Rios family inspired by late wife, mom

By GLENN MILLER
Roy Hobbs Baseball
RHWS 37

One member of the Rios Family has not been around for recent Sunshine Classic Family Ties.

Tina Rios died on Aug. 2, 2023. She had been married to Juan Rios for 50 years. Juan, 74, plays for the Florida Pirates. So do the couple’s three sons, John, Matt and Andrew. So do their grandsons.

“We play for her memory,” Juan said.

Family Ties has profound meaning to all the Rios men who remember and honor a Rios woman. It’s about far more than balls or strikes or any game or any score. It is about family. About Mom. About all of them.

Juan, a retired Teamster, resides near Tampa in Brooksville. His oldest son, John, resides in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Matt and Andrew are Florida residents in the Tampa Bay Area. They come together in the winter in Fort Myers to play as a family and to remember as a family and to forge new memories. The widower Rios gets to play baseball with his sons and grandsons.

“Oh, God, I love it,” Juan said.

The sons know what baseball means to their dad, who coached them when they were boys, and the message their mother instilled before her death.

“The one thing she did tell me was, just make sure that he keeps playing regardless,” John said. “She said he’s not going to be happy unless he’s running the bases.”

The game is an essential part of his dad’s being.

“He still enjoys going to batting practice and catching high flies in the outfield,” John said.

John’s sons, Derek, 20, and Ty, 17, participate in Family Ties with grandpa.

Grandpa Rios spent part of his childhood in Brooklyn hanging out with neighborhood kids and playing stickball and baseball. His sons heard those stories of stickball in the streets when they were young.

“We used to laugh at him,” Matt, 45, said.

They joked those were his Glory Days.

One of the many highlights of Family Ties for the Rios family is playing at Terry Park. Juan is from Puerto Rico. Terry Park was the spring training home of the greatest Puerto Rican player ever, Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente, from 1955 to 1968.

Matt wears No. 21 in honor of Clemente, who wore No. 21. They know one of the fields is named in honor of Clemente and that a plaque at the site honors his character and legacy.

But Family Ties isn’t about history. It’s about families, about families building memories for the future, Matt’s 18-year-old son, Christopher, plays every year.

Playing into his 70s is something Juan never could have envisioned when he was young.

“I’m 74 and I’m stilling hanging around,” Juan said.

He does more than hang around. He plays baseball. He inspires his sons and grandsons. Juan pitches and plays second base and used to catch. No more of that.

“They won’t let me catch,” Juan said.

If Family Ties was measured in wins and losses the Rios Family has not done much. Until this year.

“We finally won a game,” Juan said, “We won two games.”

But it is not about wins and losses,

The Rios family rents a house in Cape Coral every Sunshine Classic that becomes a Rios House. That is what Family Ties is about. Juan said 15 family members stayed in that Cape Coral house for the 2026 Sunshine Classic. That includes his youngest son Andrew, who resides in Bradenton. Andrew brings his teenage son, Isiah, to the tournament, But not Tina, of course. But her presence was felt. She’s gone but never forgotten,

“She was his biggest supporter,” John said, “She was the one going around the state with him when he was playing.”

Mom knew what baseball meant to dad.

“She made sure that we, as kids, knew this is his thing,” John said, “You’re not going to take this from him no matter what. This is his thing. Let him enjoy it. Let him keep playing. It’s where he’s happy, it’s where he’s the happiest.”

Dad is still playing. So are the sons and grandsons.

Tina Rios would be pleased.