Every time Santiago Chirino gets a hit, he adds to his all-time Frontier League record for most hits in the history of the league – a record that might last forever.

     Is he aware of it? Is it on his mind each time he walks to the plate?

     “I know about it, but I never think about it,” he said. “I think about me and the pitcher. That’s all that matters. That’s what’s going to make it a good day or a bad day for me, what happens between me and the pitcher.”

     The Jackals shortstop is currently enjoying yet another productive year, batting .312 after his four hits over the holiday weekend helped his team win two of three games over the Sussex County Miners.

     He started this season with 809 hits for the No. 1 spot in the league record book. So far this year, he’s added another 48 hits to give him 857 at the moment. No. 2 in league history is Chris Sidick, who retired a decade ago with 635. 

     “It’s a minute-to-minute battle with the pitcher,” Chirino said. “It all comes down to that.

     “I move around a lot in the batter’s box. I’m always trying to make a plan for how to hit the next pitch. I believe you’ve got to have a plan. They say that baseball is half mental, and when you’re standing at the plate, it’s more than that.”

     New Jersey manager Brooks Carey simply loves Chirino’s approach.

     “He thinks things through,” Carey said with obvious admiration. “Every pitcher has his hands full when Santiago comes up to bat.”

     And Carey knows better than anyone. He was managing the Frontier League’s Normal CornBelters in Illinois in 2013 when Chirino joined the team as a 21-year-old. Before that, Chirino had been signed as a 17-year-old in Venezuela by the Texas Rangers and had already played at the minor-league level in that organization for four seasons.

     He remained with Carey and the CornBelters for the next four years, always batting above .300 and steadily heading toward the league hitting record. Then, Carey came east to take over the Jackals for the 2018 season. One year later, Chirino reunited with Carey here in New Jersey to bat .308 in 2019.

     “If he’s available, you just pencil him into the lineup,” Carey said. “He’s definitely a special player, the kind you don’t meet every day.”

     Chirino’s output that first year here – 86 hits and 50 runs scored – helped the Jackals win the last-ever championship in the old, now-defunct Can-Am League, but of course did not count in the Frontier League records which he’d been building for six years with the CornBelters.

     Last year, when the Jackals joined the Frontier League, Chirino was once again adding to his league totals, batting .306 with 84 hits and 44 runs in 72 games. That expanded his lead in hits and moved him into the No. 3 spot in league history in runs scored. He’s since climbed into the No. 2 ranking with a current mark of 407 runs, approaching the longstanding league record of 434.

     Now 30 years old, Chirino’s wife and 11-month-old son are spending the summer with him here in Little Falls. After the season, the family will return to their home of four years in Pekin, Ill., on the banks of the Illinois River just south of Peoria. They chose to move to that area from Venezuela in 2018, largely because of the warm welcome and deep friendships formed there when Chirino lived with a host family during his CornBelters days.

     A clear leader on and off the field, Chirino sees team camaraderie as one reason for the Jackals’ hitting this year seeming to be contagious – it’s not just one or two guys hitting now and then, it’s a good chunk of the lineup hitting with consistency.

     “It can be contagious, but you need the right group of guys, and you need to work at it,” Chirino said.

     “This is a great group on this team. We talk to each other a lot about hitting. We watch each other. We talk about pitchers and about at-bats. Older guys like me and (Alfredo) Marte try to help the younger players. That’s how you make it contagious.”

     That’s also how a team like the Jackals has the best hitting in the league with a team batting average of .299, ahead of the Washington Wild Things at .296.

     New Jersey also ranks third in the league with 66 home runs, but Chirino is not a part of that barrage.

     “I’ll leave that to some of the other guys,” he said with a laugh. “That’s not me. I just want hits. Hits make me happy. Hits make me go home at night happy and have a happy day the next day.”

     And with his league record for hits growing every day, year after year, it’s no wonder Chirino is usually smiling at the ballpark.

     The final word goes to Carey, his longtime manager:

     “If I manage another five or six years and Santiago is still playing, he’ll be in my lineup,” Carey said. “Even if he’s a 36-year-old player who can’t run, he’d still figure out a way to hit .300.”

By Carl Barbati, former sports editor of the New Jersey Herald, Daily Record and The Daily Trentonian.