty much flat-footed, from the warning track. He had zero momentum toward where he was throwing.
"As soon as he let it go, I knew we had a shot," first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said.
The throw sailed to Gonzalez on the fly, strong and accurate, just ahead of the sliding Denorfia to double him off.
Game.
"To have that throw ... unbelievable," Mattingly said.
It was a moment that nobody watching will ever forget. And that is no exaggeration, not even in the slightest.
What a throw, what a play.
What a debut.
"Really, with all the hype, it really is just amazing it ends like that," Mattingly said. "It was fun. ...
"How can you not be surprised by that ending?"
After nearly forcing his way onto the major-league club with his sensational spring, Puig was minding his own business at Double-A Chattanooga, developing just as the Dodgers had asked, leading the Southern League with a .313 batting average and a .599 slugging percentage ... while all hell was breaking loose in Los Angeles.
The impetus for his promotion was a crushing series of injuries over the past week that sent three regulars (Matt Kemp, A.J. Ellis and Carl Crawford) and one starting pitcher (Josh Beckett) to the disabled list and also sidelined two other starting pitchers (Hyun-Jin Ryu and Chris Capuano).
The hope is that he can bring some energy and some knocks to an offense that has scored the third-fewest runs in the majors.
Not that Puig is the five-tool kind of player that scouts daydream on, but one said earlier Monday he thought the Dodgers should have started the season with Puig in the outfield instead of keeping a spot warm for Carl Crawford.
"He's an animal," the guy said. "He can hit for power, he can run, he can throw ... I'd take him over Yoenis Cespedes."
Those comparisons are natural and, be forewarned, you're going to hear an awful lot of them simply because both players are Cuban.Are they legitimate? Not right now. Absolutely not. For one thing, Puig is only 22, Cespedes 27. And people outside of the West Coast still don't come close to appreciating the Oakland outfielder the way they should.
With Cespedes in their lineup the past two seasons, the A's are 112-60 (.651). Without him, they're 17-32 (.347).
Puig picks these Dodgers up by the scruffs of their necks and pulls them forward like that, then go ahead and make all of the Cespedes comparisons you want.
"I'd say there's definitely a comparison," Gonzalez said, plowing forward. "Cespedes is not as much of a base stealer. He's got more power."
What the Dodgers saw of Puig this spring was a smiling, personable kid who cannot get enough baseball.
"He's outgoing," Gonzalez said, smiling at the spring memories, a time when last place in the NL West would have been the most ridiculous notion ever. "He's a fun guy. He's the kind of guy who likes to make fun of people and who likes being made fun of."
At 6-3 and 215 pounds, he also has the type of build that causes comparisons to more folks than Cespedes. Mattingly and a scout each invoke the name of Bo Jackson.
"That's what I see more than anything," Mattingly said. "It's that NFL running back-type of body. Big, thick legged, built low to the ground."
Mattingly slotted Puig in the leadoff spot Monday, and moved Andre Ethier over to center field so the kid could play right -- where he's mostly played at Chattanooga.
There is no long-range plan for how long he will be in Los Angeles. The Dodgers expect both Kemp and Crawford back from the DL -- each is down with a hamstring strain -- by the middle of the month.
At that point, barring another injury or three, Puig will be squeezed out of the lineup.
Unless, of course, he rolls some thunder into what so far has been an awful lineup. Then things will get very interesting. Who knows, maybe Ethier will be on the trade block by July.
"More than anything, we'll see where it goes," Mattingly said. "When we get people back, we'll see how they're swinging and we'll see where it goes."
In a broadcasting booth upstairs, Valenzuela called the play while watching Dodger Stadium spring to life the way it regularly did in the old days. It was in 1979 when Brito went to scout a shortstop in Leon, Guanajuato in Mexico.
"Fernando was pitching," Brito says. "I didn't know who Fernando was.
"I didn't like the shortstop, but I loved the left-hander."
Two years later came Fernandomania, and a World Series title. It was one of two the Dodgers won in the 1980s.
They're still trying to find their way back.
"We all got a chance to see what Puig's capable of in spring training," Mattingly said. "If it's anything like that, he's going to be fun to watch."
Nine innings in, he's an absolute blast.
