By Tiffany Williams –
BOSTON — On Sunday, the streets of Boston were filled with Dominican flags.
Music rolled through the city. Families danced. Colorful floats passed through neighborhoods as thousands gathered for the 40th annual Dominican Parade and Festival.
The celebration eventually moved to Franklin Park, where the music and festivities continued. People had reportedly traveled from the Dominican Republic, New York and elsewhere to be part of it.
For Boston’s Dominican community, it was a day about heritage, family and pride.
And 990 miles away, a young man born in Boston and raised partly in Santo Domingo had just given that community another reason to celebrate.
His name is Joshua Báez.
And one day before Boston’s Dominican parade, he introduced himself to Major League Baseball in a way nobody had before.
Báez made his Major League debut Saturday afternoon for the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field.
His first Major League pitch came from Chicago Cubs starter Matthew Boyd.
Báez swung.
The baseball traveled 449 feet to center field.
Home run.
One pitch into his Major League career, Joshua Báez had gone deep.
Then he came up again.
Another home run.
Then again.
Another one.
Three plate appearances.
Three home runs.
By the time his debut was finished, Báez had gone 3-for-4 with three home runs and five RBIs as St. Louis defeated Chicago 8-4.
It was not simply a great debut.
It was history.
Báez became the first player in Major League Baseball history to hit three home runs in his first three plate appearances.
For a 23-year-old Boston native whose road to the majors stretched from Santo Domingo to Dorchester, through Massachusetts high school baseball and years in the Cardinals’ minor league system, history arrived quickly.
Very quickly.
On the first pitch.
There is something almost poetic about the timing.
On Saturday afternoon in Chicago, a Dominican-American kid from Boston made baseball history.
On Sunday in Boston, thousands celebrated Dominican identity.
Two events nearly a thousand miles apart.
One shared story.
Báez was born in Boston on June 28, 2003.
But Boston wasn’t the only place that shaped him.
His family moved to Santo Domingo when he was an infant.
Years later, they returned to Boston, settling in Dorchester when Báez was in sixth grade.
He arrived facing an immediate challenge.
He knew no English.
So he used Google Translate to communicate.
Think about that journey for a moment.
A sixth grader trying to navigate a new school and a language he did not understand.
Years later, that same kid would stand in the batter’s box at Wrigley Field with thousands watching.
And on the first pitch he ever saw in the major leagues, he sent the baseball 449 feet.
The path between those two moments wasn’t easy or automatic.
Báez started his high school career at Cristo Rey Boston High School.
He transferred to Snowden International School as a sophomore.
He could pitch.
He could hit.
At Snowden, he threw as hard as 97 mph from the mound while batting .442 with 20 RBIs and 11 stolen bases.
Before his junior year, Báez transferred again, this time to Dexter Southfield School.
His talent was obvious.
In 2020, he was named the Massachusetts Gatorade Baseball Player of the Year despite the high school season being canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recognition centered on his work ethic and potential.
The following year, in a shortened season, Báez hit .378 with three home runs.
He also pitched to a 1.94 ERA and struck out 44 batters in 18 innings.
Vanderbilt University wanted him.
Major League Baseball wanted him too.
The St. Louis Cardinals selected Báez in the second round of the 2021 MLB Draft with the 54th overall pick.
He signed for $2.25 million.
Then came the part of baseball nobody sees when a player hits three home runs on national television.
The grind.
Báez started in rookie ball.
His first professional numbers were not spectacular.
Over 76 at-bats, he hit .158 with two home runs, eight RBIs, three doubles, 28 strikeouts and 14 walks.
There were injuries.
There were promotions.
There were struggles.
There were seasons spent working far away from Major League stadiums.
In 2022, a left wrist sprain put him on the injured list.
He returned.
In 2023, he played 91 games for Palm Beach and hit .218.
He kept going.
In 2024, Báez played between Palm Beach and Peoria and hit .245 with 11 home runs and 41 RBIs.
Still, he kept going.
Then everything began accelerating.
Báez opened the 2025 season with Peoria before earning a promotion to Double-A Springfield.
Across 117 games between the two clubs, he hit .287 with 20 home runs, 79 RBIs and 54 stolen bases.
Fifty-four stolen bases.
Twenty home runs.
Now the player who had once struggled in rookie ball was forcing the Cardinals to pay attention.
On Nov. 18, 2025, St. Louis added him to its 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft.
The majors were getting closer.
During 2026 spring training, Báez hit .333 with three home runs.
The Cardinals still sent him to Triple-A Memphis to begin the season.
So Báez kept hitting.
On June 16, he produced one of those performances that makes an organization look twice.
Four home runs in one game.
It was a Memphis single-game record.
By August, Báez had played 103 games for Memphis and was hitting .256 with 34 home runs and 90 RBIs.
Thirty-four homers.
Ninety RBIs.
The Cardinals couldn’t keep the door closed much longer.
On Aug. 14, Cardinals manager Oli Marmol announced Báez was coming to the majors.
One day later, Báez was standing in left field at Wrigley.
There is a special pressure attached to a Major League debut.
A player has spent years imagining it.
Family members have spent years waiting for it.
Every bus ride, every minor league clubhouse, every batting cage, every injury and every bad night somehow leads to that first moment.
For most players, the goal is simply to settle down.
Get the first hit.
Make the routine play.
Breathe.
Joshua Báez didn’t ease into anything.
Matthew Boyd threw him his first Major League pitch.
Báez hit it 449 feet.
The first home run might have been enough to make the day unforgettable.
Then came the second.
Then the third.
Baseball has existed for well over a century.
Thousands of players have taken their first Major League at-bat.
Nobody had done what Báez did.
Three home runs in his first three Major League plate appearances.
That is what makes Saturday difficult to describe without sounding exaggerated.
The numbers don’t need exaggeration.
Three at-bats.
Three home runs.
Five RBIs.
An 8-4 Cardinals victory.
History.
And maybe the most remarkable part is where the story started.
Boston.
Santo Domingo.
Then Boston again.
Dorchester.
Cristo Rey.
Snowden.
Dexter Southfield.
Minor league towns most fans will never visit.
And finally Wrigley Field.
The story also arrives at a moment when Boston’s Dominican community was celebrating itself.
Sunday’s Dominican Parade and Festival marked its 40th year.
Thousands took part.
Dominican flags filled the route.
Music and dancing filled the streets.
The festival continued afterward at Franklin Park.
There are generations represented at an event like that.
People who came to Boston from the Dominican Republic.
Children who were born here.
Families whose lives exist between two places and two cultures without having to choose between either one.
Joshua Báez’s story fits somewhere inside that experience.
He was born in Boston.
He moved to Santo Domingo.
He came back to Dorchester.
He learned English after returning.
He became one of the best high school baseball players in Massachusetts.
And now he plays Major League Baseball.
Dominican-American does not mean half of one thing and half of another.
Báez’s journey shows how both can exist completely in the same story.
Boston helped shape him.
The Dominican Republic helped shape him.
Baseball connected the two.
There is also something fitting about where his first Major League game happened.
Wrigley Field is one of baseball’s most recognizable stages.
A century-old ballpark filled with history.
And Báez walked into it and created something the game had never seen before.
Not Babe Ruth.
Not Hank Aaron.
Not Willie Mays.
Not Albert Pujols.
Not David Ortiz.
No player had ever started a Major League career with home runs in each of his first three plate appearances.
Joshua Báez did.
There will be harder days.
Baseball guarantees that.
Pitchers will adjust.
Scouting reports will change.
There will be strikeouts and slumps and games when nothing falls.
One extraordinary afternoon cannot predict an entire career.
But nobody can take away the first one.
Nobody can erase the first pitch.
Nobody can erase the second home run.
Or the third.
Years from now, whatever Joshua Báez’s career becomes, there will always be Aug. 15, 2026.
There will always be Wrigley Field.
There will always be the afternoon when a 23-year-old Dominican-American from Boston stepped into a Major League batter’s box for the first time and immediately started rewriting baseball history.
And back home, one day later, the Dominican flags were everywhere.
Maybe most people marching through Boston weren’t thinking about baseball.
Maybe some were.
But somewhere between the music, the dancing, the flags and the celebration of a community that has spent generations building its place in this city, there was another story worth celebrating.
A boy born in Boston.
Raised between Boston and Santo Domingo.
A kid who once needed Google Translate just to communicate at school.
A young man who spent years working his way through professional baseball.
And then, on the very first pitch of his Major League career, Joshua Báez didn’t need any translation at all.
The sound of the bat said everything.