I’m not sure when a player’s personal life has been so interesting!
I’m coming around on Alex Bregman.
Throughout the offseason, I was fairly vocal that we didn’t necessarily need or want him on the Red Sox. There’s no doubt his arrival has shaken things up on the Sox…start with bumping Raffy off of third, and adding that right-handed bat we’ve been wanting for so long…though I never expected that an infield anchored by Alex Bregman and Trevor Story would lead the league in errors. (As of April 19, the Red Sox lead MLB with 23, but that’s a topic for another day.)
It’s actually Bregman’s off-field life that has piqued my interest at the moment. And unlike plenty of other professional athletes, I don’t mean in a tabloid kind of way. No, this all seems pretty wholesome. Other players have certainly had interesting hobbies and notable achievements off the field—who can forget Mookie Betts bowling a perfect 300 in the World Series of Bowling—but Bregman has so much going on in so many different areas right now.
He co-owns a horse with Walker Buehler
The horse, called March of Time, recently won at Santa Anita, one of America’s most prestigious racetracks, in its first race.
Buehler says there are currently no upcoming races on the docket but keep your eyes on this one.
His father is running for governor of New Mexico
As a Democrat! To me, that was the biggest surprise. If he wins the primary, Sam Bregman will almost certainly be the next governor of the Land of Enchantment.
He speaks Spanish
He began learning in junior high school, as a means to be able to play football. (His mother said the answer was no, unless he got a 100 in Spanish.) He earned his 100 and was accepted onto the football team later that year.
He is confident enough to occasionally speak to the media in Spanish and to have provided “white-guy” Spanish lessons on YouTube. Although it’s bleeped out and I can’t be sure, he seems particularly proficient in swearing.
Bregman has said:
“In baseball, we expect everyone to learn English as they move up. But we should probably do the same thing the other way and learn Spanish so we can communicate both ways.”
This strikes me as a really generous and uncommon sentiment. He has also spoken about his efforts to continuously learn and improve his Spanish. My own anecdotal (and therefore completely inconsequential) survey of friends, family, and the internet says that not too many Americans choose to study a language, and if they do, they don’t tend to continue with it once they’ve fulfilled any school requirements. Good for Bregman. Alex Cora says it is part of what marks him as a leader.
He’s a new dad for the second time
After his first son was born in 2022, Bregman returned from paternity leave and immediately went on a hot streak for the Astros that lasted a whole month, hitting .362 with 7 home runs. Earlier this week, in his last game before departing on paternity leave for Baby #2, Bregman was en fuego, with 4 RBI, 2 HR, and a career-high five hits in a win against the Rays. Although he was hitless in his return to the Sox—going 0-4 and striking out in the bottom of the ninth with a chance to walk it off against the White Sox—he reappeared in the tenth as the ghost runner and scored the winning run. Bregman seems just as enchanted with parenthood the second time around, so we’ll see what kind of on-field enthusiasm that may generate in the upcoming days.
This guy is one to watch.