This story was excerpted from AJ Cassavell’s Padres Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here . And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The city of Guayana on the south bank of the Orinoco River in Venezuela has produced two Major League catchers. One of them, Carlos Hernández , backstopped the Padres to the 1998 National League pennant. He played parts of 10 seasons in the big leagues and now calls games as an analyst on the team’s Spanish radio broadcast.

The other? He joined Hernández in San Diego last week. Freddy Fermin , the Padres’ newly acquired catcher , grew up five minutes from the Hernández family’s home in Guayana.

To say Fermin and Hernández go way back would be an understatement. In fact, Hernández and Freddy Fermin once played together

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