Melvin Mora

It takes only one swing to hit a home run. It takes two teams to play the game. Three strikes and you’re out. Four balls will mean a walk. Unfortunately, there aren’t many times in baseball when the number five sticks out. Melvin Mora may be the exception, though. Although he had a successful 13-year career in the majors, he is probably better known as the first major leaguer whose wife had quintuplets.

Mora was born in Agua Negra, Venezuela, on February 2, 1972. He had one brother and one sister. When he was only seven years old, Melvin “witnessed his father, Jose, being murdered by a man who mistook him for someone else.”1 Playing organized sports, Mora was determined to escape the violence that had claimed his father’s life and make it to the big leagues.

Mora was a natural athlete. He attended primary school in Agua Negra and Libertador High School in Valencia, Venezuela, graduating from the latter. Before he played baseball, he was an amateur boxer in Venezuela.2 From 1981 to 1990, Mora also played soccer for the Venezuelan National Soccer League. As he spent more and more time on the baseball diamond, his sister, Sunirde, competed in track and field. She went on to the University of Mayaguez in Puerto Rico on a track scholarship.

On March 30, 1991, the 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound Mora signed with the Houston Astros as a non-drafted free agent. He spent his first season in professional baseball in the Astros’ instructional camp in the Dominican Republic. A year later, the Astros assigned the 20-year-old Mora to their 1992 rookie team in the Gulf Coast League. Although he batted only .222 in 49 games, he led the team with 16 stolen bases. The next year found him assigned to the Asheville Tourists in low Class-A ball (the South Atlantic League). He started exhibiting power, hitting two home runs. Further, the Astros organization experimented with Mora at different positions. In addition to playing in the outfield, he played every infield position and even threw two-thirds of an inning (one hit, no runs). By 1994 he had advanced to the Osceola Astros in the advanced Class-A Florida State League and batted .282 with 8 homers and 24 stolen bases (both team highs). He was primarily an outfielder, although he saw action at second base and third base.

Mora continued to impress the Astros organization, and in 1995 he started the season with the Triple-A Tucson Toros, but after only two games (in which he batted 3-for-5), he was sent down to the Jackson Generals in the Double-A Texas League. He hit .298 and was a starting outfielder for Jackson. By 1997, Mora was again splitting time between the outfield and third base, now playing for the New Orleans Zephyrs in the Triple-A American Association.

In the offseason, he was granted free agency from the Astros, and he began 1998 with the Mercuries Tigers of the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan. He hit .335 with 34 runs scored and 11 RBIs. The New York Mets organization took interest and signed Mora, now 26 years old, on July 25, assigning him to the St. Lucie Mets in the Florida State League. Within four weeks he was promoted to the Triple-A Norfolk Tides.

From 1992 to 1998, Mora had spent seven seasons in the minor leagues before he received his first invitation to major-league spring training in 1999. He proceeded to prove he belonged, hitting .421 in the Grapefruit League,3 yet he was sent back to the Tides.

After two months in Norfolk, the Mets called him to the majors, and Mora made his debut in the big leagues on May 30, 1999, in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Manager Bobby Valentine put him at shortstop, batting eighth in the lineup. He was 0-for-3; all three at-bats ended in fly outs to the outfield. He spent the next two months being used primarily as a pinch-hitter and pinch-runner. On July 6, in his 20th game, he pinch-hit for Robin Ventura and collected his first major-league hit, a single to center. Three weeks later, on July 25, Mora made his first start, playing center field against the Chicago Cubs. Again, he was 0-for-3, but he collected a bases-loaded walk in his first at-bat of that game, which resulted in his first career run batted in. He spent the month of August playing for Norfolk but was then called back to New York, to be eligible for the post-season. He made 66 game appearances for the Mets in 1999, with five hits in 31 at-bats.4 New York added Mora to its postseason roster and he batted .429 (6-for-14) in the six-game National League Championship Series against Atlanta. (The Mets lost the series in six games.)

A season later, Mora became the Mets’ everyday shortstop when Rey Ordonez was sidelined with a broken forearm. He blasted his first major-league homer on April 20 in the bottom of the 10th inning off Milwaukee’s Curt Leskanic, giving New York a 5-4 victory. On July 6, 2000, Mora celebrated an offday by getting married. The Mets had finished a series against the Marlins in Florida and did not have to be back in New York until the 7th. His wife, Gisel, had a daughter, Tatiana, and Mora adored the instant family. However, just before the 2000 trade deadline, Mora was traded with pitchers Leslie Brea and Pat Gorman and infielder Mike Kinkade to the Baltimore Orioles for shortstop Mike Bordick. Mora had split his time with the Mets between the outfield and shortstop, and Baltimore was looking for someone to replace Bordick at short. Mora hit safely in 15 of his first 19 games with the Orioles, displaying a .413 batting average. In the offseason, he returned to Venezuela and won a home-run-hitting competition in Caracas, defeating Andres Galarraga, Richard Hildago, Magglio Ordonez, Edgardo Alfonzo, and Bobby Abreu. Mora received a trophy and $7,000, which he donated to the Hospital San Juan de Dios.

On July 28, 2001, Mora was waiting to board a flight from Anaheim when Gisel gave birth to quintuplets at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Daughters Genesis Raquel (1.51 pounds), Jada Priscilla (1.88 pounds), and Rebekah Alesha (1.88 pounds), and sons Matthew David (2.01 pounds) and Christian Emmanuel (2.48 pounds) became five new additions to the Mora family. The quintuplets were born 3½ months before their due date. All the names were chosen from the Bible. “I’m happy. God has blessed us. All of the babies are doing fine,” Mora told reporters two days later.5 When the new father visited his locker before the game, a package of 68 diapers was stuffed into the top compartment. Soon folks were describing his family as baseball’s version of the Brady Bunch with “Mora the merrier.”6 Interestingly, Mora and his wife were initially told to expect twins. Early in the pregnancy, Gisel was rushed to a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after experiencing massive bleeding. Doctors performed an ultrasound, and Gisel was told she would instead have quintuplets and all were safe. Melvin had been out in the parking lot praying. When he came into the hospital, he found his wife laughing. The babies were safe. Mora recalled, “I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ Then the nurse congratulated me five times. I didn’t know whether to laugh or smile or what.”7

Mora had played 124 of the first 137 games of the season before injuring his left elbow on September 3 against the Oakland Athletics. Mora had the rare feat of getting two hits in the same inning in a May 9 game at Tampa Bay. He then went on a tear at the plate, and in a 43-game stretch during May and June, he went 52-for-146, including a season-high eight-game hitting streak.

On April 25, 2003, Mora was batting .250 with only 10 hits in his first 14 games. Over the next three months, he had gone from struggling utility player to the leading hitter in the American League and a spot on the junior circuit’s All-Star squad. A nine-game stretch in May saw him get 22 hits, and he put together a 23-game hitting streak. He was selected as a reserve for the midsummer classic in Chicago, telling reporters, “I’m excited for the way my career is going. I’ve worked hard all season. I think I deserved it.”8 At the All-Star break, Mora was batting .349 with an on-base percentage of .443. Primarily playing in the outfield, Mora hit .379 in May and .355 in June. He had led the American League in batting from July 12 until the end of the season. Mora tried to become the first Oriole to win a batting championship since 1966, when Frank Robinson batted .316 as part of his Triple Crown season. At the end of July, Mora had been batting .325. But he missed all of August due to injury and September saw his average drop to .317. The American League’s leader for the season was Boston’s Bill Mueller (.326).

In January 2004, Mora followed up his breakout season by signing a three-year deal with Baltimore. The Orioles made him their everyday third baseman, a position he occupied for the next six seasons. He delivered on his end of the bargain, batting .340 with 27 home runs and 104 runs batted in (all career highs) in 2004. The .340 mark was second to Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki (.372). Mora’s .419 OBP led the American League. He also won a Silver Slugger Award and was named Most Valuable Oriole. Further, he was named third baseman on The Sporting News AL All-Star Team and AL Silver Slugger Team. In May 2004, Mora claimed American League Player of the Month honors. His average had surpassed Ken Singleton’s previous Baltimore record of a .328 batting average in 1977. In the offseason, Mora established the Melvin Mora Foundation to fund educational, medical, and other needs in his native Venezuela.9

In 2005 Mora earned his second election to the American League All-Star team. He led the Orioles and matched his career high with 27 home runs. He batted .319 with 22 RBIs over his final 24 games of the season.

In 2006 Mora announced that he was stepping out of the inaugural World Baseball Classic after being asked to play center field rather than third base for Venezuela, a position he had not played since 2003. He told the press, “I cannot go to that competition to try and play something that I don’t know how to play.”10 In the midst of a contract negotiation, he added, “This is not spring training. It’s a big competition. And as everybody knows, I’m trying to negotiate my contract here. If I don’t agree with the Baltimore Orioles, I’m going to be a free agent. But not as a center fielder – as a third baseman.”11 The Venezuelan manager wanted 22-year-old Miguel Cabrera to play third base for the national team.

Later that spring, on May 19, the Orioles agreed with Mora to terms on a three-year contract extension that would keep him with the team through 2009. The new deal guaranteed Mora $25 million and included an option for a fourth year. At the time of the signing, he was batting .288 with 7 home runs and 20 runs batted in in 40 games. He played 155 games in 2006, finishing the campaign with 16 home runs, 83 RBIs, and a .274 batting average. His production had slipped a bit in 2006 and 2007, as he hit 16 and 14 homers respectively and batted .274 each year. However, in August 2008, Mora again earned American League Player of the Month honors. He finished the season with 23 round-trippers and 104 runs batted in, batting .285.

After only five regular-season games in 2009, Mora was placed on the disabled list with a strained left hamstring on April 15 (retroactive to April 13). He was activated from the 15-day disabled list after he failed to catch a plane to begin a rehabilitation assignment. He was eligible to return April 28, and the Orioles wanted him to test his leg in a rehab stint with Triple-A Norfolk, but Mora never got the chance. “I tried to go to the airport and then there was traffic everywhere,” Mora said. “I tried to catch the next one, and the next one goes [through] Dallas, and I had to be at the ballpark at 6 o’clock.”>12 He then told manager David Trembley that his leg was fine and that he had already run on it, so the Orioles placed him in the starting lineup against the Anaheim Angels. He went 3-for-5 with two runs batted in, but the O’s fell to the Angels, 7-5.

Mora became a free agent in November 2009, when the Orioles did not pick up his $8 million option for 2010. Mora had spent 10 seasons with Baltimore. He ended his Baltimore tenure (1,256 games) in the top 10 in many team offensive categories, playing third base in a Sunday afternoon game (October 4, 2009) at Oriole Park at Camden Yards against the Toronto Blue Jays. He was removed for pinch-hitter Justin Turner in the bottom of the sixth. When the inning ended, Mora stepped out of the dugout and acknowledged a standing ovation. He had played 807 games at third base for Baltimore, second only in franchise history to Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson.

Mora signed a one-year, $1.275 million with Colorado. After a solid season with the Rockies, he signed a one-year, $2 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks. However, he injured his neck in a car accident while in spring training. He appeared in only 42 regular-season games, splitting time as a third baseman and a pinch-hitter. At the end of June, he was batting .228 with only two walks (a .244 on-base percentage), and the Diamondbacks released him on June 29.13

So, in December 2011, Mora announced his retirement from baseball. He was five weeks shy of his 40th birthday. At a news conference in Valencia, Venezuela, Mora said, “It’s a very difficult decision because this has been my life, but it’s time to do it. I’ve been in this for many years and it’s time to dedicate myself to my family. I’ve had a beautiful career that I will always remember.”14 In 13 seasons with four teams, the two-time All-Star had played every position but catcher and pitcher. Two weeks later, he told reporters he was interested in a minor-league deal, as long as it was for an East Coast team. He wanted to remain close to his family, who still lived north of Baltimore. But no offers came.

On April 20, 2015, the Baltimore Orioles announced that Mora had been selected for enshrinement in the Orioles Hall of Fame, along with outfielders Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein and longtime scout Fred Uhlman Sr. The new inductees were honored at an August 2015 luncheon at Oriole Park.

Two years later, on May 10, 2017, Melvin Mora was naturalized as a United States citizen. He thanked the country that gave him the opportunity to follow his dreams and play baseball.15 He holds dual citizenship in both the US and Venezuela. His children had become dual citizens in 2013.

Mora appeared on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in 2017, but he didn’t receive any votes. However, he did accomplish one thing that no other Hall of Famer ever did. On July 18, 2008, Mora hit a two-run home run “off the very TOP of Camden Yards’ 70-foot-high foul pole,” which stands 333 feet down the left-field line.>16 He told the Baltimore Sun, “I just prayed it was a home run. I didn’t want to have to take another swing.” And Matt Monagan of the Sun wrote, “You shouldn’t have needed to take another swing, Melvin. If you had retired after this at-bat, who could’ve blamed you? You were on top of the foul pole. You were on top of the world.”17

Last revised: January 31, 2026

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Liam Davis, public relations intern for the Baltimore Orioles, for sharing Melvin Mora’s pages from the 2001-2009 Baltimore Orioles Media Guides (and his page in the 1999 New York Mets Media Guide). A number of the articles cited come from Mora’s file at the Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Photo credit: Melvin Mora, Getty Images.

Notes

1 Jim Armstrong, “Mora a Five-Tool Player off the Field,” denverpost.com, March 23, 2010. This article was part of Mora’s file at the Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Accessed June 2019.

2 “Melvin Mora,” 2000 New York Mets Information Guide: 152.

3 “A Christmas Miracle,” New York Post, December 23, 1999. Found online at https://nypost.com/1999/12/23/a-christmas-miracle-met-melvin-mora-became-a-playoff-hero-when-his-rocket-arm-and-timely-bat-nearly-led-amazins-past-braves-but-to-a-young-orphan-boy-in-flood-ravaged-venezuela-hes-about-to-becom/.

4 In 82 games at Norfolk in 1999, Mora thrived, batting .303 with eight home runs.

5 Roch Kubatko, “Proud Mora Gets High-five for Quints,” SunSpot.net, July 31, 2000.

6 Armstrong.

7 Armstrong.

8 “Newfound Patience Transforms Orioles’ Mora into All-Star,” USA Today, July 9, 2003.

9 “Melvin Mora,” 2005 Baltimore Orioles Information Guide, 130.

10 “Mora Out of Classic,” USA Today, February 27, 2006.

11 “Mora Out of Classic.”

12 “Mora Inserted into O’s Starting Lineup,” espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=4108570, April 28, 2009. Accessed July 2019.

13 “Melvin Mora Retires After 13 Seasons,” espn.go.com/espn/print?id=7406121&type=story, December 30, 2011.

14 “Melvin Mora Retires After 13 Seasons.”

15 Eduardo A. Encina, “Orioles Hall of Famer Melvin Mora on Becoming U.S. Citizen: “I finally did it,’” Baltimore Sun, May 10, 2017. Story and video online at baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bal-orioles-hall-of-famer-melvin-mora-becomes-u-s-citizen-in-baltimore-20170510-story.html. Accessed July 2019.

16 Matt Monagan, www.mlb.com. February 2, 2018. See story and video at https://www.mlb.com/cut4/the-night-melvin-mora-did-the-impossible-and-homered-off-the-top-of-the-foul-pole.

17 Monagan. The Orioles won the game, 7-4, over the Detroit Tigers.