BOSTON — Alex Verdugo has never been the loudest voice in the Red Sox clubhouse, but on a quiet Tuesday morning in June, his actions resonated louder than any walk-off home run.
It started with a letter. Handwritten, edges smudged from being read and folded over and over, it was sent by the parents of 10-year-old Liam Ramirez, a Boston-area boy fighting an aggressive brain tumor. Liam’s parents, Rosa and Miguel, weren’t asking for much. They wrote about how their son loved the Red Sox, how every night in the hospital, he would fall asleep wearing his worn-out Verdugo jersey, and how he often whispered that one day he hoped to see Fenway Park, even if just once.
Verdugo read the letter in the training room before batting practice. “I had to stop reading halfway,” Verdugo recalled. “I could feel the tears coming, and I didn’t want the guys to see me like that.”
Instead of handing the letter off to PR, Verdugo did something he hadn’t planned. He grabbed his phone, found the number Rosa included in the letter, and FaceTimed them directly from the locker room.
Rosa almost dropped the phone when Verdugo’s face appeared on the screen.
“Is Liam there?” Verdugo asked, smiling, even as his eyes betrayed how deeply the letter had affected him.
Liam was propped up in bed, tubes visible around his arms, a Red Sox cap too big for his head. The moment he saw Verdugo, a small, tired smile spread across his face.
“Hey, champ,” Verdugo said, waving. “How would you like to come see a game at Fenway?”
That moment set off a chain of quiet preparations. Verdugo told no media, no cameras. It wasn’t a team-arranged PR visit, just a player and a family connected by baseball and the fragility of a child’s fight for life.
On game day, Liam arrived in a wheelchair, wearing a fresh Red Sox jersey Verdugo had sent to the hospital two days before. The Fenway staff, informed quietly by Verdugo, cleared a small space near the dugout so Liam could watch batting practice up close.
Verdugo walked over, placed a signed baseball in Liam’s small hands, and took off his own cap, signing it on the brim before fitting it carefully on Liam’s head.
“He kept saying, ‘Thank you, Alex,’ over and over,” Verdugo said softly. “And I just told him, ‘No, man, thank you.’”
They sat for nearly 30 minutes, talking about everything from favorite ice cream flavors to which player has the best walk-up song. Verdugo promised him a home run, though he admitted later he wasn’t sure if he could deliver.
In the bottom of the sixth, with Fenway rising to its feet, Verdugo smashed a double off the Green Monster. Standing on second base, he looked toward Liam, who was cheering from the dugout’s edge, cap slipping over his eyes. Verdugo pointed, smiled, and thumped his chest.
After the game, Verdugo took Liam and his family on a private tour of the clubhouse, letting him sit briefly at his locker. Verdugo pulled out a glove and helped Liam slip his small hand into it, gently showing him how to close it around a ball.
Liam’s mother, Rosa, would later say it was the first time in months she had seen her son laugh that freely.
What Verdugo didn’t tell anyone publicly was that he also covered the cost of Liam’s transportation to and from the hospital that day, paid for a hotel near Fenway so the family could rest, and sent additional Red Sox gear to the hospital for Liam’s friends in the pediatric ward.
“Alex has always been about family and community,” said a Red Sox teammate who witnessed the meeting. “He didn’t want the cameras, didn’t want to tweet about it. He just wanted to make a kid happy.”
Verdugo, when asked days later, was reluctant to talk about the visit.
“This isn’t about me,” he said. “It’s about Liam. It’s about reminding ourselves that baseball is a game, but it can mean everything to someone who’s going through something bigger than any game we’ll ever play.”
Verdugo, who grew up in a tight-knit family, knows what it means to fight for what you love. He’s been open in the past about challenges growing up in a modest home, seeing how his parents worked tirelessly to give him and his siblings opportunities. Perhaps that’s why the letter hit him so hard.
“Liam’s fight is something I can’t even imagine,” Verdugo said. “But if being there for him for a day helps him smile, helps his family have a good memory, I’m going to do it.”
When asked if he plans to keep in touch, Verdugo nods. “Oh yeah, we’re pen pals now,” he says with a grin. “I told him he’s got to let me know what ice cream flavor I need to try next.”
In a season filled with home runs, walk-offs, and playoff hopes, the image of a Red Sox outfielder sitting beside a young fan, sharing a laugh while the sun set over Fenway, stands as a reminder of what truly matters.
And somewhere in a hospital room near Boston, a young boy fighting a battle far tougher than any baseball game, drifts off to sleep, clutching a signed baseball, wearing a cap too big for his head, and dreaming of the day he’ll see Verdugo hit a home run just for him.