A Midnight Call and an Unforgettable Haunt
One night in December 2019, Willson Contreras – then a Cubs catcher – received a call from Venezuela:
“William was in a motorcycle accident. Hit his head. He might not make it…”
The caller was a neighbor. In that moment, Willson collapsed in the winter training room, his phone flying out and falling to the floor. He couldn’t breathe.
Willson’s younger brother William was everything to him. The two had grown up playing together with broken bats and torn gloves, sleeping together on a mat in a tin-roofed house. Willson had fed him through the difficult years, even refusing his own meals to save some for William.
Because of the political crisis in Venezuela, Willson couldn’t fly back home right away.
“I sat at the dinner table and stared at the phone all night, waiting for news. It hurt more than losing the game.”
The doctors said William had a traumatic brain injury and internal bleeding. His survival rate was less than 40%.
In that moment of waiting, Willson posted an old photo of the two brothers with their first glove — torn, faded — and simply wrote:
“I’m not letting you go, God.”
After more than 20 hours of surgery, William slowly regained consciousness. The first thing he asked the nurse was:
“How many homers has my brother hit this year?”
Willson burst into tears in the middle of the practice field, and immediately called FaceTime:
“If you survive, I’ll take you to America. You’ll never have to live there alone again.”
A career, two numbers, and a brotherhood that transcends time
After the incident, Willson convinced the team to put his brother William’s number on the inside of his catcher’s glove — a reminder that baseball is more than just fame. It’s love. It’s family. It’s blood and tears.
“I play because William survived. Every time I catch a difficult pitch, it’s because I remember how close I came to losing him forever.”
Willson Contreras is more than just an All-Star catcher. He is a symbol of undying brotherhood, of silent pain forged into the spirit of the highest level of competition.