Juiced (3 page)

My parents and older sister, Teresa, were living in Regla in July 1964 when my mother gave birth to me and my twin brother, Osvaldo. People like to say that Ozzie and I were like pocket-sized atom bombs when we were babies, but my father says we were actually nice and quiet. People were always fussing over us. They usually had trouble telling the two of us apart because we looked the same and were the exact same size and weight. But I had a birthmark on the back of my hand, so that helped family members know which of us was which. Those were bad times to be living in Cuba, especially since the government knew my father did not support their system. My father had to wait until the year after Ozzie and I were born for a chance to leave. The Castro government announced in 1965 that it would allow an airlift of people from Varadero, Cuba, to Miami. Ozzie and I were just babies when my parents took us and Teresa to the airport, where we climbed into a small propeller plane.

There was only room for about twenty people inside, and apparently it was stuffy. I don't remember any of that, but it was an important day for the family and we heard about it later.

"It was very, very hot inside the plane," my father used to tell us, looking back on that momentous day. He would always tell us how sad he was, leaving behind his home country and his parents, and the rest of his family. Bui he knew he had to do it, and he was eager to start a new life, ma king the most of his knowledge of English. We were also lucky to have family members living in south Florida, ready to help us out. My Aunt Lilia was there at the airport, waiting to meet us, but first my parents had to go through an inspection. They had no money or identification, but they stripped my father and searched him, and then stripped my mother and searched her, too. "We had nothing," my father would tell us.

But he had English, and the work experience to land a good job soon after he arrived in America. He found work as a territory manager for Amoco Oil, which was a good position, but to him it was only a start, and he was always looking for other ways to bring in extra income. He also worked nights as a security guard at two different places. We grew up in an average environment, in the southwest section of Miami, but my dad was always working like crazy to improve our position. He always had dreams of bettering himself and took some college courses, and was always studying something.

He never had much extra time, but sometimes he would take a break from his work in the afternoon and drive Ozzie and me to a nearby school in Opalocka so he could teach us baseball.

He started this when Ozzie and I were real small, just three or four years old, and continued for years, helping us develop. We would wait until school was out for the day so we could use the school building as a backstop. We just needed a bat and a ball. "Jose, see this bat here?" my father would ask me. "Yes, Dad," I'd say. "You put that bat on your shoulder and I'm going to pitch the ball to you." "And when I say 'Swing!' you swing, so you can hit it."

Each of us would get ten hits. One would take his swings, and the other would stand behind my dad to field any balls that made it that far. My dad says that Ozzie learned faster than I did, and used to hit the ball farther when we were both little kids, but I don't remember.

Ozzie and I started playing organized baseball when we were twelve or thirteen. You could say we were both late bloomers. We were always just average baseball players, and that was really frustrating for my father. He had worked so hard to give us a good life in America, and he wanted us to do great things. Average was never acceptable, and my dad would criticize us a lot because we weren't better. He would come to all of our games, and every time we would play badly, my dad would scream at us in front of everybody. It was embarrassing and really hard to take. Sometimes we'd leave the game crying.

"You're going to grow up and work at Burger King or McDonald's!" my father would scream at us. "You'll never add up to anything!"

Ozzie and I were both pretty lousy baseball players at that time, and we gave my dad plenty to scream about. But we were just kids, twelve or thirteen years old, and his yelling was pretty hard to take. I guess it kind of stuck with us, even today. "You stink!" he would shout.

My father was a real perfectionist. He was tough on himself, always trying to do everything in life perfectly. And he was hard on us, too. But my father was expecting too much of us, and we couldn't live up to such high expectations. Now he says he hopes he did not push us too much.

One day, in an effort to help us get better, my father made a deal with us that he would give us five dollars for every home run we hit. He stuck with that long after I had made the major leagues and was hitting plenty of homers every year.

But early on, after he first made that offer, I didn't get many chances to collect. I don't know if it was because my father was always pointing out everything I did wrong on the baseball field, or if it was because I was skinny and weak at that age, but I never felt like I had any real talent as a baseball player. I did love to watch the game, though.

I used to watch the Cincinnati Reds a lot, and on Saturdays I would catch the television show This Week in Baseball. Back then, Reggie Jackson was the big hero; he was my favorite player-the big power hitter-and I used to watch him whenever I could and try to study what he did. But I never tried to imagine myself in his shoes. That was just not for me. Guys like me didn't make it.

As a little kid, I played with Rafael Palmeiro and Danny Tartabull, two guys who you just knew were automatic major leaguers. You could just take one look at them and see that they had what it took to become some of the best baseball players in the world. You could tell from watching their swings or checking out the little details about the way they played the game. They were so talented, it was incredible. Palmeiro had the sweetest, most compact swing. Both of them stood out among us kids.

Raffy went on to hit more than 500 home runs. Tartabull finished with 262 homers. Between the three of us, we've hit more than 1,250 major-league home runs. But back then, when we were boys, those guys were way ahead of me. They were already superstars, confident and physically developed at thirteen or fourteen. I was so puny, it was a joke. Now it turns out I'm probably twice their size and twice their strength. Life's funny that way.

Baseball was such a struggle for me. I never even had a set position until I got to high school and started playing a lot of third base. Basically, when you're a kid you just play everything. You catch. You pitch. You play some outfield. You play some infield.

You're trying to find what position you'll actually do well in, so you play all over, waiting for something to click.

Ozzie and I kept plugging away, and my dad kept criticizing us. For both Ozzie and me, it would have been a lot harder to handle my dad's constant criticism and yelling if it weren't for our mother. She was always there for us, taking care of us, feeding us.

If we got beat up by some other kids-and believe me, that happened from time to time when we were little-we'd go to my mom and she'd make everything better. She was a stay-at-home mom and a great cook. There was always something on the stove, usually Cuban food, and she would look after that and look after us, and she always maintained an even disposition. I don't remember her ever being angry with us, not once, even though sometimes we definitely deserved it. My father took care of supplying the anger.

My mother came from a quiet family back in Regla, the Capas family, and she was just the quietest, nicest lady in the world. All of my memories of her are set in the house. My mother was always restrained in her emotions; she loved Christmas, and I'll always remember the half-smile she had as we decorated the tree. That smile was how you knew she was really enjoying herself. On Christmas Day, when we woke up to find a pile of toys under the tree, my mother sat there beaming at us. She was so giving. I think it must have been her favorite day of the year.

My mom never learned much about sports. My father was the one who took us to practice, telling us what we needed to do to improve. My mother almost never came to our games; she just wouldn't have understood what was happening out there, and anyway that was my father's domain.

My mother was very old-fashioned and hardly spoke any English. She loved to sing to us in Spanish. I remember when we were little, she would put us to bed and sing us Spanish lullabies. My mother was our rock. She was our protector when my dad had a bad day at work or was after us for some other reason. Don't get me wrong. Ozzie and 1 were not what you would call little angels. Sometimes we would misbehave and we probably did deserve to get spanked for it. But that was only some of the time. My mom was the one who was always trying to soften the blows or the issues with my dad. From the time when we were young boys and all the way up until high school, Ozzie and I would always run to mom for protection if my dad criticized us or spanked us. We loved her very much.

People always laugh when I tell them what ordinary kids Ozzie and I were growing up, but it's really true. We looked forward to the same things as any other kids, like going to the movies. A lot of times, we would head up to the Jerry Lewis Theater in Carol City, which was a little to the north of Opalocka, to check out the double features they were showing. I always loved the movies and as crazy as it might sound, I always thought about being in movies myself. That was a dream that seemed more real to me than playing professional baseball.

One weekend, when Ozzie and I were about eleven, we went with our two cousins to see Bruce Lee in a double feature of Enter the Dragon and The Way of the Dragon. I don't remember much about the plot of Enter the Dragon; what I do remember was the action. Bruce Lee was so fast, nobody could touch him, and that was long before computer-generated special effects.

That first time we saw Bruce Lee and all the amazing things he could do, we came out of the theater into the bright sunlight of South Florida and started messing around, kicking each other in an attempt to recreate what we'd just seen. We knew we had to try to learn some of his tricks, and from the beginning we were pretty good at it. It was fun, too. Bruce Lee was so cool; we all wanted to be like him. Back then, he was the foremost martial artist in the world, and not only because he was extremely fast, but also because of his ideas and philosophy. Once we had seen Bruce Lee on screen, it kind of stayed with us. I remember every now and then, Ozzie and I would play around, either kicking each other or trying out some of Bruce Lee's other moves. It didn't take long before we found a way to get some actual lessons to learn how to do some of these things properly. We didn't have enough money to go to a dojo, of course, but a friend knew someone who was an instructor and we were able to arrange private lessons for a group of us, two or three times a week.

I enjoyed those lessons a lot. We were learning Tae Kwon Do, and I took to it quickly. Finally, something I was good at! I was the highest kicker in the group, almost right from the start, and as I practiced more, I got better. The lessons were sporadic, but even when we weren't taking lessons, Ozzie and I practiced by ourselves. We turned into serious students of the martial arts. Later on, as we got bigger, we put that on the back burner, but I knew we would get back into it when the time was right.

2. A J.V. Player at Coral Park High

Staring down at this poor sap from the pitcher's mound,
his uniform flapping loosely in the breeze,
I remember thinking, Jesus Christ, this guy could
Hula-Hoop inside a Cheerio.
The toothpick's name was Jose Canseco,
and before this game was over, I'd beat him for four
dribbled groundouts and a nice, fat K.
-
DAVID WELLS,
Perfect I'm Not

You hear many players say that they'd been dreaming about the majors since they were old enough to hold a bat. Not me. I was always a scrawny kid, not very athletic, and in my wildest dreams I couldn't see myself playing at the major-league level. I never, ever thought that I would make it, or that I was good enough. After all, I was so shy and wimpy-looking back in high school, everyone ignored me most of the time, especially the girls. Seriously, I was probably the ugliest kid at my high school. I did have a girlfriend in high school for a while, a beautiful girl named Anna, and I don't even know what she saw in me. I was the ugly duckling.

I remember having a crush on a cheerleader named Dawn Alba, who was drop-dead gorgeous. Every guy at the school must have had a crush on her. She was Cuban, of course, but looked kind of Italian, with dark hair, dark eyes, and an incredible body. You know how high school crushes are. My jaw would drop when I saw her, but I never talked to her. I was basically too dweeby and yucky-looking to approach her.

I never really said much of anything to anyone. I kept to myself, rather than having to deal with communicating with other people.

Every week in social studies, the teacher made some of the students go up to the front of the class to give a verbal presentation on something we had been studying. I couldn't do it. It was too scary for me. I would just take the bad grades on the verbal presentations because I knew I didn't have the courage to talk in front of the class. Not once did I go up there. The idea of speaking in front of people made me too nervous. You could have offered me a million dollars to go up to the front of class and speak, and I still could never have done it. I just refused and took a failing grade.

My high school physical education teacher, Glenn Dunn, was also one of our baseball coaches, and he made an effort to bring me out of my shell. We still talk about those days. He'd tell me that if I had more confidence in myself, good things would happen. My brother was always more confident than I was, and that might have helped him make a better impression on people, including the coach. But Ozzie was also more aggressive than I was, and tended to mix it up in a way I didn't.