Hensley Meulens

Who is Hensley Meulens?

Hensley Filemon Acasio Meulens is a Dutch former professional baseball player and current hitting coach for the San Francisco Giants, from Curaçao. He played from 1989 to 2000 in Major League Baseball, Nippon Professional Baseball, and the Korea Baseball Organization. He was the first major leaguer to come from Curaçao. He was also the first from Curaçao to play at the Dominican Professional Baseball League, followed by Sharnol Adriana, Andruw Jones, Wladimir Balentien, Randall Simon and Jurickson Profar. When Meulens worked as the hitting coach in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization he often acted both as unofficial team translator for the Indians and as Japanese scout for the Pirates because he speaks five languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, Papiamento and Japanese.

Hitting home runs left-handed while playing softball as a teenager earned Meulens the nickname "Bam Bam" when his friends compared his power to the Flintstones cartoon character.

Over the course of his career, Meulens would become the first to play for all four of the major Caribbean winter leagues.