Meet 'Mini Tatis,' young baseball prodigy

Ten-year-old Amir Azul Santiago takes around 100 swings with a baseball bat every day. The youngster, who lives in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, plays on a field on which the distance from the mound to home plate is 60 feet and 6 inches, and the distance between the bases is 90 feet.

Amir competes against kids two to three years older than him, and when a ground ball is hit to him at shortstop, his arm is strong enough to throw out guys at first despite other kids his age playing on Little League fields.

He’s a child prodigy in a country that produces some of the best baseball players on the planet. And one day last January, he got a phone call he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

On the other end of the line was his father, Luis.

“He said Fernando Tatis Jr. wanted to watch me hit,” Amir said through an interpreter from his home in the Dominican Republic. “He saw some video of me and wanted to see me hit in person.”

Tatis got his wish at an indoor batting cage facility run by the family of z101 Digital baseball reporter Héctor Gómez -- the Padres’ superstar shortstop visited last winter and was shown a video of the boy taking BP, so he arranged a meeting. Tatis sat directly behind the cage and observed as the precocious Amir hit line drive after line drive.

Tatis was more than just impressed. He told Amir, who wears his hair in the same style as Tatis and plays the same position as his role model, that Amir is more advanced at 10 years old than Tatis himself was at that age. And Tatis grew up the son of an 11-year MLB veteran, Fernando Sr.

"He was nasty," Tatis told MLB.com. "The way he swung the bat, it surprised me for how young he is."

Santiago even got tips from one of the premier young superstars in baseball.

“He told me to come inside with my hands and then get more extension,” Amir said.

And then came a discussion about more important matters.

“He told me that my hair looked very cool, and that we look alike,” Amir said.

What drew Amir to becoming a Tatis superfan was the 23-year-old’s style of play, combining tremendous power with incredible agility on defense, as well as the emotion that Tatis brings with him onto the field every day.

So having his hero ask to see him in the batting cage was a bit nerve-racking for Amir, at first. But that was just at first. Once he got into familiar surroundings, it was all second nature, even with Tatis keenly watching.

“Once I got in the cage, I got loose,” Amir said. “It’s something I do every day.”

It’s that type of dedication that might just make Amir a future superstar in baseball himself. Reaching Tatis’ level isn’t his dream, though.

“I want to be better than Tatis,” Amir said.

Tatis, for his part, would love to see that -- he even insisted that Amir join Fernando Tatis Sr.’s baseball academy in San Pedro de Macoris when the boy turns 12.

Amir is on his way. So remember his name, because it wouldn’t be surprising if a decade from now, Tatis and “Mini Tatis” are playing on the same Major League field.

"It's really cool to see," Tatis said. "I just hope he keeps going."

MLB.com Padres beat writer AJ Cassavell contributed to this story.