Brito’s other signings include current Dodgers starter Julio Urias, who won 20 games in 2021; the moody outfielder Yasiel Puig, who is Cuban; Pitchers Ismael Valdez, Joakim Soria, Antonio Osuna, Victor Gonzalez and Dennys Reyes; Shortstop Juan Castro and outfielder Karim Garcia. Another of his discoveries, Bobby Castillo, a converted third baseman named Babo, taught Valenzuela how to throw a screwball.
“I’m not lying to you,” Brito told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “Within a week, Fernando was throwing the screwball as well as Babo.”
“He was a god to a lot, a lot of Mexican prospects,” Jaime Jarrín, a Spanish-language broadcaster for the Dodgers since 1959, told Baseball America last year. “They loved him because he protected them.”
Born in Cuba on August 21, 1934, Mike Brito was a catcher who played three seasons in the minor leagues of the Washington Senators’ minor league system beginning in 1955, then several seasons in the Mexican league.
After retiring, he moved to Los Angeles, where he found work as a truck driver and started and played in an adult amateur league.
Scouting became his way to stay in baseball. “Thank God I became a scout in the Mexican league,” he said in a short video profile, The White Hat & Wild Horse: The Scout Who Found Puig. When asked by Dodgers general manager Al Campanis to work for the team, he recalled thinking, “It’s like finding a guy in the desert and asking him for a glass of water would like.