Former Red Sox infielder Deven Marrero shares spicy anecdote from 2017 about ghost peppers, sushi

Six years ago this past May, several members of the 2017 Red Sox went out for dinner in downtown Chicago after suffering a series-opening loss to the White Sox in a Memorial Day matinee at Guaranteed Rate Field.

The restaurant they went to, which based off a quick Google search is more than likely Sunda New Asian on West Illinois Street, serves a unique sushi dish called “The Gambler.” According to the establishment’s menu, this offering features spicy tuna, kani, cucumber, scallion, kampyo, avocado, and ghost pepper sambal, which is extremely spicy.

What makes this dish so risky? Well, as former Red Sox infielder Deven Marrero explained in a recent Instagram post, only two of the 12 pieces served actually contained the ghost pepper sambal. Since it was done randomly, though, each member of Boston’s contingent was at slight risk of consuming the peppery morsel.

“It was me, Mookie [Betts], [Jackie Bradley Jr.], [Chris Young], [Brock Holt], [David Price], [Joe Kelly], [Andrew Benintendi], and a couple other guys,” Marrero recalled. “The sushi restaurant that we were at had a Russian roulette-style game that you could play. They give you 12 pieces of sushi, but two of them both have ghost pepper in it.

“Ghost pepper is the third-spiciest pepper in the world,” he continued. “We played one round. Everybody was nervously chewing until Brock Star and C.Y. got up out of their chairs and started going crazy because they got it. We thought it was over and dodged a bullet, until Joe Kelly steps up and says, ‘Hey man, we’re a team. We all got to take one.’ We did. We had big plans, but that ended our night pretty much on the spot. Everyone spent the rest of the night chugging milk.”

The following afternoon, Marrero and Co. arrived at the ballpark and were expectedly feeling uneasy as a result of the previous night’s endeavors.

“The trainer was running low on [Pepto Bismol], because that’s all we all asked for,” said Marrero. “We were all kind of worried about how the game was going to go.”

As it turns out, though, the Red Sox lineup overshadowed Chris Sale’s return to the South Side that fateful Tuesday night by homering six times as part of 13-7 win over the White Sox. Marrero went 2-for-5 with a pair of early home runs and five RBIs, marking the first and only multi-homer game of his big-league career. Betts and Bradley Jr. also went deep, as did Xander Bogaerts and Mitch Moreland

“Sure enough, everyone who ate the ghost pepper homered that day,” Marrero said. “To this day, this group identifies itself as the Ghost Pepper Boys.”

Marrero, now 33, appeared in a career-high 71 games for the Red Sox in 2017 and batted .211/.259/.333 with nine doubles, four homers, 27 RBIs, 32 runs scored, five stolen bases, 12 walks, and 61 strikeouts. The former 24th overall pick out of Arizona State was then traded to the Diamondbacks for a player to be named later the following March.

That player turned out to be lefty reliever Josh Taylor, who debuted for Boston in May 2019. Marrero, meanwhile, spent the 2018 campaign with Arizona and then signed a minor-league deal with his hometown Marlins that December. The Miami-area native appeared in five games in 2019 and — after not playing at all in 2020 — got into 10 more games for the Fish in 2021 despite being designated for assignment on five separate occasions.

Last April, Marrero signed with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. He spent two months with the club before joining the Mets organization on a minors pact in late June. The right-handed hitter was called up by New York twice, but he received just six plate appearances before again being designated and outrighted off the 40-man roster in September. He elected free agency shortly thereafter but did not sign with a team at any point during the 2023 season.