Baseball 'Prodigy' Almost Took The World By Storm Until People Learned His Secret
It was June of 2008, and Danny Almonte was growing desperate. Once touted as a can't-miss prospect with a slider sweeter than sugar, the 21-year-old pitcher sat as silent as his telephone, with each round of the MLB Draft slowly slipping past. His mind raced — what could've happened? Where did he go wrong? But Danny knew: August 30, 2001. That was the day one impossible secret threatened to rob him of everything.
"Little Unit"
In those days, however, Danny was known by a different name: "Little Unit," a nod to imposing Hall-of-Fame pitcher Randy "Big Unit" Johnson. The moniker made sense. At 5'9", Danny was one 12-year-old you didn't want to mess with on the monkey bars.
Professional Prowess
But the place people dreaded seeing Danny most wasn't on the jungle gym; it was on the pitcher's mound. After all, his repertoire featured the kind of stuff you only saw in the pros, including a slick slider and a 76 mph fastball — equal to, at that distance, a 102 mph major-league pitch.
Pitching Phenom
The batters he faced could hardly do long division, let alone make contact with the kind of gas Danny was throwing. Pitch after pitch, strikeout after strikeout, the Dominican-born Bronx native had quickly become the next great Little League phenom.
The Big Stage
Backed by the "Baby Bombers" — nicknamed for their home field's place in the shadow of Yankee Stadium — Danny dominated the circuit en route to a Little League World Series berth, pitching a no-hitter in the 2001 Mid-Atlantic Regional finals in the process. "Almighty Almonte" appeared unstoppable — the LLWS, however, would be his biggest challenge yet.
