Juan Gonzalez (baseball)
| Juan González | |||
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| Outfielder | |||
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Born: October 20, 1969 Vega Baja, Puerto Rico |
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| MLB debut | |||
| September 1, 1989, for the Texas Rangers | |||
| Last MLB appearance | |||
| May 31, 2005, for the Cleveland Indians | |||
| MLB statistics | |||
| Batting average | .295 | ||
| Home runs | 434 | ||
| Runs batted in | 1,404 | ||
| Teams | |||
| Career highlights and awards | |||
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Juan Alberto González Vázquez (born October 20, 1969), nicknamed "Igor", is a former Major League Baseball right fielder. During his 16 years in the league, González played for five teams, but is more remembered for his two stints with the Texas Rangers (1989–1999, 2002–2003). One of the premier run producers and most feared hitters of the 1990s, González averaged 37 HR and 117 runs batted in per season from 1991 to 1999. He won the AL MVP award twice in that time span, 1996 and 1998.
Gonzalez was known as a screaming line drive hitter, not a majestic fly-ball hitter as were many power hitters of the 1990s. He was a full-time player at the age of 21 and a two-time MVP before his 30th birthday. González explained his propensity for bringing runners home by saying, "I concentrate more when I see men on base."
González grew up in a rough area of Puerto Rico, where he learned to hit bottlecaps and corks with a broomstick handle in the Alto de Cuba barrio. In the Puerto Rico youth league, González batted cleanup behind future Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams, where both competed against González's future teammate Iván Rodríguez. When the Yankees scouted Williams, eventually signing him, they declined to pursue González, who they perceived as not serious about baseball.
The Texas Rangers signed González as an amateur free agent on May 30, 1986, at the age of 16. Juan has always wanted to serve as a role model for the kids of Puerto Rico, as they are faced with the downfalls of drugs and prostitution frequently. Gonzalez avoided such temptations growing up. His father, a math teacher, and mother, a housewife, made sure Gonzalez and his two sisters behaved properly and stayed away from negative influences. Gonzalez moved his family out of the barrio early in his MLB career. He paid utility bills for down-on-their-luck friends and plans on working to construct recreation facilities and a baseball diamond in his home town. One of Juan's managers, Johnny Oates, believed that until you've walked where Juan Gonzalez has walked, you just won't understand. Speaking from experience, as Oates has walked the streets of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, during visits multiple times, he had this to say: "I don't think you can appreciate how far he's come until you've been there", Oates said. "We might be making choices between going to the movies or going to the skating rink. But look at the choices the kids there were faced with growing up – do you want to do drugs or get beaten up? I think it says so much about him that he was able to rise above the peer pressure in Vega Baja. He had enough intelligence to say, 'I don't want to do that.'"
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