Benito Santiago Rivera (born March 9, 1965), a native of Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico, is a MLB baseball catcher with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Santiago came up to the major leagues in 1987 with the San Diego Padres and he established a Major League record that year for a rookie by hitting safely in 34 straight games. He won the National League's Rookie of the Year Award unanimously that year.

Santiago failed to match all the hype that subsequently followed him, and his hitting was not helped by his poor plate discipline. He joined the Marlins in 1993, who traded him to the Reds, where he briefly recovered his best form. Bouncing in 1996 to the Phillies (where he became the first player to hit a grand slam off Greg Maddux) and Blue Jays (1997-98), he lost almost the entire 1998 season to a serious injury sustained in a car crash in Florida. A free agent again, he played 89 games for the Cubs before arriving in San Francisco in 2001, where he has been able to put up decent numbers while helping his team to the playoffs in 2002. His good hitting continued in the playoffs, where he was named 2002 National League Championship Series MVP.

In 2003, Santiago was named by FBI investigators as one of the athletes alleged to have received anabolic steroids, via the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative. In 2004, Santiago was traded to the Kansas City Royals; after the season he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

See also

• Players from Puerto Rico in MLB
• List of famous Puerto Ricans

External links

• Baseball-Reference.com: Benito Santiago
• ESPN.com: Benito Santiago