Baseball (20 page)

Latin America has developed its own style of baseball. While the Japanese leagues have existed for domestic consumption until recently, most players in the Caribbean region have had one major goal—to reach the majors and make money. Only Cuba, with its state-dominated league and tight controls on immigration, has kept its players at home, although defections by Cuban stars have been common.

Because of its proximity to South Florida, Cuba was the first major Latin outlet for baseball. Some say that Nemesio Guilló, a college student, brought the sport back from the United States in 1866, while others give credit to Esteban Bellán, who left the island to study at Fordham University in New York in 1869, became the first Latin major-leaguer with the Troy Haymakers, and returned to Cuba in 1874.

By 1878, there was a professional league, including Havana, Almendares, and Matanzas. Cuban sugarcane workers then carried the sport to the Dominican Republic and also the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico while American troops and oil workers taught the sport in other parts of Mexico. Venezuela's tie to baseball was established
in 1895, but the sport really boomed after 1922, when oil was discovered in Lake Maracaibo, bringing the inevitable Americans. And Puerto Rico took up baseball following its independence from Spain in 1897.

Early in the twentieth century, Cuba was becoming a virtual colony of the United States, convenient for beaches and gambling and various other pleasures, only a few miles from the Florida coast. With a year-round baseball season, Cuba developed its own players and also offered a haven to black Americans who were banned from organized ball at home and therefore had considerable incentive to beat touring major-leaguers.

“I didn't come down here to let a lot of coffee-colored Cubans show me up,” John J. McGraw is said to have grumbled after visiting with the Giants. Historians have counted 65 games between major-leaguers and Cuban teams, with a direct split of 32-32-1. Jose Mendez, one of Cuba's greatest pitchers, won eight of those games.

In the early twentieth century, many Latinos hoped to play in the major leagues but never got the chance because of America's national obsession about race. Martin Dihigo, a Cuban who led the Mexican League in batting in 1938 with a .387 average and also won 18 games as a pitcher with an earned run average of 0.90, was too dark-skinned for the majors, although he would eventually be voted into the Hall of Fame.

Some players did slip under the American visual skin-tone barrier. Clark Griffith, while operating the Cincinnati Reds, hired Rafael Almeida and his translator, Armando Marsans, whose complexion was called “olive-skinned,” and later when Griffith moved to Washington he signed light-skinned Latinos at modest salaries.

One Cuban who passed the visual barrier was Miguel Gonzalez, a catcher who became the first Latino manager, filling in for 17 games with the Cardinals late in the 1938 season. Gonzalez was also the third-base coach when Enos Slaughter steamed home with the winning run in the 1946 World Series, and Gonzalez was later the scout who coined the immortal evaluation: “good field, no hit.”

The first big star from Latin America was Adolfo Luque, a
pitcher born in 1890 in Cuba. After bouncing around, Luque joined Cincinnati in 1918 and bloomed under his manager, Christy Mathewson. Luque pitched the first shutout by a Latino, and in 1919 became the first Latino to play in the World Series. Although he often heard heckling about his swarthy skin, Luque had the aggressive temperament to give it right back, lasting long enough to save the 1933 World Series for the Giants.

Luque is a classic example of the six-degree connections in baseball. After World War Two, during the Pasquel brothers' expensive raids on the majors, Luque was managing the Puebla team in Mexico. One of his pitchers was Sal Maglie, a refugee from the Giants, who had previously pitched for Luque in winter ball in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

Years later, Maglie would tell how Luque lectured him to throw a curveball—“like Mardy.”

“Mardy? Who's that?” Maglie had asked.

“Mardy! Mardy! You never heard of Chreesty Mardyson?” Luque replied in his chewy Cuban accent.

After Luque's tutelage, Maglie returned to the States as a hardbitten old pro, mostly with the Giants, later with Brooklyn. In 1956, Maglie was a teammate of a lanky rookie named Don Drysdale, imparting his wisdom about when and how to pitch inside, which Drysdale adapted with great relish. Thus, there is a direct baseball lineage from Mathewson, the Hall of Famer early in the century, through Luque and Maglie, to Drysdale, an eventual Hall of Famer.

The ethnic barriers fell slightly, out of necessity, during World War Two. Some teams, particularly Washington, signed Latin players who happened to be light-skinned and were not about to be drafted for the military. Needing reasonably able-bodied players, Griffith and other owners were less likely to inspect the color of their imports from Cuba.

Two years after the arrival of Jackie Robinson and other pioneers in 1947, Cleveland brought in Orestes Arrieta Armas, who went by his stepbrothers' family name of Minoso. Nicknamed “Minnie,” he was promptly traded to the White Sox, where he became Rookie of the Year and was soon considered a Chicago civic
treasure up to his retirement in 1964. Minoso made cameo appearances in the 1970s and 1980s but was stopped from playing in another decade in 1990 when Commissioner Fay Vincent refused to permit any such Veeckian-style tomfoolery.

Roberto Clemente from Carolina, Puerto Rico, became the first Latino superstar. He signed with the Dodgers for a bonus of $10,000, but under the rules of the day Clemente either had to play for the parent team in Brooklyn or be eligible for a draft by another system. The Dodgers tried to hide him at their Montreal farm team in 1954, but the rumpled veteran Pittsburgh scout Howie Haak noticed Clemente on his rare appearances and quickly recommended him to the Pirates' general manager—none other than Branch Rickey. Rickey, who had been forced out by Walter O'Malley, delightedly drafted Clemente, and turned him over to mentors, in-cluding—the reader has already guessed—George Sisler.

Sisler showed Clemente how to make tighter turns while running the bases, and how to keep his head from bobbing at the plate. Clemente broke in with the Pirates in 1955, helped them win the World Series in 1960, and won the batting championship in 1961 with a .351 average. Later he thanked the Pirates coaches, including Sisler, for their encouragement.

Proud, intelligent, handsome, and outspoken on the subject of race—plus a graceful right fielder with a superb arm and quick bat—Clemente became a superstar. In the last days of 1972, following an earthquake in Nicaragua, Clemente chartered a plane in Puerto Rico, loaded it himself with relief supplies, and prepared to fly there, but the plane crashed into the sea upon takeoff. He quickly became one of the few players ever inducted into the Hall of Fame before the mandatory five-year waiting period. To this day, many Latino players wear No. 21 in his honor.

After Minoso and Clemente arrived, it was obvious that Latin America was a gold mine for talent. The Giants found the three Alou brothers in the Dominican Republic, along with Juan Marichal. After the Dodgers discovered Fernando Valenzuela in Mexico, their 1981 attendance was an average of 9,000 higher on the days of his scheduled starts at home.

No country in the world loves baseball more than Cuba, both before and after the 1959 revolution. Fidel Castro has never discouraged the myth that he was once a hot pitching prospect, but in reality his highest level was pitching for his decidedly amateur law school team. Under Castro, the state-supported national team has dominated world amateur tournaments, but Castro has refused to allow his players to earn a salary in professional leagues outside the country. Many Cuban stars found a way to leave, starting with young Tony Perez and Tony Oliva after the revolution and followed, years later, by Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez, who slipped out by sea, either on a leaky raft or a high-powered yacht, depending on who is doing the telling. In 1998, somewhere in his thirties, El Duque established himself as a fearless winner of big games for the Yankees. Nicaragua also closed its borders for a time, but Dennis Martinez managed to sign with Baltimore in 1973 and had a long and successful career in the major leagues.

Many major league teams, recognizing the talent pool in Latin America, began establishing academies, particularly in the Dominican Republic. In 2005, the Mets brought over Omar Minaya as their general manager after he had helped keep the shaky Montreal Expos competitive.

Minaya, of Dominican ancestry and raised in Queens, a few blocks from Shea Stadium, was given a large budget for restocking the Mets. He promptly signed Pedro Martinez, the ace Dominican pitcher, as well as Carlos Beltran and later Carlos Delgado, two Puerto Rican sluggers, who served as walking advertisements that the Mets were receptive to talent, wherever its origins.

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Meanwhile, Ichiro (or “Suzuki,” as he is still listed in baseball's finicky computer system) established himself as one of the great hitters in the major leagues, making 242, 208, and 212 hits in his first three seasons.

In 2004, he began to challenge the record for hits in a single season, 257, set back in 1920 by George Sisler. In America, fans were inflamed by home runs but Japan was captivated by Ichiro's chase of Sisler, who had died in 1973. When it became obvious that Ichiro
might break the record, members of Sisler's family were invited to Seattle on the final weekend of the season.

“If my grandfather were here today, he would say of Ichiro that he is a professional baseball player and would not want to talk about where he was from,” said William Drochelman, meaning that his grandfather would not care about the race of the player who broke his record.

After slapping a single up the middle, breaking the record that had lasted eighty-four years, Ichiro jogged toward the stands, waving his batting helmet for Sisler's daughter, Frances Drochelman of St. Louis, eighty-one years old. He did not perform a deep ceremonial bow as he might have done in Japan, but he smiled at Sisler's daughter, who applauded, shook his hand, and patted him on the shoulder.

“There was so little time, and with the language barrier, I just thanked them for coming,” Ichiro told reporters later.

Ichiro's opponents, the Texas Rangers, got into the spirit. The four infielders lined up near second base, removed their caps, and bowed deeply.

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By the twenty-first century, fully a quarter of all major-leaguers came from abroad. By contrast, the number of African-Americans in the major leagues had fallen to 9 percent by 2005. The sport of Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays was now perceived as a “white man's sport” by many black Americans, who tended to play football and basketball. Black fans, who had flocked to the integrated major leagues after World War Two, were now a distinct minority in the modern stadiums of America. By 2006, Major League Baseball was encouraging urban baseball academies in the United States to match the twenty academies that trained the eager talent in the Dominican Republic.

The sport continued to grow around the world after being officially added to the Olympic schedule in Seoul in 1988. Countries like China and Russia recruited athletes from other sports to learn baseball's specialized techniques. Unfortunately, Major League Baseball did not allow its players to take time off for the Olympic
tournament every four years because it inevitably fell during the regular season. Perhaps Major League Baseball was hesitant to expose its players to the rigid Olympic testing for performance-enhancing drugs. The International Olympic Committee, seeking to streamline the Summer Games, voted to drop baseball after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

Needing to find its own path to a world forum, Major League Baseball organized a sixteen-nation tournament in March 2006, trying to emulate the World Cup of soccer, the most popular sports event on earth. The new World Baseball Classic included stars like Derek Jeter from the United States; David Ortiz from the Dominican Republic; Mike Piazza representing Italy, the nation of his grandparents; and Ichiro Suzuki from Japan. South Korea beat the United States out of a place in the semifinals and Cuba stunned Puerto Rico in San Juan for a place in the semifinals. The proud and edgy Cubans, wearing bright red uniforms—with Fidel's son Antonio serving as team doctor, counselor, and cheery commissar in the dugout—advanced to the finals against Japan.

In the championship game in San Diego, the Japanese prevailed over the Cubans, 10–6. Many Americans grumbled that holding the tournament in March, during the early days of spring training, did not allow the Americans to play at their best, but the reality was that the Japanese and Cubans and South Koreans all outworked the United States with sound fundamentals and desire. The absence of the American squad in the finals was a huge boost to the credibility of the tournament and an advertisement for the growth of baseball around the world. The organizers hoped to work out some of the flaws by the next Classic in 2009, but a World Cup–style tournament seems to be the way for baseball to continue growing around the world.

I
f Alexander Cartwright or Doc Adams were ushered into a modern ballpark, he would surely recognize the sport itself, right down to the strutting athletes who hit and run, spit and scratch, just like the old-timers. But the ancient builders of the sport might be mystified by the dreadful din blasting from the loudspeakers or the air-conditioned luxury boxes separating the shrimp-eaters and wine-drinkers from the actual fans. (“Sushi? What is this sushi?” Cartwright or Adams might well ask.)

They would also demand a careful explanation of some strange doings on the field. Are those gigantic gloves really necessary? What is all that equipment on the catcher? And who is this interloper who comes out to bat every few innings and then disappears without ever playing in the field?

Baseball has continued to evolve, every day, every season, sometimes generically and sometimes artificially, often accompanied by loud and long debate. Many of the changes divide fans into conservatives and liberals. Every innovation produces purists and high priests who believe the game should never be monkeyed with, and more tolerant souls who ask, “What's the big deal?”