Cab driver from the Dominican Republic

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Well, yesterday I had a prior Houston Astros minor league baseball player originally from the Dominican Republic drive me from the Houston airport to my hotel.

I could have said the pleasantries and just looked at my phone or stared out the window for the 25-minute ride, but I decided to start asking him some questions. I found out that he was born in the Dominican Republic and was one of probably thousands of kids that trained with hopes to play baseball in the major leagues in the United States. He was a pitcher, but due to a car accident, he injured his arm and was not able to get back into the game after the accident. He still gets tickets to all Houston Astros games for free, but after the accident, he started driving cabs and now drives for Lyft and Uber.

All of his family now lives in Houston. I think the most interesting about our conversation was that he spoke mostly Spanish and in order to communicate better with me, he used Google translator. He would speak into Google translator and then play it for me and then I would speak into the translator and he would listen in his language. It was amazing to see how he was able to use the technology for us to communicate and me to learn from him.

The other interesting thing was the mentality of Dominicans to try and get their sons to play professional ball in order to get their entire family out of poverty. From what it sounded like Major League baseball through Dominican players has helped bring a lot of families out of poverty there.

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