Jim O'Leary

Somewhere in the middle of this postseason, on an off day, Miguel Rojas of the Los Angeles Dodgers sat down and took the United States citizenship test. He did not miss a question. And he says he is prouder of that than the biggest hit of his life, which is saying something, because the biggest hit of his life was this. Last October he came to the plate in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series with his team down a run and three outs from the end of their season. He hit it out. Off the closer, into the seats. Four to four. The Dodgers went on to win the whole thing in extra innings, on a home run in Game 7 that had never happened before in the history of the World Series. He is from Venezuela. He came to this country at 16 years old as a prospect in the Cincinnati Reds organization. He is 37 now, which means he has been here 21 years. He played nine seasons for the Miami Marlins. Both of his children were born here while he was doing it. Twenty one years of work permits and spring trainings and clubhouses, and he still had to go sit in a room and take the test like anybody else. The civics test pulls from a bank of 100 questions. An applicant gets asked 20 of them and has to answer 12 correctly to pass. Rojas studied all 100. He did not want anything handled for him because of who he is. No arrangement, no accommodation, nobody smoothing it out on his behalf. He went into a conference room with an official, by himself, the way everybody else does it. Here is what he said afterward. "I wasn't nervous because I was prepared. That's how I live my life." "I felt I was ready. It was my first time going into a conference room with an official. I knew the answers." He missed none of them. Twenty for twenty. On why he did it at all, he pointed at his family. He said he did it for his kids and for their future. And then he said the part that is worth reading twice. "There's things in life that are bigger than just baseball." "This process has nothing to do with baseball." He has said he wants to be judged by the person that he is, not by what he does on a field. Here is the timing of all this, which almost nobody has pointed out. Miguel Rojas is 37 years old. He has talked openly this season about getting emotional, about the real possibility that these are the last games he will ever play. So he is in the middle of a postseason that might be the end of his career, and he spent his off day studying for a test. "I'm really proud of being an American." A man hit a home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7 of the World Series. There are maybe a dozen people alive who have done that. He would rather talk about the twenty questions.