Endy Chavez

VIERA, FL – FEBRUARY 21: Endy Chavez of the Montreal Expos poses for a portrait during Media Day at Space Coast Stadium on February 21, 2003 in Viera, Florida. (Photo by Rick Stewart/Getty Images)

He was a slender Venezuelan outfielder whose defensive skill and joie de vivre earned him a 21-year professional career, highlighted by one of the postseason’s all-time most memorable plays.

A reminder of Endy Chávez‘s magnificent catch in Game Six of the 2006 National League Championship Series greets entrants to the left-field gate at Citi Field in New York, where the sign incudes a silhouette figure of a graceful reach into the sky – capturing the moment that Chavez’s outstretched glove snared a soaring line drive by the St. Louis Cardinals’ Scott Rolen that seemed destined to be a tiebreaking home run. Instead, the ball was trapped in the very top of the webbing of Chávez’s glove, and safely yanked back over the fence. Chávez recovered with the presence of mind to turn it into a double play, when his relay to José Valentin caught runner Jim Edmonds hopelessly off first base, delivering a second jolt of awe to the resplendent display of larceny.

The play is further featured in the fan walk outside Citi Field, the ballpark erected just a home run north of where Shea Stadium once stood. Not that Mets fans ever need a reminder: Chávez’s heroics are etched into the souls of every Mets fan and remain a signal of the breathtaking abilities that earned Chávez, never a particularly threatening hitter, a 13-year career over eight major-league organizations, along with a storied run in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he starred for the Navegantes del Magallanes for 19 seasons. The proud Venezuelan also represented his country in the World Baseball Classic tournament in 2006 and 2009.1

Endy de Jesus Chávez was born on February 7, 1978, in Valencia, Venezuela, to Alirio, a window installer, and his wife, Carmen, a homemaker.2 A brother, Ender James Chávez, came two years later and followed his older sibling into pro ball, although he never cracked the big leagues. A sister, Nidi, died prematurely. Chávez described learning to hit with sticks and stones and developing skills in sandlot and youth leagues as a pitcher and a first baseman. Chávez, however, had no taste for picking balls off the ground and it was only after transitioning to the outfield, where his speed and a sense of position was a game-changer, that he forged a path to the pros.3

Chávez was performing in a developmental academy run by the Colorado Rockies as a teenager when Mets scouts Gregorio Machado and Junior Roman made a daring catch of their own, signing the 19-year-old to his first pro contract. Their faith was rewarded when Chávez earned the organization’s Class-A Doubleday Award in 1997,4 after the rookie flycatcher hit .277 for the Mets’ Gulf Coast League Rookie franchise in Port St. Lucie, Florida. In a short stint with Kingsport of the Class-A Appalachian League, he hit .301 with a .407 on-base percentage.

Chávez spent all of 1998 in Kingsport, where he slashed .290/.373/.430. His ascension continued at St. Lucie of the Class-A Florida State League and Capital City of the South Atlantic League in 1999, hitting .312 in more than 200 plate appearances for Port St, Lucie. In 2000 Chávez hit .298 with 20 doubles and 38 stolen bases for Port St. Lucie, whose manager, Dave Engel, compared him to a young Andruw Jones.5

And just like that, he was stolen away again. Kansas City in the Rule 5 Draft selected Chávez from the Mets. Considered too inexperienced to make an Opening Day roster – where rules stipulated Rule 5 draftees reside – the team in a paper transaction reassigned Chávez to New York at the end of spring training, reacquiring him the same day for a minor-league outfielder named Mike Curry.6
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A left-handed hitter who was variously listed as 5-feet-11 and 170 pounds or 5-feet-9 and 159 pounds, Chávez had a distinct batting style that incorporated his great speed into his swing, completing the action already taking his first step toward first base. Minor-league teammates with the Kansas City organization recognized the slap-and-run approach as resembling that of the phenomenal new arrival to the big leagues, Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki and took to calling Chávez “the New Ichiro.”7

Eyes in the organization were already open to the difference Chávez could make with his glove and his speed. “Our scouts said Chávez could play defense in the big leagues today,” Royals GM Allard Baird said while explaining their decision to pluck him from the Mets despite his not having a single plate appearance above the Class-A level. “That he was an above-average runner. That he had an average arm in center field. That he could go get fly balls and that he wasn’t afraid to leave his feet. That he had no fear of the wall. That he came in on the ball well.”
“But,” Baird added, “his bat was not major league ready. That needed to get stronger. That he played hard and wouldn’t be in awe of the major league environment. So far, he’s done that.”8

That assessment would hold true throughout Chávez’s career, assuring that he’d always be in demand as a player, but most often considered a utility-type deployed primarily to protect late-inning leads, pinch-hit or pinch-run, bunt runners over, and steal. Chávez was well adept in all these tasks and that made him a useful weapon and a favorite of many of his managers.

The 2001 Royals sputtered to an 18-32 start and an ensuing roster shake-up provided Chávez’s first opportunity in the big leagues. He was recalled along with right-hander Kris Wilson on May 29 when struggling pitcher Brian Meadows and reserve catcher Sal Fasano were sent down to the minors.

Wearing uniform number 43 and batting ninth, Chávez started at The Ballpark in Arlington that evening, grounding out against Texas hurler Rick Helling in his first two plate appearances before lining a single to left in his third at-bat, scoring Joe Randa and scampering to second base on the play to the plate. The next day Chávez had three hits, including an RBI double, helping the Royals down the Rangers, 11-2.

Chávez, however, still needed time to solve big-league pitching. He was returned to Double-A Wichita in July after enduring an 0-for-21 skid and ending his first big-league stint hitting just .208 with a .238 on-base percentage and slugging just .234. His figures in the minors remained promising, however, logging a combined .313/.346/.375 slash line between Wichita and Triple-A Omaha that year.

Chávez was on the move three times that offseason. The Detroit Tigers in December claimed him from Kansas City after the Royals designated him for assignment, and the Expos subsequently claimed him in February 2002 when the Tigers tried the same thing.9 Omar Minaya, the Expos’ new general manager, had been among Chávez’s fiercest defenders when he was a Mets prospect, and Minaya went on to reacquire Chávez once he’d returned as Mets’ GM in 2005. In Montreal, Chávez was afforded the freedom needed to establish himself, as Minaya gave him the regular job in center field beginning in 2003, succeeding a promising young rival in Peter Bergeron.10 Chávez hit .343 in 2002 in Triple-A Ottawa, climbing his way onto the organization’s top prospect lists, and during a September call-up to Montreal, logged his first major-league home run, a solo blast over the right-field fence at Shea Stadium off Pedro Astacio, and was named the National League’s Rookie of the Month.

Chávez logged more than 500 plate appearances in both 2003 and 2004, leading off and playing center field in most of those appearances. On June 20, 2003, he legged out an inside-the-park home run off Toronto’s Jeff Tam among his five home runs that season. He hit .251 that season with a .294 on-base percentage, drove in 47 runs, and stole 18 bases. Manager Frank Robinson was patient but ultimately disappointed in his leadoff hitter, confessing to reporters that he hadn’t improved over the course of the year. Playing a season split between home parks in Montreal and Puerto Rico, the Expos finished 83-79 and in fourth place in the NL East Division, 18 games behind division-winning Atlanta.

Chávez, who rehabbed a sore neck on the roster of Montreal’s Triple-A franchise until mid-April, improved his performance in 2004, but the Expos, who’d lost superstar slugger Vladimir Guerrero over the offseason, sputtered to a last-place 67-95 finish that was also their last gasp as a franchise; they began a new era as the Washington Nationals beginning in 2005. Before they did, Chávez had the distinction of making the Montreal Expos’ final out, grounding to New York’s Jeff Keppinger at second base.

Chávez began the 2005 campaign with the New Orleans Zephyrs of the Triple-A International League as the front office acknowledged Frank Robinson’s contention that he hadn’t reached base enough to justify another season in the big leagues. Chávez slashed .253/.330/.333 in New Orleans before a May 14 swap to Philadelphia for Marlon Byrd in an exchange of seldom-used outfielders. Phillies manager Charlie Manuel used Chávez mainly as a reserve for a team that contended for the NL East title but fell two games short of the division-winning Braves at 88-74. Chávez was granted free agency that offseason and lasted one day on the market before he was signed by the Mets.
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The Chávez acquisition was practically lost in the bevy of high-profile signings by Omar Minaya, who returned to New York with an open checkbook that secured the services of All-Stars Carlos Beltrán and Pedro Martinez, among others. Manager Willie Randolph’s fortified Mets led the NL East nearly wire-to-wire, helped along by what was the best season by far in Chávez’s career. The Mets won 97 games and the NL East title by 12 games over Philadelphia. Backing up at all three outfield positions, the 28-year-old speedster hit .306 with a .348 on-base percentage, 18 stolen bases, 5 home runs, and 42 RBIs.

In the 2006 NL Division Series, the Mets dispatched the Los Angeles Dodgers in three straight games. Chávez started Game Two in right field and delivered two key singles off starter Hong-Chih Kuo, the first starting a rally to break a scoreless tie. His second hit set the stage for a fifth-inning uprising that added to the New York lead.
What looked to be the Mets’ clearest path to the World Series in 40 years was complicated by a string of late-season injuries to its starting pitching staff. Regular-season workhorses Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez each missed the series with physical ailments; slotted in their place were the talented but erratic lefty Óliver Pérez and the rookie right-hander John Maine.

The Mets drew the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. The clubs split the series’ opening two games in New York. In St. Louis, the Mets took two of three and so returned to Shea Stadium needing two victories.
They got halfway there in Game Six, when John Maine and four relievers scraped out a 4-2 victory. That set the stage for a winner-take-all Game Seven, a Thursday night duel between St. Louis’s Jeff Suppan and Óliver Pérez of the Mets.
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The Mets took the field in the top of the sixth with the score tied 1-1. Jim Edmonds drew a one-out walk as Perez faced Rolen. Perez left a first-pitch strike out over the plate and the right-handed-hitting Rolen swatted it deep into the night. Chávez, playing deep and shaded toward the left-center-field gap, turned and gave chase. Upon reaching the warning track, Chávez left his feet and reached with his right gloved hand above the eight-foot fence. Fans in the upper deck could hear the collision of Chávez’s body and the fence, as his elbow bent as far as it could into the St. Louis bullpen. There was a moment where no more than a fifth of a ball could be seen trapped in the webbing of the glove. Chávez, in one of the hundreds of interviews he gave about the play, explained that his challenge at that moment was to retrieve not just the ball but the glove it then belonged to – which, between absorbing the impact of hitting the fence and the force of the arriving ball, was sliding up his hand. Countering these forces, Chávez tucked it all back into his chest as he descended to the ground. In one of the most fortuitous combinations of advertising and baseball since Cracker Jack, a slogan for the insurance company AIG on the fence where Chávez leaped read “THE STRENGTH TO BE THERE.” Edmonds was well past second base, and made a game effort to retrace his steps back toward first but was way too late to beat José Valentin’s relay to Carlos Delgado at first. Valentin had positioned himself where a shortstop might as José Reyes had given fruitless chase to Rolen’s drive. The play took all of 12 seconds.

Writing in his 2020 book, So Many Ways to Lose, author Devin Gordon argues that “The Catch,” as Met fans refer to Chávez’s play, was the greatest single play in postseason history, coming as it did in a more crucial situation than Willie Mays’ famous pursuit of Vic Wertz’s long fly at the Polo Grounds in Game One of the 1954 World Series, the gold standard of postseason outfield plays. “Endy’s catch should be played on a loop in an art museum,” Gordon writes. “It’s layered and virtuosic, the work of a grand master, each color and detail applied in just the right order, a lifetime of study and schooling and apprenticeship, all to be ready for this very moment, for this exact circumstance.”11

One of the points Gordon makes is how Chávez’s feat endures as a triumphant accomplishment despite the bitterly disappointing outcome of the game for Chávez and the Mets. By contrast, the catches that Chávez’s feat brought to mind for Mets fans – game-saving grabs by Tommie Agee  and Ron Swoboda in the 1969 World Series – were part of the Miracle Mets’ triumphant effort. In 2006 it was missed offensive opportunities, a heartbreaking strike-three call on Carlos Beltrán with the bases loaded in the ninth inning, and another long drive to left that Chávez could only watch sail into the seats – Yadier Molina’s ninth-inning, two-run shot off Aaron Heilman – that delivered the win for the Cardinals, who went on to a five-game triumph over the  Tigers in the World Series and left Mets fans in a haze of cognitive dissonance.

Chávez missed 12 weeks of the 2007 season with a strained hamstring but when healthy turned in another fine season as a reserve, although the team suffered a September slump that ate away a seven-game lead in the season’s final weeks, and finished a game behind surging Philadelphia at 88-74 and a game and a half out of the playoffs. Chávez added to his legend in a chilly April evening game against Colorado, laying down a surprise two-out drag bunt to drive in Shawn Green from third base with the winning run in a 2-1, 12-inning victory. An inning earlier, Damion Easley had awakened the slumbering club with a two-out pinch-hit home run to tie the game.
The 2008 Mets suffered a yet another heartbreaking finish, blowing a 3½-game division lead they’d held on September 10, finishing three games behind the Phillies and one game out of the wild card. Manager Willie Randolph was fired in a controversial move in June and replaced by Jerry Manuel, but it was an unreliable bullpen, injuries, and poor execution that ultimately did them in. Chávez for the year finished with a .267.308/.330 slash line over 298 plate appearances.

A strenuous offseason makeover, arriving just as the Bernard Madoff scandal12 crippled the Mets’ financial situation sent Chávez to a new address for 2009, as he was among seven Mets dealt away in a three-team, 12-player whopper with Cleveland and Seattle.13

Chávez slashed .273/.328/.342 over 182 plate appearances as a Seattle Mariner in 2009, backing up a star-studded outfield of Ken Griffey Jr., Franklin Gutierrez, and Ichiro Suzuki for a team that finished third in AL West at 85-77. But his season came to abrupt halt when he collided with teammate Yuniesky Betancourt as they pursued a shallow fly on June 19. The pair banged knees, causing Chávez’s right leg to hyperextend, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament. An awkward landing then tore the medial collateral ligament on the same joint.14
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Chávez missed all of the 2010 regular season rehabbing the injury with the Texas Rangers, with whom he signed a minor-league free-agent contract that February. Texas lost the World Series to San Francisco in five games.
The Rangers returned to the postseason again in 2011 but Chávez went hitless in five plate appearances across the club’s ALCS win over Tampa Bay and seven-game loss to St. Louis in the World Series. Chávez hit .301 in 83 games as the Rangers’ part-time center fielder that season.
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Chávez signed with Baltimore in 2012. The Orioles under manager Buck Showalter surprised the AL East with a 93-win season and a wild-card playoff victory over Chávez’s previous employer, the Texas Rangers, but lost a five-game set to the Yankees in the AL Division Series. The 34-year-old Chávez hit just .203 that season, prompting Baltimore Sun baseball columnist Peter Schmuck to give him a grade of D.15
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Chávez earned better marks back with Seattle in 2013, hitting .267 as a reserve for a club that finished fourth in the AL West. On July 28 he robbed Minnesota’s Chris Colabello of a three-run home run at the fence in Safeco Field in a play reminiscent of his 2006 playoff catch. Chávez returned to the Mariners again in 2014, appearing in 80 games and slashing .276/.317/.371 for manager Lloyd McClendon’s third-place team. He tried out again with Seattle the next season but was released in spring training, and his 13-year major-league career ended.

Chávez stayed busy in the offseasons as a proud participant in the Venezuelan Winter League, the Caribbean Series, and in the World Baseball Classic tournament. Chants of “Endy Si! Chávez No!” were common at these events, where fans expressed their enthusiasm for the homegrown player – and their disapproval of the strife brought by President Hugo Chávez.16 Endy had been the Venezuelan League’s rookie for the year in 1999.

Chávez married Patrice Maldonado in 2015. As of 2021 they were raising five children in New Jersey: a daughter from Chávez’s previous relationship, Maldonado’s two sons, their own child, and an adopted niece, the daughter of Chávez’s sister Nidi.17 Daughter Joendys, born in Seattle in 2009, was the subject of a lengthy and complex international custody battle between Chávez and the girl’s mother, Joelis Molina, involving authorities in the United States and Venezuela. In 2024, Chávez sued fellow Venezuelan big-leaguer Melvin Mora, alleging Mora had failed to pay a $1.2 million debt owed Chávez.18

In his career after major-league baseball, Chávez played independent-league ball for several years, with the Northeast League’s Bridgeport Bluefish and with the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League. He played one season, 2017, in the Mexican League. Chávez coached the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ New York-Penn League rookie club affiliate, in 2019 and later served as bench coach for the Mets’ Florida State League club.

Reminders of his most famous moment are never far from Chávez, who treated his Instagram fans with a recreation in 2021 in which he is filmed leaping from his kitchen into a deep snowdrift, shoeless and shirtless, exhibiting the same exuberant joy he so often brought to fans.
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Sources
The author would like to express gratitude to Jay Horwitz for arranging the interview with Endy Chávez. Statistics cited are from Baseball-reference.com.
A video of “The Catch” is available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_5Fgii__c
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Notes
1 Stephanie Myles, “Two Expos Think of Homes,” Montreal Gazette, February 28, 2003: 8.
2 Author interview with Endy Chávez, April 23, 2021.
3 Author interview with Endy Chávez, April 23, 2021.
4 Brian Falzarano, “Mets Notes,” Passaic (New Jersey) Herald-News, September 14, 1997: 54.
5 Chuck Otterson, “Chavez a Consistent Force for Mets,” Palm Beach Post, August 25, 2000: 191.
6 Bob Dutton, “A Peek at the Future,” Kansas City Star, March 4, 2001: 40.
7 “Chavez Draws Ichiro Label,” Des Moines Register, June 3, 2001: 20.
8 Jeffery Parson, “Don’t Fence Him In,” Wichita Eagle, April 15, 2001: 31.
9 Kit Stier, “Alfonzo’s Back, Better Than Ever,” White Plains (New York) Journal News, February 23, 2002: 20.
10 Bill Madden, “Willie Needs Minor Tweaking,” New York Daily News, November 3, 2002: 66.
11 Devin Gordon, So Many Ways to Lose (New York: Harper, 2021), 296.
12 The Wilpon and Katz families, who owned the Mets, had a long relationship with the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff but argued they were victims and not beneficiaries of Madoff’s ponzi scheme, which was revealed in December of 2018.
13 Geoff Baker, “Mariners GM Already Making Mark,” Spokane (Washington) Spokesman-Review, December 13, 2008: 24. The Mets that offseason also let free agents Pedro Martinez and Moises Alou go, while signing closer Francisco Rodriguez. The Mets had sought relief help in the Chávez deal, with Seattle’s J. J. Putz the main name acquired. Putz however pitched just 29 1/3 mediocre innings with New York; pitchers the Mets surrendered in the deal included Jason Vargas who had 11 years ahead of him in the big leagues, and reliever Joe Smith, who pitched effective relief for another 13 years.
14 Ryan Divish, “Smiling Chavez Visits Mariners’ Clubhouse,” Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune, July 7, 2009: B3.
15 Peter Schmuck, “Peter Schmuck’s Final Grades for the 2012 Orioles” Baltimore Sun, October 17, 2012 https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/analysis/schmuck/bal-peter-schmuck-final-grades-for-the-2012-orioles-20121016-photogallery.html.
16 P. Scott Cunningham, “Endy Si! Chavez No!,” Miami New Times, March 16, 2009 https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/endy-si-chavez-no-6530627.
17 Author interview with Endy Chávez, April 23, 2021.
18 Lauren Elkies Schram, “Ex-Mets outfielder Endy Chavez sues former MLB All-Star Melvin Mora over $1.2M investment fraud: ‘I trusted him’,” New York Post, May 25, 2024 https://nypost.com/2024/05/25/us-news/former-met-endy-chavez-sues-mlber-melvin-mora-in-1-2m-investment-fraud/

This biography appears in Vinotinto Venezuela Béisbol, 1939–2024: 85 Years of Venezuelans in the Major Leagues (SABR, 2025), edited by Leonte Landino and Bill Nowlin. Click here to download the free e-book edition or save 50% off the paperback.