The island nation of Curaçao is accustomed to punching above its weight in the sporting world. Well above. Ahead of this year’s FIFA World Cup, they became the smallest country—both by land area and population—to qualify for the tournament. That milestone accompanies its continued ascendence as a baseball hotbed. You can thank Curaçao for the Netherlands making regular appearances in the World Baseball Classic.
Hensley Meulens is a player who punched above his own weight, too. Though the former top
Yankee prospect never achieved lasting success in the majors, “Bam-Bam” became the first player from Curaçao to reach MLB, setting the precedent that would be followed by Andruw Jones, Kenley Jansen, Ozzie Albies, and more. He went on to spend over 15 seasons as a MLB hitting coach.
Hensley Filemon Acasio Meulens
Born: June 20, 1983 (Willemstad, Curaçao)
Yankees Tenure: 1989-93
Meulens’ current-day baseball resumé is about as impressive as anyone’s, but it all began on Curaçao, as he honed his craft in a decidedly less popular sport. Like most places around the world, soccer was king, but Hensley quickly emerged as a promising power bat. Having already earned the Flintstonian nickname Bam-Bam, Meulens was signed by the Yankees in 1985 and worked his way steadily up the minor league ladder.
The Bombers, of course, needed all the help they could get in this era. For a mediocre squad which only bore a passing resemblance to the dynasties of yesteryear, Meulens became a classically overhyped prospect; a name to dream and dream and dream on. Meulens did make his MLB debut at the advanced age of 22 against the Red Sox in 1989, logging his first career hit in the process. The following season, he appeared in 23 games and acquitted himself nicely, with a .771 OPS and three homers.
Ultimately, though, Meulens could not make consistent contact. A poor breaking ball hitter by his own admission, Bam-Bam stumbled through a nightmare 1991, the first and only time he got a real shot as a starter. In 96 games, he managed a mere .595 OPS with six homers and 97 strikeouts. He only made a few passing cameos over the next two years before the Yankees released him.
But the Bronx was just the first step on a long and varied itinerary for Meulens as a player. The second step took him to Nippon Professional Baseball, where he played three seasons: one year with the Chiba Lotte Marines and two with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. There, his promising power translated; he hit 77 homers with a .466 slugging percentage. In 1995, the Swallows won the Japan Series. Meulens was second on the team with 29 homers.
That bam-bamming across the Pacific Ocean was sufficient for Meulens to get a few more looks from Major League teams—he added more stamps to his passport by suiting up for the Expos for 16 games in 1997, then popped up in the desert for the expansion Diamondbacks. In 1999, he couldn’t quite make it back to the Show, but did the next-best thing: he played 118 games for the independent-league Newark Bears. (RIP Riverfront Stadium.)
Meulens scratched two more countries off his bucket list in 2000 when he played in both Mexico and Korea, then wrapped up his playing career following the 2002 season. As that door closed, a new door opened in the realm of coaching. He served as hitting coach for the Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis for four years in the mid-2000s, instructing prospects like Rajai Davis, Neil Walker, Nate McLouth, and Andrew McCutchen.
In 2010, he became the hitting coach for the San Francisco Giants, just in time for Bruce Bochy’s squad to win three World Series in five years. Meulens maintained that post while serving as Team Netherlands’ manager in international competitions, while also growing the game in his native Curaçao with youth programs and academies.
In 2017, the Yankees declined to renew Joe Girardi’s contract, giving the Yankees a managerial vacancy for the first time in a decade. Meulens popped up as one of the candidates who interviewed for the job, but ultimately Aaron Boone got the nod. Meulens still made his return to the Yankees organization in 2022 as an assistant hitting coach before the Rockies hired him away the following season.
Now, we all know Meulens is a man who has been all over the globe—a frequent flyer, if you will. Well, in 2024, it seemed he finally wanted to see how he was getting around. In April, while still in his role with the Rockies, he posted an Instagram video of him in the cockpit of a plane during a team flight to Toronto. While somewhat amusing, it was clearly not something Meulens should have been doing, nor something the crew should have let him do. He nonetheless kept his job as the hitting coach for the Rockies for the remainder of the season before being replaced by Clint Hurdle in April 2025. This May, the Leones de Yucatán of the Mexican League announced Meulens would be their new manager.
The odds that Meulens would become a successful baseball player and coach were not necessarily in his favor. But in reaching the Show, he showed what was possible for the ballplayers to follow who would come from Curaçao — as well as nearby Aruba. The best of them have played under Meulens for Team Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic: Ozzie Albies, Jurickson Profar, Xander Bogaerts, Jonathan Schoop, Andrelton Simmons, and Kenley Jansen. Of course, there was also Andruw Jones, also known as The Curaçao Kid, whose stardom with the Braves brought more widespread awareness of the island to baseball audiences (he recently succeeded Meulens as the Dutch skipper for the WBC). Meulens was the man who proved it was possible to make it from there to the bigs, and today, Curaçao is a wonderfully unique and indelible part of the international tapestry of baseball.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
