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Gift Ngoepe makes baseball history

This spring, a South African is playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is giving baseball fans a thrill.

On Wednesday Mpho Ngoepe, who was born and raised near Johannesburg, become became the first African-born player to appear in a major-league game. It happened at PNC Park, in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Ngoepe, whose first name means “gift” in Sotho, singled off Jon Lester in his first at-bat en route to a 6-5 victory win over the Cubs.

“To accomplish this only for me but for my country and my continent is something so special,” Ngoepe later told reporters. “There are 1.62 billion people on our continent. To be the first person out of 1.62 billion to do this is amazing.”

It was 2:49 a.m. in South Africa, where sport usually means soccer, cricket, rugby or golf. But as Gary Smith detailed in a profile of Ngoepe eight years ago for Sports Illustrated, Ngoepe grew up beside a baseball diamond.

His mother, Maureen, raised Gift and his brother, Victor, who plays for the Pirates’ Gulf Coast League team, in a seven-and-a-half-by-nine-foot room adjacent to the clubhouse of the Randburg Mets, an amateur baseball club in Johannesburg’s northwestern suburbs.

“The Mets’ shower became Gift’s scrubbing room; their baseball field, 40 yards from his bed, his front yard,” writes Smith. “The new and larger tuck shop that was added later became Gift’s kitchen, its refrigerator became his family’s.”

Ngoepe became water boy, batboy and, eventually, player for the Mets. From there he advanced to baseball’s European Academy in Italy, where the Pirates signed him.

Though Ngoepe impressed scouts with his defensive skills, he struggled at the plate until he focused on hitting right-handed after years as a switch hitter.

Ngoepe later said he almost cried as a trotted out from the dugout to take his position at second base. I told myself not to cry because I’m in the big leagues and I’m a big guy now,” Ngoepe said. “(Catcher Francisco) Cervelli hugged me and I could feel my heart beat through my chest.”

In his first big-league start, on Friday night in Miami against the Marlins, Ngoepe notched three hits in three at-bats, including a run batted in. In all, the Pirates scored 12 runs to the Marlins’ two.

Ngoepe journeyed through the minor leagues for nearly nine years before his appearance in the big leagues. His mother died four years ago. On Thursday, Deadspin asked him what he misses about South Africa.

“I just miss the people,” he said. “In South Africa, we’re more like a family. We call it a braai, but you call it a barbecue. And we just braai anytime. It’s just like, you can call a friend and be like, ‘Hey, Hannah, we’re having a braai right now, come on over.’ And you’d be coming on over at this very moment. For no current reason. We’re just having a braai.”