How Waino's work in Honduras shaped Dubón's early years

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

When veteran pitcher Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals picked up his elusive 200th career win last week, Astros utilityman Mauricio Dubón made sure to send him a congratulatory text message. That’s the least Dubón could do, considering the impact Wainwright made on his life and in his native Honduras.

In 2014, Wainwright partnered with a Christian engineering non-profit organization called Water Mission to travel to Honduras and assist poor communities gain access to clean water. One of those communities was close to where Dubón grew up, and the act of giving wasn’t lost on him. Dubón made it his mission to meet Wainwright in person and thank him.

The 29-year-old Dubón first faced Wainwright in 2019, his rookie season with the Giants. He hit a double off Wainwright, so he didn’t feel like the timing was proper for a meet-up. The '20 pandemic-shortened season came and went, and Dubón was in the Minor Leagues when the Cardinals faced San Francisco in '21. Last year, he was traded to the Astros from the Giants, who were in the middle of a series in St. Louis.

“We were playing the Cardinals and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to meet him the next day,’ and the next day happened, and I got traded,” Dubón said. “This year was the only chance I had. I said, ‘I’ve got to meet him.’ I had to wait a few years to meet him.”

During the Astros’ late-June series in St. Louis, Dubón went to the visiting clubhouse and requested to meet with Wainwright, who was struggling through a difficult season as he attempted to reach 200 career wins. The meeting finally happened outside the clubhouse, with Wainwright signing a jersey for Dubón.

“It’s pretty cool,” Dubón said. “This guy’s an unreal baseball player, but he’s a better human being than anything else. This is a guy that has done everything in baseball and to have a friendship like this is pretty awesome. … I told him when we met, actually, that he just needed two more [wins]. As a baseball fan, he needed to do it.”

Wainwright works closely with Water Mission, which brings infrastructure, including water wells and filtration equipment, storage tanks and solar panels to run pumps to provide sustainable water supplies. It has staffed offices in nine countries across Latin America, Africa and Indonesia, and its disaster-response work has been in 60 countries, including assisting with the recent earthquake in Morocco.

“These are very intricate systems,” said Scott Linebrink, a former big league pitcher who’s the brand ambassador for Water Mission. “Very similar to what you would see in rural America. But much more than just a shallow well with maybe a hand pump. The big thing that we want to promote is safe water -- water that is completely free of contaminants -- and you can improve the access to water.”

Dubón was born in Honduras and lived there until he was 16 years old. He said finding drinkable water wasn’t always easy, and that he often became sick after drinking out of a faucet following his baseball workouts.

“But we still did it, because it was a necessity,” he said.

Dubón caught eye of a Christian baseball mission group that came to Honduras and saw him playing. They offered him to come play high school baseball in Sacramento, Calif., as a foreign exchange student. Dubón played two years in high school and ended up getting selected by the Red Sox in the 26th round of the 2013 MLB Draft.

Last year, Dubón became the first Honduran-born player to win a World Series. On Wednesday, he delivered his first career walk-off hit in the Astros’ victory over San Diego.

Among those to send him congratulations? Wainwright.

“It's pretty awesome, just what he does,” Dubón said. “He said he’s not done yet. He showed me the background of his computer, and it’s a town in Honduras, and it’s pretty awesome watching him. He had no idea how he impacted people. What he’s doing is pretty cool.

“I told him, 'Whenever you go next time, I’ll go with you.'”