by Felipe Alou
2
1956–1957
3
Coming to America
I arrived in America to a parade.
And then the rain thundered down, a torrent of racism. The parade was a literal one, twenty-five festive cars long, each bearing the name of one of the twenty-five roster players on the Lake Charles Giants baseball team of Louisiana’s Class C Evangeline League, celebrating the start of the season. The thunderstorm was figurative but just as real.
It’s ironic to think that Evangeline is a biblical word, coming from Greek, with the word “angel” situated in the middle of it. The word “angel” means “messenger,” and the message I received was clear: I was not welcome, not in 1956 Louisiana, not with my dark skin color. For the first time I started to hear words like “monkey,” “nigger,” and “black son of a bitch,” all in that lilting Louisiana accent—a syrupy drawl, the sound and cadence of which have never left my ears.
I knew racism existed, but nothing prepared me for this—certainly not my upbringing, being the son of a white woman of Spanish descent and a black father who was the grandson of slaves who were likely ripped away from Africa in the early 1800s to work Hispaniola farms. Even the several days I spent in spring training in Melbourne, Florida, before the Giants shipped me to Louisiana, didn’t give me much of an inkling of what was in store. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, I learned firsthand about racism. I also learned the city had a favorite son, who coincidentally played for the Major League club—the New York Giants. He played shortstop, and I remember having his baseball card when I was a kid. His name was Alvin Dark.
There were three blacks on that Lake Charles team—Chuck Weatherspoon, Ralph Crosby, and me, the guy with F. ALOU on the back of his jersey. We all suffered the same fate, only mine was a notch worse. Not only was my skin too dark, but I was also a Latino, which meant I was viewed as a little less than equal in the black communities where I spent much of my time, trying to avoid trouble. And if there was anything I had, it was time—a lot of it. I spent a month in Lake Charles and barely played. I got only 9 at-bats in five games, all of them in Lake Charles, where I wasn’t even allowed to dress with my teammates in the clubhouse. On the road opposing teams banned us from the field.
In those 9 at-bats I did get in, I recorded 2 hits and 1 RBI (run batted in). One of those hits came in my first professional plate appearance, when I laced a pinch-hit single to drive in a run. The next day we left on a five-day road trip, for which I was ill-equipped on so many levels. Not only was I not prepared to not play, but I was also practically penniless, with only the clothes on my back to carry me through those five days. By the time we got back to Lake Charles, I didn’t know what was worse—the stench from me or from the unrelenting racism that lay in wait for me at every ball field, restaurant, and rest area.
Growing up in the Dominican Republic, we used to talk about how you had to be careful in America, so I knew, if only academically, about racism. But until now I had not seen the face of racism. I didn’t know I would have to sit in the back of a bus. I didn’t know I couldn’t look at a white girl. I didn’t know I couldn’t eat in the same restaurants as whites. I didn’t know I couldn’t stay in the same motels. I didn’t know I couldn’t drink from the same water fountains. I didn’t know I couldn’t use the same bathrooms. On a road trip in Baton Rouge, I couldn’t even enter the stadium through the players’ entrance, much less enter the clubhouse. I had to sit in the bleachers in what was called the colored section. All of it was startling to me. Until you confront a lion, you don’t know how ferocious he is.
About the only thing that tethered me to the humanity of man was the white family that housed me in Lake Charles. I’ll never forget their kindness, not to mention their courage. They put themselves in danger by putting me in their home. They were circumspect about it, to be sure. When they drove me to the stadium, which was about a half mile from their house, I had to lie low, below the window, in the backseat of the car. The same thing happened when they took me home. I had to stay out of view until their car was safely tucked inside their garage, with the garage door shut.
Once a couple of my white teammates tried to walk me through the stadium gate in Baton Rouge, flanking me on each side, almost as if they were trying to smuggle me past security so I could make it to the clubhouse. Weatherspoon and Crosby, who were darker skinned than me, didn’t even try to sneak in, heading instead for the left-field bleachers, where the black fans had to sit and where we, as opposing players, also had to sit. But a police officer spotted me walking in and stopped the three of us.
“He can’t come in,” he barked. “He has to go sit in the bleachers with the other Negroes.”
And so I did, where I watched young men play baseball, knowing I was as good as or better than they were, knowing I had what it took to play and excel in this league. Early in the season at Lake Charles, there was a Baton Rouge player, José Garcia, who saw me warming up and came over and talked to me. Garcia was very light-skinned, so he passed as white. He told me, half jokingly, that he combed his hair a certain way to make sure he looked white.
“You can play this game; you have talent,” Garcia told me. “But they’re not going to let you play in this league. You need to go somewhere else, to another league, where you can show them you can play.”
It was a waiting game. Louisiana was fighting the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for white and black students were unconstitutional. Louisiana legislators were fighting back, trying to push through a bill that stated, “The Legislature of Louisiana does hereby solemnly declare the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court of May 17, 1954 . . . and any similar decisions that might be rendered in the connection with the public school system, public parks and recreational facilities . . . to be in violation of the constitution the United States and the state of Louisiana.”
Meanwhile, I was miserable. I was eating food I didn’t recognize, trying to learn a language I didn’t understand, and enduring a raging racism that confounded me more than anything. And then there was that division in the black neighborhoods, where we were all dark-skinned, but we still weren’t the same. Black ballplayers in those neighborhoods, whether it was Lake Charles or other places I played, had places to go that were not available to Latinos. So we were rejected by whites and looked down upon in black communities. It was as if we were always operating with two strikes against us.
One night, after yet another evening of not playing and sitting in the left-field section for coloreds, I decided to walk alone to the house where I was staying. In the canopy of darkness I didn’t notice a black dog until it suddenly jumped a low fence and barreled into my side, almost knocking me down. Great, I thought, even the dogs don’t want me here. That same night the news arrived that Louisiana’s racist legislature had won, voting 119–0 to impose its archaic segregationist laws. It was official. The people they called Negroes and colored were not welcome in the Evangeline League—not in Lake Charles and not anywhere else where the league’s teams played.
I understand that for years there was even a notation in the Evangeline League’s record books that read, “Baton Rouge forfeited April 28 game to Lake Charles, refusing to play in violation of segregation law because Lake Charles had two Negro players.”
The Giants sent those Negro players—Chuck Weatherspoon and Ralph Crosby—to Class C leagues in Missoula, Montana, and Salinas, California, respectively; they sent me, F. ALOU, the colored kid from the Dominican Republic, to Cocoa, Florida. Little did those people know that out of the twenty-six players who officially spent time on that 1956 Lake Charles Giants roster, I was the only one who would make it to the Major Leagues. Not that it mattered to them back then.
After arriving to a parade, I was now departing on a Greyhound bus.
4
Just Give Me a Chance
There were no major highways, so it took almost three days to
travel from Lake Charles to Cocoa. I survived the journey by sleeping very little and eating exactly 50 cents’ worth of peanuts from bus-stop vending machines and drinking water from fountains designated for colored people. I also stubbornly defied the Greyhound bus driver, who persistently pointed with a jerking motion toward the back of the bus. It wasn’t that I was making a social statement; rather, I was so panicked I would miss the Cocoa bus station that I would hover in the seat behind the driver, asking in my fractured English whenever we stopped: “Cocoa. Me Cocoa. Cocoa?” I think his annoyance eventually translated into pity. Either that, or he got tired of pointing to the back of the bus.
For the first time since I arrived in America, I was homesick. I missed my homeland, my family, my culture, my food. Thoughts of returning to the Dominican Republic, returning to school, and resuming my studies in pursuit of a medical degree filled my head. Not only was I going from Lake Charles to Cocoa, but I was also going from the Class C Evangeline League to the Class D Florida State League. To make matters worse, I was supposed to have started my pro career in Danville, Virginia, which was a Class B team in the Carolina League, but because of visa problems I didn’t arrive on time, which was why I was sent to Lake Charles. Even with my limited understanding of the English alphabet, I knew that was going backward.
What I lacked in the native language of America I made up with my knowledge of geography. Florida, I knew, was the southernmost state, a connection to the Caribbean. So when the Greyhound bus crossed the border and I made out the sign that said WELCOME TO FLORIDA, I was overwhelmed with the notion that I could stay on the bus and ride it all the way to Miami and from there return home.
But there were three strong reasons I knew I was going to get off that bus in Cocoa. My father was finding only odd jobs to do, not really working. I felt the responsibility of feeding seven people back home. I thought of Rabbit Martínez and Alex Pompez and how they put faith in my becoming the first player to go from the Dominican Republic to Major League Baseball. I gave them my word. I signed a contract. I couldn’t do something so dishonorable as to let them down by quitting. And finally, in connection with that, I wasn’t just representing my family and the reputation of the men who signed me; I was representing an entire country.
On the third day, in the still darkness that is 4:30 in the morning, the Greyhound bus wheezed to a stop in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.
“Cocoa?” I asked.
“Cocoa,” the bus driver replied, nodding.
I was the last person off the bus, tentatively stepping into the blackness. I thought Cocoa was a city, but as I looked around I didn’t see anything that resembled a city. The bus station was a bench. With no place to go and the sun still hours away from appearing, I snaked my arm through my suitcase handle, laid down on the bench, and allowed some much-needed sleep to overtake me.
I awakened to the blinding brightness of day and a warm blanket of humidity. Looking around I still saw no city. The only thing I knew about this new team I was to play for was its name, the Cocoa Indians, and that it had two Latin players—Julio Navarro and Héctor Cruz. I met both of them in Melbourne, which was about twenty-five miles south of Cocoa, when I first arrived in America. I didn’t have an address or a phone number, so I started walking.
I would see people and say, “Navarro? Cruz?” The only replies I received were puzzled stares.
Suddenly, as if she appeared from the mist, a beautiful black woman slowed her car down to a stop and leaned out the window. “Where are you going?” she asked.
I replied by taking a pantomime swing with an imaginary bat. “Navarro? Cruz?” I asked.
“Ballplayers?” she quizzed.
I nodded. “Biesbol,” I said.
She said something I couldn’t understand, leaned over and opened the passenger door, and motioned for me to get in. A few minutes later, we arrived at a house. It couldn’t have been any later than 8 a.m., but that didn’t matter to her. She awoke the occupants, who poked their sleepy faces out the window, beaming when they saw me.
“It’s the Dominican!” Navarro called out. “Hey, Dominican, what are you doing here?”
The Cocoa Indians played in St. Petersburg the night before, and Navarro and Cruz had been home only a few hours. They were still glad to see me, though, and, boy, was I glad to see them. Navarro could speak English and Spanish, and he told the woman he knew of a family that would take me in as a boarder. She took me there, deep into the black section of town, where a kind woman named Blanche showed me a tiny room. I collapsed on the bed, fully clothed, and slipped into a deep sleep. That room became my first real home in America, and Blanche and her husband, Singletary—I never knew their last name—became surrogate parents.
I awoke at 4 p.m., and it wasn’t too long afterward when Navarro and Cruz stopped by on foot, and we walked a half mile to Provost Park, where the Cocoa Indians played. It was a rickety structure with a steamy clubhouse that was more like a cave, dank and dingy, with barely enough room to dress. Making matters miserable were the mosquitoes, which swarmed with unrelenting vengeance, descending on exposed flesh like kamikaze fighter pilots.
Still, I was happy. Finally, I could play baseball and play every day. Thus, in 1956, I launched my professional career. Buddy Kerr, the Indians’ manager, greeted me with a sincere handshake and smile and told me I was the regular center fielder. I got my first hit that night and felt settled in. In retrospect, it was to be one of the greatest seasons I had as a professional.
Early on, my teammates chided me for my swing, calling me out for what they called an ugly hitting style. “Maybe so,” I would reply. “But I keep getting hits, more than anyone else.”
I clubbed 169 hits over 445 at-bats for the Indians that season, good enough to lead the Florida State League with a .380 batting average and a .582 slugging percentage. We also went 90-50, best in the league, which was quite an accomplishment, because the Indians were in last place when I arrived. I could have batted—or perhaps it is more accurate to say I should have batted—.400 that season. After all, I was hitting .433 with about a month to go in the season. But the pressure got to me, and, frankly, I choked. Still, leading the league with a .380 batting average was quite an accomplishment.
I say I clubbed 169 hits that season because I’ve always believed that hitting a baseball is an aggressive endeavor. That’s the way all of us Alous approached it. We never had a hitting coach in the Dominican Republic, yet the three of us—Matty, Jesús, and I—were all solid Major League hitters. Combined, we accumulated 5,094 hits (2,101 from me, 1,777 from Matty, and 1,216 from Jesús). My son Moisés, a fierce hitter, surpassed us all with 2,134 hits. That’s 7,228 hits from the only four men to have played Major League Baseball with the name ALOU on the back of their jerseys. All of us had an attitude that a bat is an offensive weapon. It’s an aggressive weapon.
My brothers and I had that mind-set growing up. We would spend hours in our yard hitting—or should I say attacking?—any small object we could find and throw. The rule was that if you didn’t strike out, you could keep hitting—and the three of us liked to hit. That was a contest mostly between Matty and me, only because Jesús often preferred to go fishing rather than join us. But when Jesús made it to the big leagues, he was known to swing at anything near the strike zone, doing so with enough success to spend fifteen years in the Major Leagues. The Alou brothers were not hitters looking for walks. Over a 162-game season the three of us combined to average only 26.3 walks and 41 strikeouts to go with a .291 batting average. In fact, Jesús not only finished his career in 1979 as a Houston Astros player and batting coach but also had a walk rate of 3 per 100 plate appearances, the lowest in the twentieth century for someone who played a minimum of 1,000 games. Some hitters bring a bat to the plate, and it looks like they’re trying to defend themselves from the baseball. Not the Alous. We approached the plate as the aggressors.
In relation to this I believe in hitting—not swinging. You have to hit.
Yes, your swing is important, but you have to learn to hit with your swing, even if it’s ugly, like mine was. I also believe a lot of batters take too many pregame swings. Because of that not many hitters are good late-game hitters. They leave a lot of energy in the batting cage. Look at the New York Mets’ hitters in the 2015 World Series. To me it looked like they took too many pregame swings during the season, especially late in the season, and it showed.
I also believe every hitter has a way of hitting, that he was born with a swing. His swing is like a fingerprint. No two hitters have the same swing. I also believe not everyone has the same answer when a pitch is thrown. In order to arrive at your answer, you have to be able to anticipate pitches—not guess, anticipate. If you guess, you’re going to get beat. Anticipation means remembering what happened in your last at-bat, or yesterday, or last week, or last month, and then using that information. If you guess, you’re going on no information.
Because I could hit right away as a professional player, I felt mostly accepted by my teammates. And Cocoa turned out to be a paradise for me. The fishing, the weather, the vegetation—it reminded me of home. I quickly discovered some wonderful fishing spots, the kind Florida was known for back in the 1950s. When I wasn’t playing I would be the guy you would see walking through town shirtless, carrying a string of fish. I quickly discovered, too, why I had awakened Navarro and Cruz that first morning. Because of the team’s limited budget, we rarely stayed in a motel. Instead, we would cram sixteen players, along with our manager and equipment, into the club’s two station wagons and sometimes drive all night back from road games. And we would do so not on the highways that now exist in Florida, but often along two-lane roads, sometimes arriving back in Cocoa when the sun’s first morning rays started to shoot across the horizon.