Willson Crown-treras? Cubs Catcher Wins HR Derby in Venezuela

It’s totally frivolous and has absolutely nothing to do with the Cubs organization as a whole, but we felt compelled to print something about someone who is actually on the roster at this point. So it is that we’re bringing you news of Willson Contreras winning the home run derby at the 16th annual Pepsi Honoree Festival in Valencia, Venezuela.

The news comes via the Spanish-language site LVBP.com, so what follows is a Google translation of the report’s opening paragraphs. As a hopelessly monoligual rube, I have little else at my disposal when it comes to deciphering these things, though I do thoroughly enjoy reading stuff like this and applying context to the often incongruous grammar and syntax.

Long before stopping at the batting box of the Estadio José Bernardo Pérez, even before the physical warm-ups and putting one foot on the ground, Willson Contreras knew something: he was going to win the sixteenth Pepsi Honoree Festival. I had conviction. In fact, he smiled confidently when asked about his physical condition, pertinent interpellation due to the long inactivity that produces the winter break in a big-league player like him.

If someone did not believe the carabobeño was very bad. He proved that his words were far from being preposterous. He was crowned with relative comfort in the competition, which filled the diamond of the Carabobo industrial zone.

My unofficial translation would go a little something like this: “WillCo is a bad, bad man and he damn well knows it, which is why he stepped into the box like Larry Bird in the 1988 three-point contest and asked, ‘Who’s playing for second?'”

Contreras joins Melvin Mora (2000), Miguel Cabrera (2005, ’12), Pablo Sandoval (2008), Bob Abreu (2009), and Carlos Gonzalez (2015, ’16) as notable MLB’ers to take the crown in the event.