The $750 million teens: The untold story of Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and the remarkable 2009 und

Editor’s Note: This story was included in The Athletic’s Best of 2019. See the full list.

From the moment they arrived in Barquisimeto, the fourth-largest city in Venezuela, the players knew that things would be different. There was danger in the streets, they were told. There could be no straying from the compound. But good sense is often no match for adventure. This is especially true for teenagers, even ones handpicked for their unwavering focus. That’s why when the kid in the bottom bunk called out to the kid up top, there was a swift answer.

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“Hey, you ever have an empanada?” asked Manny Machado.

“No,” replied Bryce Harper.

“You gotta try this.”

“Let’s go get some food.”

It was 2 a.m., and they would have been sleeping had they not been starving. They’d brought from home a giant bag of Skittles, Starbursts, and chips, but these would no longer suffice. So, off they went sneaking into the night, around the walls, past the guards, and into the darkness, two of the best baseball players of their generation defying the rules that had been installed to protect them. On the street, they found a tiny shack that served empanadas stuffed with ham and cheese.

“It was perfect,” Harper said, years later.

“Crushed them,” Machado said.

“Then we came back and fell asleep like it was nothing,” Harper said, the stories flooding back now.

They were all just boys then, from the sun-splashed diamonds of California and Florida and from every point in between. They wore cowboy boots and Vans, board shorts and skinny jeans. Some were hyped, some were overlooked. Soon, life would send them on their own paths. They’d become heroes and villains, dreamers and realists, inspirations and addicts, famous and anonymous, beneficiaries of charmed lives and survivors of illness, tragedy, and personal demons. But first, they were a $750 million baseball team, even if it was impossible at the time to know it.

Of the 20 players who comprised the 2009 under-18 U.S. national team, 10 would reach the major leagues. It could have been even more, had a few future All-Stars made the cut. The pitching staff featured Kevin Gausman, Robbie Ray and Jameson Taillon. The lineup boasted Tony Wolters, Nick Castellanos, and a pair of superstars who would be linked beyond their empanada escapade, Harper and Machado.

They were assembled to compete in the Pan Am junior world championships, an event that had been dominated by the world’s preeminent amateur power, Cuba. Their pursuit began a decade ago this week. It was not seen on SportsCenter. Only a relative few from their own country watched them play, and even fewer remember what they did. But their exploits have lived on in their own minds.

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“Dang, we had so much fun,” Harper said, his eyes brightening. Suddenly, he’s 16 again, in Venezuela, contorting his body, just as he did for hours when he scrunched into the corner of a rickety old bus while it snaked its way through the mountains. It was the furthest he’d ever been from home. Everyone was against them, they’d soon be convinced. In their young minds, there were too many coincidences to think otherwise. There were the drinks spiked with booze, and the stone-faced soldiers roaming the stands with machine guns, and the umpire calling out bola even as he signaled strike. They had only each other. It was surreal to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the foul line, when the ever-present buzzing of vuvuzelas was replaced by the familiar strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The retelling left Harper feeling a chill. So, he paused for a moment to inspect his bare forearm.

He had goosebumps.

The pool began at 72, which was then halved to 36, before being whittled down to the final 20. Beginning in mid-September, the team would be together for roughly three weeks — not a lot of time, but enough to feel like family. Most had been veterans of the showcase-industrial complex that is elite-level youth baseball in America. Part of that life is quickly getting to know teammates. But years later, they would say that this team was exceptional. “Just the camaraderie we had,” Harper said, “it came so quick, so soon.”

It helped that there was shared history. Everyone knew of Harper, the son of a Las Vegas ironworker who launched 500-foot homers before he could hold a learners’ permit. He’d already graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, which proclaimed him to be a prodigy on the order of LeBron James. Harper was the youngest player on the team, and its most serious, especially when he was catching. “A lot of times, a prospect of that nature, you just think he’s there to hit home runs and throw guys out,” Taillon said. “But for us not knowing each other for very long, he was super interested in calling a game, he was super interested in talking in the dugout between innings about sequences and stuff. I remember that blew me away.” Harper was also one of several holdovers from the under-16 national team, which a year before had won gold.

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That core group included Wolters, then a slick-fielding infielder, who teammates remembered as a pretty boy. He was from Southern California, just like righthander Cody Buckel, a self-described “really quiet, small kid,” who didn’t overpower hitters so much as he picked them apart. The game had been life for pitcher Connor Mason, who impressed teammates with his intelligence. Catcher Ladson Montgomery had a gift for working with pitchers. Lefthander Philip Pfeifer, who relied on finesse, was high school teammates in Tennessee with Nicky Delmonico, a coach’s son who always seemed to be smiling. It was Delmonico who brought along an old Nintendo 64. When the teammates weren’t on the field, chances were they were back at the dorms, staging Mario Kart tournaments. It was a sweet setup. “As you walked into this thing, you’d go up these stairs, and we had this big old white cinderblock wall, and we projected (the game) right onto it,” Harper said. “We all sat there and played Nintendo the whole time.” The gaming sessions served as a way to bring the new players into the fold.

Taillon, a 6-foot-6 powerhouse from Texas, bullied hitters with a 98 mph fastball. As the consensus top high school pitching prospect in the nation, he was the undisputed ace. He gravitated to another big-armed righty, Karsten Whitson, who came from the Panhandle. The imposing duo could be heard as easily as they could be seen. Sean Coyle, the group’s de facto DJ, got teammates hooked on Kid Cudi. He came from north of Philadelphia, the only one from the Northeast, where the winters were a disadvantage. Growing up in Utah, Kavin Keyes also battled the realities of climate, though the switch-hitting infielder had the refined swing of a coach’s son. The righthander Gausman came from Colorado, and was just as comfortable on a snowboard as he was on a mound.

For pure decibel level, no one could match Garin Cecchini from Louisiana, who spoke as if his words were coated in roux. He had a comedian’s natural timing. At trials, during a talent competition, Coyle and Wolters thought they had it won when they lip-synced their way through a compilation of songs by Missy Elliott. Then, Cecchini took the stage and told tales about his mother, the best batting practice pitcher in the family, and his father, who came to know the absurdities of coaching high school baseball with a mild case of Tourette’s. The accent, the cadence, all of it played. To a room full of 17-year-old boys, it was hysterical. Coyle conceded defeat to Cecchini, who he groused “should have had a Netflix special.”

While Cecchini could strike up a conversation with anyone, lefthander Kyle Ryan was rarely inclined to do much talking, unless it was to share stories of hunting alligators in his native Central Florida. Ray, a standout from Tennessee, wore cowboy boots wherever he went. Both Brian Ragira and A.J. Vanegas were Stanford-bound, and Cecchini marveled at how “all they did was study.” Ragira, the Texas-born son of parents from Kenya, often helped Whitson with his math homework. Vanegas never heard the end of it when he once revealed that he was still waiting to kiss his girlfriend for the first time. This stood in contrast to Castellanos, who Buckel recalled as “outgoing, the really smooth-with-the-ladies type guy.”

Machado, like Castellanos, grew up in South Florida. And he also had a knack for making things look easy. He was skinny then, “like a spider,” Coyle remembered, and the pitchers who hadn’t seen him play wondered how he could cover enough ground at shortstop. Those concerns disappeared with each hit he took away in the field. It also helped that balls came off his bat as if they were fired out of a cannon. “Manny was just, smooth,” Cecchini said. “Everything he did looked great.”

Then there was Cory Hahn, who could do everything. He would’ve passed for a SoCal surfer dude sent straight by central casting. In center field, he could fly. At the plate, he could rake. On the mound, he threw gas. His skills flowed from a 5-foot-10, 155-pound frame that was hard-wired with boundless energy. Harper still calls him “the biggest name for us as a group,” and Buckel insists that he was the “best pure hitter on that team.” That Hahn started only half the games spoke to the team’s talent; that he did not complain spoke to its ethos. “We all were from different walks of life,” Hahn said. “We were all from different regions of the country with different lifestyles, different cultures. Yet, we were all able to click and all able to come together and it was with ease.”

That ease spilled onto the playing field. As a tune-up, the team played three games against a pair of two-year colleges, whose rosters were made of older players. The high school kids hammered the collegians, 33-8. “I remember scrolling through our roster,” recalled Taillon, a self-described baseball nerd, “and thinking anything short of going down there and winning it all is a disappointment. We were extremely stacked.”

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Soon, the team was off to Barquisimeto, where they would square off against Aruba, Argentina, Panama, Colombia, host country Venezuela, and if all went according to plan, mighty Cuba. It turned out these would be the least of their problems.

The first sign of what awaited them was the track suits they wore for the flight to Caracas. They bore no insignias. The same went for their duffels, which were stripped of any markings that would tie them with Team USA. Upon reaching the tarmac, the players were escorted by armed guards to a shoebox of a bus. “It had shag carpet on it,” Whitson said. “It had curtains on it. It was 30 years old and ragged. And we had to go six hours into the mountains when we landed. I remember looking out the window as the sun started to set and you just see fire starting all throughout the mountains, and it’s these people in huts just trying to get some light for the night.” The bus rumbled up and down winding terrain, slowing to a near halt as it climbed. Those who could not fall asleep wrestled with nausea.

Upon arriving at their lodging, an Olympic-style compound with spartan dormitories, the Americans encountered another problem. They were assigned to the eighth floor. But the building had only one elevator, and it was the size of an old phone booth. “So everybody goes up the stairs — get in a line, we’ll pass each other bags to get it all the way up top,” Machado said, recalling the team’s workaround. After a night of fitful sleep, the team awoke to another surprise. The driver scheduled to take the players to breakfast never showed up, so their first team meal on foreign soil consisted of Chewy Bars and PB&Js.

When he did arrive, most of the team’s equipment had been raided. This included most of Harper’s bats, catcher’s gear, and a brand-new all-tan Mizuno infielder’s glove, which had been bought with money that his father received for cashing in his unused vacation days. “You’re like ‘man, we’re in for two weeks of this,” Montgomery said.

In the dorms, players slept five or six to a room, and bunk beds occupied small common areas. WiFi covered only one corner of the floor, problematic given that there was still schoolwork to complete. The showers went cold after the first few drops. To brush their teeth, the players used bottled water. But culture shock did little to slow the group, which opened the tournament with blowouts over Aruba, Argentina, Panama and Colombia. Next came a confidence-boosting triumph over the favorites, Cuba, though it was only in the preliminary round. That led to another tough matchup, this one against the host nation, Venezuela. That confrontation would begin long before first pitch.

Every day during the tournament, the team ate breakfast at a nearby dining hall. The meal was always the same; rice, beans and either chicken or beef. It was accompanied by a side of juice. But on this morning, Vanegas, that day’s starting pitcher, tasted something odd. It took a second to register, but he had just taken his first-ever sip of rum. “You looked over at the guys who weren’t going to pitch in that game that night,” Buckel remembered, “and they’re just chugging it like ‘oh shit, here we go, I gotta down this before somebody catches us, this is awesome, this is free booze!” Chaos ensued when the coaches swarmed in to seize the drinks, convinced that they were spiked to help the home team.

The stakes seemed even higher once at the field. To this day, Ragira remembers “the energy of just the kids at the ballpark, just running around, and how excited they were.” Children had made up much of the crowd during the tournament. But against Venezuela, those kids were replaced by what felt like the country’s entire armed forces, complete with M16s. It’s why Cecchini’s father was so conspicuous in his seats behind the backstop. One of the few parents to make the trip, he was decked out from head to toe in stars and stripes.

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To the Americans, the stadium sounded like a beehive. Military brass bands played nonstop. It only got louder when Coyle led off and struck out looking because of a mix-up with the count. To this day, he insists that home plate umpire yelled ball after the first two pitches. It’s why he was confused when he took the third pitch, a fastball down the middle, and then heard a ball whizzing by his head on its way around the infield. The crowd roared. The Americans were furious. Even if the umpire had called out bola, as Coyle contended, from their dugout they had seen him signal strike. He was saying one thing but doing another. From that point on, the hitters turned to check on every pitch, just to make sure.

It may have been miscommunication, or as some of the players still suspect, a bit of chicanery. But the outcome was unaffected: United States 6, Venezuela 3. Next, the Americans easily dispatched Panama in the semifinals, leaving just one more game to win. It was against a powerhouse.

The whole team — including five future first-round draft picks, four of the top nine overall, three All-Stars, and a Most Valuable Player — squeezed into a room walled in by cinderblocks. The only light came from a projector that showed the movie “Miracle.” It told the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, the ragtag collection of collegians that upset the Soviets, the best team in the world. They’d all seen it before. But they watched the movie in silence. “It was bone-chilling and it was exhilarating,” Hahn said. “No matter how many times you watch that movie, you get chills when they accomplish what they set out to accomplish.”

The Cubans were to baseball what the Soviets had been to hockey. They’d won seven straight under-18 Pan Am junior championships. But to the Americans, they were shrouded in mystery. “It was kind of like this phantom,” Vanegas said. “We didn’t know anything about them.” At various points through the years, Harper said, he’s searched unsuccessfully for a roster of that Cuban team. The only player that Harper knew for certain was Jorge Soler, now the fearsome Royals slugger, who “hit one of the farthest balls I’ve ever seen,” a mammoth blast that Ray surrendered earlier in the tournament. Soler wasn’t the only future major leaguer playing for Cuba. Hitting ahead of him in the title game were Guillermo Heredia and Yandy Diaz, both of whom wound up with the Rays. “You had 12, 13 big leaguers on that field at 17 years old,” Whitson said. “It’s pretty crazy.”

The Cubans wore their iconic red uniforms. Their pregame stretches looked strange to the Americans — Coyle described them as “a dead-serious Jazzercise” — but they were done with military precision. They could hit, throw and run like professionals. “I just remember being a little bit intimidated,” Ray said. “But knowing the guys that we had on our team, that we definitely could play on the same field as them. I knew how talented we were.” Years later, that sense of certainty is what comes back the strongest for the players. Not once had they considered that they might lose, regardless of history.

The American under-18 team had never won the Pan Am championships. They hadn’t won gold of any kind in a decade. It was in no small part due to a five-game losing streak to the Cubans in gold-medal games, which dated back to 1992. “And here we are with what we felt like was the best that America could offer, literally, with Bryce Harper, the prodigy on our side,” Vanegas said. “This would be great if we could run into each other. Sure enough, it happened. That’s what made Jameson’s performance so incredibly satisfying for us.”

What Harper was to the hitters, Taillon was to the pitchers. He was untouchable then, before enduring two Tommy John surgeries, before battling testicular cancer. He’d been saved for this occasion and did not disappoint. With Harper behind the plate, Taillon mowed down the Cubans, firing 7 2/3 shutout innings against a lineup anchored by three future major leaguers. “We were in the zone,” said Taillon, who set a new Team USA record with 16 strikeouts. Aside from his time in the major leagues, he called it “probably the best game I’ve ever pitched.”

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Upon the final out of a resounding 6-1 victory, the kids in the stands spilled onto the field. In the middle of the chaos was the Americans, who had stormed from their dugout into a dogpile at the pitcher’s mound. There, far from home, they formed their own joyous sea of blue. “It’s not like everybody was following us like the ‘Miracle’ team with the papers,” Coyle said. “We’re not going to be on Jay Leno because we win this. But we may as well have been. That’s how it felt.” After the game, teammates posed for pictures, pulling each other closer so they could be captured while draped beneath the same flag. On the victory lap around the stadium, Harper wore the stars and stripes like a cape.

The team never got its gold medals. The exact explanation has been lost to time. But the players viewed it as just one more slight. “I don’t think anybody really wanted us to win that,” Harper said. “I think they were kind of shocked. So, they were like screw you guys, you’re not going to get anything, I’m pretty sure.” The Americans finished 8-0, outscoring opponents 99-4. And now that it was over, they promised to stay in touch. “It was crazy how quick of a brotherhood we made through this whole thing,” Wolters said. “I wish every kid could go through something like that.”

Then, just as quickly as it had come together, one of the greatest teams ever assembled would drift apart.

One night late in the tournament, Garye LaFevers, the cigar-chomping, ass-kicking, coach summoned his players for a talk. “He told this story about this oak tree, intertwining the roots, and everybody being intertwined, how it was all about us, and this is why oak trees live to be so old,” Harper said years later. “Because their roots and everything grow together.” This, the coach said, is how they’d be the best version of themselves.

Over time, every branch in that tree grew in its own direction. In baseball, there is always another team to join — until there isn’t. A decade later, this has been the fate for most, but not all.

To no one’s surprise, Harper went first overall in the 2010 draft. The day after winning the tournament, the team took an outing to a local mall, where fans swarmed Harper for autographs. He was 16. He was fully aware of his destiny. “He’s like holding this pillow, he’s got like a backwards hat on, we’re outside the dormitories or whatever,” Castellanos said, recalling a late-night conversation they had. “And he’s like yeah man, look around, we’re the next Jeters and A-Rods.” But there was another side to Harper, too, one that his teammates also saw frequently in Venezuela. That group was so confident that back in the dorms, they’d talk about how they could probably beat teams in Double A. Yet, they played with an urgency that radiated from Harper, who Coyle recalled could be “frank when he needed to be.” There was a reason. While everyone around him had assumed that his success was a matter of time, Harper felt the weight of obligation, knowing that the alternative to providing for his family was working in iron with his father.

“I had more pressure on myself when I was younger at those things than I do now,” said Harper, whose 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies is the largest free-agent deal in baseball history. “I had to perform — I had to no matter what. That’s just how it was … If that doesn’t happen, then I’m out tying rebar right now and doing what I’m doing in Vegas.”

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Taillon came off the board next at No. 2 to the Pirates, who gave him a $6.5 million bonus, then the second-largest in history. Injuries and illness slowed his rise until a breakout year in 2018. After another elbow injury, he’s trying to be one of the few pitchers to bounce back from a second Tommy John surgery.

The Orioles selected Machado at No. 3, watching him blossom into the superstar who would earn a 10-year, $300 million contract from the Padres. “That was the first time we ever had to deal with some adversity,” Machado said, looking back at his pursuit of gold. “We went over there as a group, everyone rooting against you. We went to a foreign country that doesn’t want you to win. With the group of guys we had, we all united and dealt with that adversity, and we overcame that. I mean, we have a bond now that we still talk to each other no matter what the situation is.”

At No. 9, the Padres took Whitson, who left a $2.1 million bonus on the table to play college ball at Florida, where both his parents went to school. But in college, shoulder surgery robbed him of his feel. He landed with the Red Sox, where he pitched briefly in the New York-Penn league. His catcher there was a native of Barquisimeto, David Sopilka, whose father had saved up to take him to the Pan Am championship. Whitson’s pro career lasted four games. He’s coaching at South Florida. He has no regrets.

The Tigers chose Castellanos at No. 44. His recent surge with the Cubs has put him in line for a lucrative payday. He’s teammates with Ryan, a 12th rounder who has become a solid big-league reliever. Another 12th rounder that year was Ray, who went to the Nationals before blossoming with the Diamondbacks, where he was an All-Star in 2017.

Wolters got chosen in the third round by the Indians, though he’d make his mark with the Rockies, his soft hands making him a natural to be converted into a catcher. Gausman later teamed with Machado on the Orioles. He’s now pitching for the Reds. Before going back to Louisiana, where he owns a medical supply business, Cecchini reached the majors with the Red Sox in 2014 and 2015. He’s pursuing a pilot’s license. Delmonico overcame an addiction to Adderall and broke through with the White Sox, though he was released earlier this season after undergoing shoulder surgery. Pfeifer won his own battle with drugs and alcohol addiction. He finished the season in the Braves’ system at Triple-A Gwinnett. If he makes it, he’d be the 11th member of the team to reach the major leagues.

For Ragira and Vanegas, who had roomed at Stanford, the journey ended in the minors. Ragira is a real estate investor who is making plans to attend business school. Vanegas works with a church in the Bay Area, where part of his duties include bringing supplies to homeless encampments. Sometimes his work takes him to Oakland, not far from the Coliseum, where the night sky is flooded with the same lights he’d spent his whole life chasing. These days, he’s guided by a different light.

Montgomery, the catcher, went on to play college baseball. He’s now a youth coach in his native Jacksonville, Fla., where he owns a printing and design company. Keyes returned to his native Utah after a brief minor league career. He had played at Oregon State, where he’d sometimes tell teammates about rubbing elbows with future superstars. Arm problems stemming from overuse ended Mason’s pitching days. He called winning gold “the height of my career.” Now, he’s an airline pilot. The yips derailed Buckel, a cruel fate for the former top prospect, who the Rangers took in the second round in 2010. He’s the pitching resource coordinator for the Indians, on the cutting edge of baseball’s coaching revolution.

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Hahn remains in baseball, too, though his path was shifted when a headfirst slide left him with a severed C-5 vertebra. In his third game at Arizona State, he was paralyzed from the waist down. He’s now coordinator of pro scouting for the Diamondbacks, a position that affords him regular contact with many of those he had once dogpiled with in Venezuela. “That’s the special part about this group,” Hahn said. “We maybe don’t get a chance to see each other every day. But when we do connect, it’s like we never left each other.”

A few days earlier, Coyle sat in a sidewalk coffee shop in Philadelphia, not far from where Harper will play for the Phillies later that night. Coyle’s career ended in the minors in 2017. He attends business school at Temple, which is why he pounded away on a laptop keyboard. He wore a red T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of Project 34, a nonprofit that assists those with spinal cord injuries. It was co-founded by Hahn.

At least on paper, baseball’s dream team could have been even better. Those who missed the cut include Matthew Boyd, Luke Jackson and Aaron Sanchez. All now pitch in the major leagues. Kris Bryant and Christian Yelich, a pair of MVPs, also did not make it. But it was never entirely about talent. The mix had to be just right.

“We all have a very good respect for each other, I think,” Castellanos said, as he wrapped his bat. He’s about to hit before a game, though not before sharing a final thought.

“Maybe put it out there,” Castellanos said. “We’ve got to do a 10-year reunion or something. That would be a lot of fun. Make Bryce and Manny pick up the fucking check.”

“Shit, he’s gonna get paid this offseason,” Harper said with a smile a few days later. “He should pay for it.”

If the $750 million (and counting) team were to get together, there would be plenty to talk about. Whitson could tell Hahn about how he wanted to dress like him, and how he drew stares when he wore Vans and skinny jeans back to the Panhandle. Or Taillon could tell about the time he was passing through LaGuardia and saw a pilot who was a dead-ringer for Mason, but he couldn’t flag him down because he was laid up in a wheelchair recovering from surgery. “So, yeah, not to be creepy,” Taillon said. “But Connor, if you read this, I saw you.” Or Machado could discuss what exactly possessed him to risk millions for late-night ham and cheese empanadas, an action that Harper explains by shrugging and saying simply, “we were hungry, man.”

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Or perhaps Harper could share with the group something he learned years later about that hellish bus trip through the mountains, the one from Caracas to Barquisimeto. He once told that story to several teammates from Venezuela. In the end, they could barely hide their laughter.

“They were like, it’s only like a two-hour drive, what do you mean?” Harper said. “I’m like are you kidding me?”

Surely, they would each wear their rings, the ones handed out by USA Baseball after winning the Pan Am championship. The inside of the band features the words “muddy water, pour it on ’em,” which their coach said was a battlefield slogan, one that the team adopted during their run to the championship. The top is studded with diamonds, and on the side, a tiny image is engraved. It is a gold medal.

— The Athletic’s Dennis Lin contributed to this story.

(Photos: Courtesy of USA Baseball)

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