Edmundo Sosa's story of love and loss: How a big dream was born in a tiny bedroom (2024)

They were raised in a rented room, and this was Edmundo Sosa’s world. He was the youngest of four siblings. His mother worked long days in subzero temperatures packing chicken at a manufacturing plant. They all shared one bed and a small TV in Panama City. But the Sosas were a baseball family. That passion trickled down to the youngest boy.

He loved the game. It was his escape. It let him entertain modest imaginations.

“My dream,” Sosa said, “was always to have my own bedroom.”

They called him Mundito because his father and oldest brother were both Edmundo. Mundito could not be contained in the one room. “I was very hyper,” he said. He’d run everywhere and his mother, Nilka, warned him not to. There was something special about Mundito. Nilka knew. She had played shortstop in a Panamanian softball league. Her husband was an umpire. Her oldest son played amateur ball, but Mundito was different. So, whenever she could, Nilka took Mundito to the field and hit him grounders. He was gifted. He had this bounciness that could not be taught. They started to dream bigger.

“Remember where you come from,” Nilka told her son.

Sosa is 28 now. He is a millionaire. He has started 12 of the past 14 games at shortstop for the Phillies, the team with the best record in Major League Baseball, while Trea Turner recovers from a hamstring injury. He has reached base in 11 of those games. He is a reserve infielder. He does not complain. He has made a beautiful life with that job.

“He’s always ready to play,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “He’s just a wonderful human being. I love him.”

But Sosa has a secret, and he wears it on his right arm. Mundito is the last living Edmundo in his family. He has not forgotten that tiny bedroom.

Last week, he lifted his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo, written in Spanish: I would like to have a stairway to heaven so I could hug you one more time, Dad. Underneath the words are clouds with stairs descending from them. At the base are two silhouettes, a father and a son.

They are having a catch.

The day a path toward professional baseball opened, Sosa was on the bench. There is a youth national tournament every January in Panama. It is televised throughout the country. People pack stadiums to watch teenagers play.

Moisés Rodríguez liked to scout Panama for this reason. The St. Louis Cardinals international director was there in 2012 when 15-year-old Mundito made Panama Metro, the main amateur team in Panama City. But Sosa had to wait his turn. He entered the game in the eighth inning as a defensive replacement at second base. He made an athletic play that caught Rodríguez’s attention. He didn’t do much in his one at-bat. But, on defense, Sosa was engaged. He did the little things. He let everyone know how many outs there were. He directed traffic on the infield. He encouraged his pitcher.

“It was obvious how much he enjoyed being out there and how much he loved playing the game,” Rodríguez said. “In the large scheme of things, I didn’t see much. But I was just drawn to him.”

Rodríguez arranged to have breakfast the next morning with Sosa and his mother. They told the scout about Edmundo, the family patriarch, who umpired in local baseball leagues. He died of lung cancer in 2002. Sosa was 6. For years, in that rented room, Nilka and her husband had slept on the floor. The kids had the bed. Sosa’s older siblings moved out one by one, leaving his sister and mother and him. They still shared the bed.

“You could tell he came from a tight family,” Rodríguez said, “and he was close to his mother.”

The Cardinals followed Sosa. “He was a kid that you needed to watch more in games to appreciate him,” said Rodríguez, now an assistant general manager with St. Louis. They offered him a contract. Sosa signed for a $425,000 bonus once he turned 16 in 2012.

The first thing Mundito did with his money was buy a new house in Panama City for his mother.

“And,” Sosa said, “I made sure that each one of us had their own bedroom.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nilka Sosa (@nilkasosa17)

Back in March, Thomson was worried about Sosa. “He wasn’t acting normal,” Thomson said. “It looked like he was down.” So, the manager thought they should have a chat in his office. Sosa said he was fine. Then, it clicked in Thomson’s head. The Phillies had signed Whit Merrifield, another right-handed utility player.

“Sosa,” Thomson said, “you know you’ve made the team, right?”

Sosa exhaled.

“Thank you,” he said to his boss. “I love Philadelphia. I love the team. I just want to be here right now.”

There is a certain joy with which Sosa plays. It is understated. He is not flashy. He often takes at-bats like it’s the last time he will ever be permitted to hit. Sosa swings at everything. But since he replaced the $300 million shortstop Turner, Sosa has looked at ease. He is more patient. He has made smooth plays at shortstop.

He feels comfortable in this place.

“To me, it’s a privilege to play this sport,” Sosa said through a team interpreter. “I’m living my dream. Someway, somehow my dream became a reality. And I’m very grateful for that. I don’t take it for granted. That’s why I come here, and every time I take the field, I have fun. I play my hardest. I try my best.

“I like treating people the same way I want to be treated. So that’s why I think I have good chemistry with my teammates. They appreciate my honesty, my energy, and the way I am.”

Many of them do not know about the losses Sosa has endured. In 2014, a year into his professional career, his oldest brother Edmundo was murdered in Panama. Sosa said it was a case of mistaken identity. Like Sosa, his brother had played for Panama Metro as a teenager.

Sosa carries their legacies on his body. He turned over his left arm to show another tattoo: There’s nothing more precious than family. The birthdates of his siblings and nephews were inked below those words.

Rodríguez said that, within the Cardinals farm system, managers revered Sosa. He was competitive and focused on his job. St. Louis traded him in July 2022 when he failed to produce with limited playing time. Coming to Philadelphia, Sosa said, was akin to a second life.

He remembered why he loved baseball. It has loved him back.

“The opportunity that I have right now, it’s a very big one,” Sosa said.”And it’s not something that everyone has. That’s why I always try to respect every single person that comes across in my life. Because I know where I come from and I know where I want to go.”

The house he bought for his mother is still in the family. Sosa’s sister lives there with her family. Nilka moved into a bigger home with Sosa, his wife, and their daughter Naya.

He does not have many memories of his father. He knew how important baseball was to him. “There is an afterlife,” Sosa said. He likes to imagine his father and brother watching him fulfill their collective dream.

Rodríguez never visited the family’s apartment while the Cardinals courted Sosa. But, after Sosa signed, his trainer took Rodríguez to see the wooden housing complex in an area of Panama City called Juan Díaz. “Humble beginnings,” Rodríguez said. “It was very modest — to say it nicely.” The people who owned the complex became a second family to Sosa. Some of them still live there. It is dilapidated.

Sometimes, Sosa will drive past it when he is home in Panama. He has not forgotten that room.

He has an idea.

“At one point in my life, I want to be able to go back to that place and rebuild something there,” Sosa said. “Something where a family can have a proper household.”

(Top photo of Edmundo Sosa: Nick Wass / Associated Press)

Matt Gelb is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Philadelphia Phillies. He has covered the team since 2010 while at The Philadelphia Inquirer, including a yearlong pause from baseball as a reporter on the city desk. He is a graduate of Syracuse University and Central Bucks High School West.