In a certain sense, a brotherhood was forged between Edinson Volquez and Yordano Ventura before they even knew each other.
It was steeped in their common experience as natives of the Dominican Republic, where each grew up with meager means in loving families.
Volquez was a self-described "tornado" as a child, Ventura a perpetual motion machine.
Each also became known as "Pedrito," Little Pedro, a nod to their promise in the game and aspirations to be like pitcher Pedro Martinez, just the second Dominican to ascend to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ventura was 7 years old when he provided Martinez's name as his idol for images to go with a Bible verse on a plaque; Volquez's first glove was a Martinez model, and the first thing he saw in his bedroom every morning was a giant poster of Martinez _ whose "every movement, every motion" he tried to emulate.
Volquez was 17 or 18 when he was signed by the Texas Rangers for $27,000 in 2001 and made his minor league debut about 18 months later; Ventura was 17 when he was signed by the Royals for $28,000 in 2008 and made his minor league debut 18 months later.
All of this might have been enough for Volquez to feel an instant kinship to Ventura when they became Royals teammates in 2015.
But there was another essential element already in place ... and much more to come as they helped the Royals win the World Series.
Eight years the elder of Ventura, Volquez saw in him the same sorts of passion and volatility he had to learn to harness in his early days with the Rangers.
All of which helps explain why Volquez relished having a locker next to Ventura for the two seasons he was with the Royals, why he loved mentoring Ventura and joking with him _ and why he felt it was his duty to counsel and even chastise him for the temperamental antics that underscored Ventura's early 2015 season.
As if speaking to a younger version of himself, Volquez remembers telling Ventura, " 'Why do you have to be angry? Why do you have to be mad?' "
So these are the intense depths to which Volquez means it when he calls Ventura his "little brother."
And maybe that helps account a little bit for how he came to pitch a no-hitter for the Miami Marlins on June 3 _ which would have been the 26th birthday of Ventura, who died in a car accident in puzzling circumstances on a twisting mountain road in the Dominican in the early hours of Jan. 22.
Depending on your belief system, of course, you might see the remarkable moment as more coincidence than fate, more a matter of chance than some cosmic indulgence or divine invention.
