{"id":72321,"date":"2025-06-02T00:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T00:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/72321\/"},"modified":"2025-06-02T00:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T00:21:07","slug":"cincinnati-reds-elly-de-la-cruz-insists-on-playing-after-sisters-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/72321\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Reds Elly De La Cruz insists on playing after sister&#8217;s death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHICAGO \u2013 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/cincinnati-reds\/241\" data-autotag=\"203cc92a-9021-409d-8007-55b0c7972c44\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cincinnati Reds<\/a> shortstop Elly De La Cruz chose to play Sunday after learning about the death of his older sister, Genelis.<\/p>\n<p>A news report from the Dominican Republic said Genelis De La Cruz Sanchez, a mother of two, died Saturday after a lengthy battle with health issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just told him we\u2019ll support whatever he needs to do,\u201d manager Terry Francona said before Sunday\u2019s game against the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/chicago-cubs\/240\" data-autotag=\"169a23b0-8bb2-4c7f-af0b-d101e2b1557d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Chicago Cubs<\/a>. \u201cHe wants to play today, and then we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some teammates were not aware of De La Cruz\u2019s loss as of an hour or two before the game.<\/p>\n<p>De La Cruz, who did not address media pregame, singled to right on an 0-2 pitch in his first at-bat with two out in the first, after taking his one allowed timeout for the at-bat before the first pitch to him.<\/p>\n<p>In the sixth inning, he lined a two-run home run to right field and gestured to his heart and then the sky as he crossed the plate.<\/p>\n<p>It was not immediately clear whether De La Cruz, who is from a tight-knit family and has worn a pendant with a photo of his parents on a chain during his career, will take bereavement leave at some point in the coming days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2013 Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz chose to play Sunday after learning about the death&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,489,138,24,535,50,4259,481,1166,161,1164,1570,1576,1163,1177,1156,5344,1165,4,494,169,1174,1182,300,503,536,482,185,317,1155,1175,1571,304],"class_list":{"0":"post-72321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-central","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-cubs","12":"tag-cincinnati","13":"tag-cincinnati-reds","14":"tag-cincinnatireds","15":"tag-content","16":"tag-cruz","17":"tag-cubs","18":"tag-de","19":"tag-death","20":"tag-death-u0026-tragedy","21":"tag-elly","22":"tag-elly-de-la-cruz","23":"tag-francona","24":"tag-il","25":"tag-la","26":"tag-mlb","27":"tag-negative","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-oh","30":"tag-oh-content-sharing-reds-central","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-negative","33":"tag-reds","34":"tag-sharing","35":"tag-sports","36":"tag-sports-news","37":"tag-terry","38":"tag-terry-francona","39":"tag-tragedy","40":"tag-u0026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114610915602701127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}