Fabio Peralta is the energizer bunny of the Commodores – a kid from Cuba who moved to the United States as an eight-year old, but made sure to bring his own Caribbean flair to American baseball.

“Every Latin country that’s big on baseball is very loud with their emotions. Here, you just gotta keep it controlled, keep rolling and try to be consistent with the emotions as well,” he said.

Two very different environments of diamond sports, but Fabio’s found a unique happy medium.

Every time Fabio gets an opportunity to step onto Guv Fuller Field, he does so while smiling ear-to-ear. Playing the game of baseball is the biggest blessing in his life, and he isn’t shy in expressing that sentiment.

“It's not like I have to come out here and ‘get it over with’, you know. I'm grateful that I get to be here and that God gave me this ability to play this game.”

And for Fabio, that gift from the Almighty not only encompasses the mere skill he has to play the game of baseball at a high level, but includes the people who he gets to play with and those he plays for.

Those he plays with right now, his teammates in Falmouth, are a group of guys who’ve embraced and adopted the Cuban energy that not only defines Fabio as a ballplayer, but is beginning to infest itself into the Commodores’ team identity.

“We’re all just having fun out there, [as if] if we were kids again,” he said when reflecting on his first month on the Cape. “It's hard to describe – it's like when you played summer ball growing up, it kind of feels like that…we just let loose.”

Being a Commodore is a pure joy for Fabio and it has him fully invested in uplifting his teammates amidst a mentally taxing summer baseball season – so much so that he’s made a simple card game the epicenter of team bonding: President.

“One of my teammates (at Miami) this past year, Alex Sosa, introduced us all to President. It's a great card game for the whole team. Everybody could play, and it gets interesting because it gets [like], ‘okay, I gotta know what this guy might put down and I got to know what I'm gonna put down’ because you want to get rid of all your cards. 
You don't want to be the last one with cards. So it's kind of cool. And it brings the teams together, so I love that.”

His Hurricane teammates loved the game so much that on a six-hour flight to Stanford for a weekend ACC series, the team played on repeat. So why not bring it to Falmouth, Fabio thought.

“I got cards the first day that I got here, I was like, ‘I know I'm gonna put the guys on to this game,’” he said. “We've had like up to 10 people play already in one round, and they love it.”

His teammates have allowed him to be as authentic as possible, both on and off the field, which has kept him at his best at the start of the year. He’s got a rebellious attitude, some may say, fueled by not only his teammates, who encourage it, but by his family, who’s sacrificed time and time again to ensure that he’d have the opportunity to play as his authentic self on the biggest of stages.

“[My parents] took the opportunity to come to this country so I could have a brighter future,” Fabio said. “They missed out on a lot when they got here just so I could keep playing baseball and keep getting better. They knew my passion for it, so they put every single second they had into my future. So my family is always going to be my number one drive.”

When his parents made the move from Cuba to the U.S., they’d shoulder a heavy load: Fabio’s father was the breadwinner, always out of the house and working in the best interest of the family. His mother was the caretaker, making sure he had everything he needed to thrive in an unfamiliar environment.

“When we got here from Cuba [my parents] had to build from the ground up,” he said. “My mom, she would take me everywhere, my dad would have to work the hardest, and he’d get home later.”

But through hardship, Fabio knew baseball was the glue that kept their family together, saying, “for travel ball, they'd try to make every trip.”

So its no surprise that when commitment time came around, making sure that baseball stayed at the epicenter of their relationships, saying “my parents do not miss a game, so I think that that was the main reason why I went to Miami.”

Everything Fabio does in baseball is for the people that mean the most to him, saying “I just want them to see me reach my ultimate goal, honestly. That's gonna make them feel the best, like the most proud ever.”

For most in the Cape League, that ultimate goal may be playing professional baseball after college. For Fabio, it simply may be leaving a positive impact on the game by sharing the joy he experiences from playing the game – a gift from God he cherishes and enjoys sharing with those that matter to him.