FORT MYERS, Fla. – In the coming months, Ceddanne Rafaela hopes to check two boxes off his bucket list:

Be teammates with a Red Sox great he’s looked up to for over a decade, and have a season worthy of a defender’s highest honor.

The first item is already down on paper in the form of Team Netherlands’ World Baseball Classic roster.

“I was looking up to him when I was coming up in the organization,” Rafaela told the Herald of Xander Bogaerts. “Didn’t happen, so I’m really excited to be close to him and learn.”

Bogaerts and Rafaela share a special bond, despite never overlapping on Boston’s big-league roster. They hail from Aruba and Curaçao, respectively, two of the three ABC Islands off the coast of Venezuela that are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 23,615 men have played Major League Baseball. They are two of just 23 players from their native islands.

When Bogaerts debuted for the 2013 Red Sox, he became the fifth of now six Aruban players in MLB history (Chadwick Tromp debuted in 2020). Bogaerts won two World Series championships, five Silver Slugger awards, and was a four-time All-Star during his 10 seasons in Boston. He is the Red Sox all-time leader with 1,246 games at shortstop.

Rafaela, who began his professional career as a middle infielder in the Red Sox minor leagues, idolized him. At Fenway Park to receive a minor league award in 2022, he spoke about Bogaerts’ influence. But by the time the Red Sox called up Rafaela late in the summer of 2023, making him the 17th Curaçaoan player in MLB history, Bogaerts was in his first season with the San Diego Padres.

Rafaela hoped the two would be teammates during the 2023 World Baseball Classic, but it never came to be. Instead, they kept in touch in the ensuing years. Bogaerts, who still keeps tabs on the Red Sox, watches clips of Rafaela being a one-man center-field highlight reel at his old stomping grounds.

Whenever the two teams meet, which thanks to MLB balancing schedules three years ago is every season for a three-game series, Bogaerts and Rafaela make sure to catch up. Always in Papiamento, the language of home.

“Obviously he’s a mentor for a lot of kids back home in Curacao and Aruba,” Rafaela said. “And I’m close to him, and to learn from him, I’m very excited.”

Rafaela made a strong case for the utility Gold Glove in 2024, when he became the only player to play at least 60 games at both shortstop and centerfield in the same season since MLB’s Modern Era began in 1901. Playing center full-time in 2025, he earned his first career Gold Glove.

He plans on repeating, and exceeding, last year’s standout defensive performance this season.

“Obviously sometimes you hope to do more,” Rafaela said. “But you have to be grateful for what the man above gave you, and I’m really grateful for what I’ve been doing in my career.”

“More” means a Platinum Glove, the award given out to the single best defender in each league.

“I aim for more,” Rafaela said. “That’s the goal, to win another (Gold Glove) and then to win the Platinum this year.”