SARASOTA, Fla. — Rico Garcia kept dropping hints with a few of his former New York Mets teammates last year. To Edwin Díaz and Francisco Lindor, the right-handed reliever let them know from time to time, not trying to push but advocating for himself nonetheless.

“Hey, if you need a guy, I’m interested,” Garcia kept telling the Puerto Rican stars.

Those hints have paid off. On Sunday, Garcia had his suitcases packed in the Orioles clubhouse, ready to join Puerto Rico’s team at the World Baseball Classic.

“As a kid growing up, this would be our Super Bowl,” Garcia said.

Garcia, one of several Orioles players participating in the World Baseball Classic, will soon fly to a territory where he has rarely stepped foot. But the Hawaiian-born reliever is brimming with pride for Puerto Rico, because his father, Eddie, is brimming with pride for Puerto Rico.

Soon, Garcia will join his wife and his parents for games in Puerto Rico, the first of which arrives Friday against Colombia. Despite being born in Hawaii, Eddie Garcia made sure his own heritage was very much part of Rico’s life. And now they’ll share it on baseball’s international stage.

“It’s something that just drives me crazy. Baseball, I love it,” Eddie Garcia said in September.

That rubbed off on Rico Garcia.

“That baseball culture was so deeply rooted from a young age [in Eddie], and he carried it on to his adult years, even into when he had kids, with Rico,” Rico’s wife, Nicolette, said in September. “The love for the game was there.”

Eddie Garcia moved from Puerto Rico to New Haven, Connecticut, as a 14-year-old. He still played baseball, even throughout his time in the Army. When Rico Garcia began to impress in the sport, Eddie vowed to follow his son’s journey through college summer ball and the minor leagues.

Rico Garcia debuted in 2019 for the Colorado Rockies, and he soon arrived in San Francisco, where his future Orioles manager, Craig Albernaz, was making his big league debut on the Giants’ staff as a bullpen coach.

It wasn’t a seamless transition to the majors. Garcia missed all of 2021 because of Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery, and he bounced around for years after that.

“Any parent would be proud of their kid and what they accomplished, and everything he went through, it was kind of tough,” Eddie Garcia said. “I was there for moral support.”

Eddie Garcia and Nicolette were there for much of Rico Garcia’s roundabout 2025 season, too. He had two stints with the Mets, one with the New York Yankees, and then Garcia landed with the Orioles.

In 19 innings to close the year, Garcia posted a 2.84 ERA. The biggest difference, Garcia said, was trusting that his stuff could force hitters into weak contact — and then trusting that his defense would make the outs behind him. By attacking the strike zone, Garcia flourished.

“He’s been throwing the ball well, extremely well,” Albernaz said. “For him, personally, I think it’s going to be so much fun. Plus they’re playing in Puerto Rico, too, so I’m very excited for him and the rest of the guys who are going there.”

Garcia reunites with a couple of former Mets teammates, along with his old bullpen coach, José Rosado, who works for the Mets and Puerto Rico. The timing of Garcia’s breakout in the majors aligned at the “perfect time” to make a World Baseball Classic appearance possible.

Sharing that with his family in Puerto Rico is even better. Because Garcia is proud of his heritage — be it Filipino from his mother, Puerto Rican from his father or Hawaiian from both.

“Just like Hawaii, if you’re from Hawaii, you’ll know if someone is from Hawaii just because they’re so proud to be from there,” Garcia said. “It’s just one of those things where you’re so far from the States that, when you are able to make it out of it, you just want to represent the people and everything, and that goes for Puerto Rico as well.”