Alfonso Soriano talks about his mother, who died suddenly from a heart attack last month:

Andrea Soriano wasn’t just mother and father to Alfonso and his siblings after the parents split when he was very young — she was also a baseball fan.

If not for her influence, he might have become an engineer instead of a $136 million ballplayer.

‘‘She supported me all the time,’’ he said. ‘‘I remember when I was a little kid, I wanted to move to my father’s house, and I went for two days and then went back to my mom’s house.’’

His father, who lived in the city — San Pedro de Macoris — didn’t let him play baseball after school and saw more opportunity in studying, even at an elementary-school level, and putting his efforts toward a white-collar profession.

‘‘My pop, he wanted me to be an engineer because he used to be an engineer,’’ Soriano said. ‘‘And I told him, ‘No, I want to play baseball.’ And I went back to my mom. My mom gave me the green light to do whatever I wanted in baseball. She’d say, ‘Go to school first, in the morning, and in the afternoon you can go to the field and work on baseball.’?’’

In most cases, his father would be right. This time, mom was, and her son became a great player and a very rich man.