The Closer (4 page)

We are going to make it to Pacheca.

My father lifts up the motor and guides the lifeboat onto the beach. I jump out and shout with joy.

Land! We’re on land. Land has never felt so good!

We begin hugging each other. I even hug my father—that’s a first, as far as I can remember—and thank him for doing such a masterful job navigating us through. My father had radioed ahead, so the police and Coast Guard are waiting for us and check to make sure we are okay. They take us to a hotel—Pacheca is a tourist island, so it has plenty of nice places to stay—where they let our whole shivering and grateful group get a hot shower and dry clothes. It’s sad about the boat sinking, but this ending beats any scenario I could’ve imagined even a few minutes earlier.

Eventually my father gets a new boat from the company he captains for, but for the time being, our fishing season is over. We spend our time repairing the net. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but I am in no rush to get back out on the water. And I am happy to be doing anything, alive.

The near-calamity brings one other positive result: Without our six-day excursions on the boat, I get to play more ball with my team, Panama Oeste. I play ball all the time as a kid, but in a place as poor and remote as Puerto Caimito, it’s much more likely to be a pickup game on the shore than anything remotely organized. I am one of the stronger players from our village, and at thirteen I begin to travel around Panama as a member of our provincial team, playing teams from other provinces. I am a good local player, but it’s not as if people are touting me as the next Rod Carew or Rennie Stennett. When I reach eighteen, I am invited to play with the
Panama Oeste Vaqueros (Cowboys) in Panama’s top adult league. I play whatever position the Cowboys want me to play. One game I am in right field, the next game at shortstop, and the next one after that I am behind the plate. I usually bat leadoff or No. 2. I can run and hit the ball in the gaps.

My favorite position, though, is the outfield, because there’s nothing better in baseball than running down a fly ball. I am stationed in right field for an important game in the league playoffs. We have our best starter on the mound. We are sure he’s going to be dominant, but today they are all over him, smacking hits from here to the Canal, and we are getting into a big hole. The manager comes out to the mound, looks around for a moment, and then motions to me in right field.

Why is he looking at me?
I think.
He can’t mean me. I am not even a pitcher.

He points at me again. He waves for me to come in. He does mean me. I have no clue what is going on, but I trot in.

I know you aren’t a pitcher, the manager says, but we’re in a bind, and all we’re looking for is for you to throw strikes. Don’t worry about anything else. You throw the ball over the plate and you’ll be fine.

Well, I’ll try, but I really don’t know what I’m doing, I say.

Throw strikes and you’ll be fine, he says again.

Okay, I’ll do my best, I say.

I’ve always had a good arm, a loose arm, and I can pretty much put the ball where I want. But I am far from the hardest thrower around, and I haven’t pitched since I threw a few innings for the provincial team when I was fourteen. It feels totally bizarre to have my foot on the rubber, to try to come up with some motion on the spot.

I come on in the second inning and go the rest of the way. I do not allow a run. I am doing nothing cute. I have no curveball and sure don’t have any dipsy-do windup. I get the ball and throw it,
probably no more than eighty-five miles per hour, but I am getting ahead of everybody, hitting corners, pitching quickly.

We wind up winning the game.

Great job, the manager says. You kept us in it and gave us time to come back. You saved the game for us.

I do not think any more about it. As far as I’m concerned this is a one-day fling. Next time out, I will be back at short or left or wherever.

I go back to fixing the nets and playing as much ball with Oeste as I can, vaguely figuring out a timeline for when I am going to enroll in mechanic’s school. About two weeks later, I spend a quiet Sunday afternoon at the beach with Clara and my family. At the end of the day we walk back up the hill to the house, and when we arrive, Emilio Gaes and Claudino Hernandez, the center fielder and catcher from Panama Oeste, are waiting for me. They want to speak to me, and, since we have no phone, showing up is the only way that will happen.

What are you guys doing here? I say.

We’ve arranged a tryout for you, Claudino says.

A tryout? What are you talking about? With who?

With the New York Yankees.

The New York Yankees?

Do you really expect me to believe this?
I think.

Yes, they want to see you pitch, Claudino says.

We told them how good you looked the other day and they think you are worth checking out, Emilio says.

This is getting more absurd by the second.

See me pitch? But I am not a pitcher, I say. If you guys are joking, please stop it.

We are not joking. We’re serious, Mariano. They want to see you pitch and the tryout is tomorrow, Claudino says.

I look at my teammates in complete disbelief. I couldn’t be
more shocked if Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels rode into Puerto Caimito and said I was going to get a chance to be on
The Lone Ranger.

When I press for more details, Claudino tells me he was so impressed with what he saw from me in that game that he and Emilio got the idea to call up Chico Heron and tell him about me. Chico is a local coach and part-time scout for the Yankees, one of those baseball lifers who are always at one field or another. Emilio and Claudino are really good guys, but they also are looking to get a little piece of the action, if there is any. Turns out, if you refer a player to the Yankees who winds up signing, you get a finder’s fee of two hundred dollars.

So what do you think? Claudino asks.

What I think is that it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard. But nets don’t make any money when they are on the boat. And I love playing ball.

I’ll see you tomorrow, I say.

T
HE
Y
ANKEES TRYOUT IS
held in Estadio Juan Demóstenes Arosemena, a fabled old park with ornate turns of stone in its stucco façade. It dates to 1938 and is named for the Panamanian president who built it. The Latin words
Citius, Altius, Fortius
(Faster, Higher, Stronger) are etched into the stone by the main entrance. I’m not convinced I am going to be any of the three, but I am here to give it a shot. Many of the top Central American and Pan American championship tournaments are held in Juan Demóstenes Arosemena. I spend the first half of the day repairing nets with my father, who isn’t thrilled that I am leaving but grudgingly gives me permission.

Get as much done as you can before you go, he says.

I set out for Panama City at 1:00 p.m. I take a bus from Puerto Caimito to Chorrera for 45 cents. Then I switch and get on another bus that takes me to Panama City, for 65 cents. The trip takes an hour and a half, and by then I am hungry, so I stop at a bodega and get six little rolls—
pan de huevo,
we call them—for a nickel apiece, and a 25-cent container of milk. It means I won’t have the full $1.10 I need for the bus trip home, but the drivers are usually good about letting you slide until the next time.

It’s a twenty-minute walk from the bus stop to the stadium. Much of it is in a barrio called Curundú, a ragged section of the
city with run-down houses, vacant lots, and starving stray dogs almost everywhere you look. Garbage is scattered all over the place. You see drunks, homeless people, and street hustlers. Crime is widespread. It’s not a neighborhood you want to linger in, but people tell me that nobody messes with ballplayers. I walk fast and don’t stop. I get through the barrio with no problem.

It’s a good thing the Yankees don’t have a dress code for tryouts. If they did, I would’ve been sent right back to Puerto Caimito. I show up in old green pants, a frayed shirt, the shoe with the hole… and no glove. There are about twenty other prospects there, and when I arrive in my ragamuffin outfit, I see them pointing and laughing at me.

Hey, look, they’re giving a tryout to a hobo,
I imagine them saying.

I’ve played games in the park before. I know the layout and the size—it seats twenty-five thousand people—so the surroundings are familiar enough. The first thing I do is look up Chico Heron, the Yankee scout who has organized the tryout. Chico is a small, round man who always has a Yankee hat on his curly mop of hair. I’ve known him for years; you can’t be a ballplayer around Chorrera or Puerto Caimito or any of the surrounding towns and not know him. I shake hands and say hello.

I am glad you’re here, Mariano. We’re taking a look at some players and I’d like to have you throw to me. I hear you looked good in relief the other day. So you are doing some pitching now?

Well, a little bit. It’s not like I pitch every day or anything. Really, I just pitched that one time, because the team needed me.

Okay, fine. Get out there and warm up and we’ll get started.

Chico had scouted me once before, about a year earlier. He was looking at me as a shortstop when I played some games there for Oeste. I made most of the plays, and had a couple of hits, but Chico didn’t see enough to recommend me as a prospect. He was concerned
that I wouldn’t be enough of a hitter to be a pro prospect, and because he’d scouted me previously, he wasn’t all that fired up when he got the call from Claudino and Emilio.

I’ve already seen Mariano Rivera as a shortstop, Chico told them.

You haven’t seen him as a pitcher, Emilio said. You need to take a look.

Trust me. I caught him, Claudino said. This is a kid who can put the ball wherever he wants.

I recognize quite a few of the guys at the tryout from playing against them. At twenty years old, I am one of the oldest players there. The guy they really want to look at is a big kid pitcher named Luis Parra, a really hard thrower. There’s another pitcher they like a lot, but I don’t even know his name. I ask one of the guys if I can borrow a glove and start to warm up. I am not worried about Luis Parra or anybody else. It is not even in my mind to make an impression, or do anything but play ball. Performance anxiety is not in my makeup. What is the worst thing they can do if they don’t like me—send me home? I am not thinking that this is my big chance to escape Puerto Caimito and change the course of my family’s life forever.

All I am thinking is:
Let’s play ball, and then I’ll get on the buses and go home.

After a few minutes, Chico calls me over.

Why don’t you get on the mound and throw some pitches?

Okay, sure.

I head out to the mound and dig in front of the rubber a little. When I look down I see my big toe poking out of my right shoe, but I pay no mind. I face the plate, pitch from the traditional windup position. I rock back with my left leg, raise my hands up slightly, then bring my left leg forward and push off with my right. I wind and deliver—a fastball on the corner. I get the ball back from the catcher and throw again, another strike on the black that pops into
the catcher’s glove. I am throwing easily, fluidly, with no grunting or flailing limbs, and seemingly little effort. I may be built like a pipe cleaner, but the ball seems to know where it needs to go.

I throw a total of nine pitches. They are all fastballs, because that is the only pitch I have.

That’s good, Mariano. That’s all I need, Chico says.

I am not sure what he means. Nine pitches? That’s it? Is it time for me to get back to the fishnets now?

A few minutes later Chico pulls me aside.

I like what I saw from you today. I would like you to keep coming back for the rest of the week, and then have Herb Raybourn, director of Latin American scouting for the Yankees, take a look at you. Herb is the one who has to make the final call. What do you think about that?

That’s fine, Chico, I say. As long as I can get off of work, I’ll come back. Thank you for having me in today.

I hope I see you tomorrow, Chico says.

I walk back through the barrio, dodge a few panhandlers, and get on one bus and then another (and talk the driver into accepting a reduced fare of twenty-five cents for today). My father signs off on the additional tryout sessions. The rest of my week follows the same schedule. I repair fishing nets in the morning, then take two buses and walk through Curundú to get to Estadio Juan Demóstenes Arosemena in the afternoon. I work out for Chico all week, and it’s all good. I get to play ball every day, and get time off from the nets—always a welcome thing. Herb Raybourn shows up at the end of the week. I find out I will be pitching against the Panamanian National Team. I don’t know much more, except that I am sure I will be pitching last. Parra is obviously the pitcher they are most interested in, and there are other guys whom they’ve been looking at a lot more closely during the week, guys who are throwing more and getting much more feedback.

I am a bottom-of-the-barrel guy. That much is very clear to me.

And that’s fine. I don’t burn to teach them a lesson for underestimating me. I don’t fill up with private fury at the sight of Luis Parra or the other guys. Nothing is really registering with me about what doing well here could mean. It’s as if they are talking in a foreign language, like English, whenever they speak to me. I am just doing what they ask. They tell me to go here, and I go here. They tell me to go there, I go there, and when they tell me to pitch, I pitch. I don’t see the future. I can’t even imagine it.

Why aren’t the possibilities on my radar?

What’s radar?

On the final day, I ride the same two buses, and stop for the same
pan de huevo
and milk. When I get to the stadium, I see Herb talking to Chico. Herb has white hair and a medium build, and his radar gun is ready to go. Like Chico, he is surprised to see me as a pitcher, because he had looked at me as a shortstop, too. I know Herb a little bit. He used to work for the Pittsburgh Pirates and signed several Panamanian big leaguers, including Omar Moreno, Rennie Stennett, and Manny Sanguillen. But mostly I know him because he once signed my uncle Manuel Giron, my mother’s brother. Manuel was also a pitcher, and a lot of people thought he’d be the first player from Puerto Caimito to make the majors. He played three years in the Pirates’ system and then got released. He came back to Puerto Caimito and went to work—where else?—in the fishing business. My uncle never talked much about his baseball career, and I didn’t ask him. He was back home, which happened to almost everybody, and that was that.

About a half hour before the game is going to start, Herb finds me in the dugout.

You’re going to pitch first, so you should warm up soon, he says.

I am shocked.

I am starting?

Yes. I want to put you right out there and show these guys some pitching, Herb says, smiling.

He’s got to be kidding,
I think.

I get my arm loose and I feel good as I walk out to the mound. Herb settles in behind home plate with his gun. I don’t know what he’s expecting, or what numbers the gun will spit out. I’m not worried about it, either. As inexperienced as I am, I understand pitching enough to know that it involves much more than what digits you put up on a gun.

The leadoff hitter steps in and I get ahead right away. I settle into a groove quickly, throwing strike after strike, hitter after hitter. There is no deception to anything I am doing. The ball is going exactly where I want it to, on almost every pitch. The strike zone looks as big as the side of a house. My approach, even then, is to keep it simple, and get out of there quickly.

I go three innings and strike out five and give up one hit. I’m not counting, but I probably don’t throw more than thirty or thirty-five pitches, almost all fastballs with one or two very primitive changeups mixed in. When I walk off, Chico shakes my hand.

Good job, Mariano. You’re done for the day. We’re going to look at some of the other guys now.

I thank him and sit in the dugout and watch Parra and the others, wishing I could get out there and play some more, maybe run around the outfield. Not to make an impression. Just to play. I’d always rather play than watch. After the game, Herb asks me if we can talk for a few minutes.

Sure, of course, I say.

You looked very good out there today, he says.

Thank you.

You made some good hitters look pretty ordinary.

Thank you.

I think you have a future as a pitcher. I’d like to talk to you and
your parents about you signing a contract with the New York Yankees. Can you come here tomorrow and meet me, and then we will go to your house so we can all meet and discuss this?

Yes, sure. That would be okay with me, I say.

I am not sure why Herb wants me to meet him, instead of just driving to Puerto Caimito himself, but I do as he asks. After I get to the stadium, we ride together through the hills and the sliver of rain forest, through Chorrera and finally back into my village. My father is down at the boat when we arrive, so I have to go get him. Herb has a small briefcase with him. I wonder what is in it, and wonder what this all means, because it is still not at all clear to me.

When we all get to our little block house, Clara is there, too, and that’s a big comfort. If something important is happening to me, I want her there. Herb opens his briefcase and puts the contract on the table and explains what happens from here, as Clara and my family listen, all of us a touch amazed.

With my parents’ blessings, I sign a contract with the New York Yankees. I am getting a $2,000 bonus to be a ballplayer. It is February 17, 1990, a Saturday.

My little marble is about to get a lot bigger.