Alou

by Felipe Alou

  Just as important were the relationships with my new teammates, some of whom became lifelong friends. Joe Torre was one of those guys. When I arrived Joe was a Brooklyn boy coming into his own as a young catcher, moving from under the shadow of his older brother, Frank Torre, who had also played for the Braves. You could immediately see Joe could hit, and hit in the clutch, and the combination of the two was going to keep him in the game for a long time. He wasn’t the type to hit forty home runs, but he was a pure line-drive hitter with straightaway power. Joe was good-natured and fun-loving, a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but early on you could also see leadership qualities and his advanced knowledge of the game.

  Joe called me F. Even to this day, Joe still calls me F. We later became roommates, and what a great roommate Joe was, mainly because he was single, had friends everywhere, and often left me with our hotel room all for myself. Years later, when Joe got his first managerial job—in 1977 with the New York Mets—we got together during spring training in Florida, and Joe took me to the racetrack. I kiddingly asked him, “So who is going to be your disciplinarian?” It’s been wonderful to watch Joe Torre and his career blossom through the years.

  Warren Spahn was a talker. He loved to talk, and he usually had insightful things to say. Probably his most famous saying, which really stuck with me, was “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”

  Spahny, as we called him, was forty-three, with his career winding down when I became his teammate. I played only one year with him. When we were both slumping, he told me, “Felipe, you and I are still here. The only advantage you have is that you’re still young.” He was right. That offseason the Braves traded him to the neophyte New York Mets.

  Eddie Mathews exuded authority. He was our team captain, and it was obvious that if he wanted to, he could one day manage, which he did. In fact, he was the Atlanta Braves’ manager in 1974 when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. Eddie was a very strong man with a sweet left-handed swing. Although I became a teammate toward the end of his career, when Eddie was losing some of his talent, you could still count on him to hit a big home run and play a good third base.

  Eddie was an honest man, and he didn’t hide from us that he had a drinking problem, nor did he hide that when he wrote his own autobiography. One time, when we were busing to Shea Stadium in New York City, a few of us got into a debate as to how many games Eddie played the season before. I don’t know how we arrived at such a mundane topic, but typical of men the argument turned heated. Eddie was sitting next to me on the bus, hungover and snoring. I woke him up.

  “Eddie, we’re arguing here about how many games you played last year. How many did you play?”

  “Too many,” he growled.

  Just then we passed a cemetery.

  “And you see all those sons of bitches in there?” he barked. “They wish they felt as bad as I do now.”

  And just like that he went back to sleep, snoring loudly.

  Hank Aaron was a complete ballplayer, a fact often overlooked because people think of him as a home run hitter. But Hank was a complete player with all five tools: he could hit, hit for power, run, throw, and play great defense. Although Hank wasn’t a speedster, he could steal a base when he needed to. People especially forget that Hank was a really good right fielder with a strong arm. I think the reason his stature as a right fielder gets overlooked is because Hank played at the same time as Roberto Clemente, who might’ve been the greatest defensive right fielder of all time.

  The one player—and the only player in my mind—whom you could compare Hank Aaron to was Willie Mays, and I had the privilege of playing alongside both of them during their primes. There wasn’t much difference between the two except for this:

  Hank was quietly great.

  Willie was spectacularly great.

  Other than that they weren’t too dissimilar. Hank was a better hitter than Willie, and Willie was a better all-around player. Hank didn’t have the benefit of beginning and ending his career in New York City, with all its media attention, as did Willie. But I’m sure that was fine with him, since Hank was a quiet man and a quiet player. The only thing that wasn’t quiet was his swing. When Hank’s bat hit the ball the loud crack! of that contact could be heard far away. When you heard it, it was unmistakable that Hank Aaron was in the batter’s box. He didn’t have a long swing like Willie had. Hank had a compact, damaging swing. The only other player with such a short swing who could do big damage was Barry Bonds. It’s no wonder why they called Hank the “Hammer” and “Hammerin’ Hank.”

  Conversely, people don’t think of Willie Mays first as a home run hitter, even though he hit 660 while missing the 1953 season due to military service. Over the 1954 and 1955 seasons, Mays averaged 46 home runs, so it’s not out of the question that he could have finished his career with 700 or more homers if not for that missed season.

  Mays and Aaron were both more line-drive hitters, not these long-ball mashers where you stood slack-jawed at the height and distance of their launches. Hank, like Willie, was a pure hitter who prided himself on hitting .300, driving in 100 runs, and stealing bases. A lot of his homers were to right or right-center field, and at old County Stadium in Milwaukee the wind—often a cold wind—blew in from center field. He and Eddie Mathews had to hit some serious line drives to get a home run. When the Braves moved to Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta and Hank saw how the ball carried, he didn’t necessarily change his swing, but rather he altered his approach. To my eye he started pulling the ball a little more.

  What I most enjoyed about Hank is that he was always a nice guy and a true teammate. He was one of our leaders. A quiet leader. But a leader nonetheless.

  I remember one game in particular, which I would like to forget. As I recall, I made two boo-boos. Earlier in the game I caught a long fly ball in center field. Thinking it was the third out, I started jogging in. But it was only the second out, with two runners on base who were now racing around the bases toward home. Suddenly, someone came to my side, reached into my glove, grabbed the ball, and threw it in. That man was the right fielder—Hank Aaron.

  Later in the game I hit a triple with nobody out and tried to score an inside-the-park home run. Instead, I was thrown out. It was foolish. With nobody out I should have stayed on third. But I was trying to redeem myself from my earlier gaffe. Instead, I buried myself.

  All I wanted to do at that point was crawl into a hole, but the only hole was the dugout. As I sat there, wishing I was invisible, someone came and tapped me on my arm. It was Hank Aaron.

  “Felipe,” he said, “don’t worry about it. Don’t worry.”

  Moments later Hank stepped to the plate and hit a bomb—a home run that helped us win the game. That’s what you call a teammate: someone who picks you up when you’re down. That was Hank Aaron.

  About the only guy I ever saw Hank have a problem with was Rico Carty, one of my fellow countrymen from the Dominican Republic. Rico was easy to have a problem with. He was defiant, belligerent, constantly challenging. During batting practice, when we each got seven swings, Rico would stay in there for eight, nine, maybe ten swings. It was as if he was daring somebody to say something. But nobody would say anything because Rico was a brawny guy who liked to intimidate people.

  But one day, standing around the batting cage, waiting our turn, I heard Eddie Mathews say, “I’m going to take care of him.” After Rico’s seventh pitch, and just as the eighth one was being thrown by the batting-practice pitcher, Eddie lunged in front of the batter’s box. While holding his bat in one hand, he caught the pitch barehanded with his other hand. “Get out of here,” he told Rico, and Rico did.

  It was a ballsy move because Rico was a muscular guy—about six feet three with a chiseled frame. He had a hair-trigger temper, and he used to brag that he had been an amateur boxing champion in the Dominican Republic. I don’t know about the latter, but I do know that Rico liked to intimidate people. If you were with him, as I often was b
ecause he was a fellow countryman, you ran the risk of getting in a fight somewhere. Rico was a hothead, quick with his mouth.

  I first became aware of that my first spring training with Milwaukee. We played the Cincinnati Reds in Tampa, and Rico and I were with Sandy Alomar Sr. and Ozzie Virgil Sr. We asked at our hotel if there were any places that served Latin food, and we were told of a Cuban eatery in nearby Ybor City called the Columbia Restaurant. We were dressed nicely, with coats and ties, and we took an expensive cab ride there to eat. A man who was obviously Latino greeted us.

  “You guys want to eat?” he said to us in English.

  “Yes, sí,” Ozzie said.

  We could tell right away it was a Cuban place and upscale, a good-looking restaurant. We thought we were home free, in line for a great dinner.

  “Look,” the man said, “we’re not integrated yet. We get Cuban and Puerto Rican ballplayers and other Negroes who come here, and they eat in that room.” He pointed to a room at the back of the restaurant, off the kitchen.

  Rico was livid. “We’re not American Negroes, and we’re not Cuban!” he exploded. “The Cubans are running from Fidel Castro! We’re from the Dominican Republic!”

  Actually, we all were from the Dominican Republic except for Sandy Alomar Sr., who was from Puerto Rico.

  The man lowered his voice, hoping Rico would do the same, speaking to us now in Spanish.

  “Listen, guys, we have a business,” he said. “You only come here during spring training. The white people are here all the time. If we let you eat with them, they’ll never come back.”

  Rico emptied some obscenities on him, but it obviously did no good. We left, getting another cab. A white guy was driving. We told him what happened, and he told us about a barbecue joint in the black section of town that he guaranteed we would love. He took us there, leaving the paved road and driving on dirt and gravel, into the boondocks. The place didn’t look like much. It had a dirt floor and picnic-style tables that seated a lot of people. But the barbecue pork chops and ribs were some of the best I’ve ever eaten. And plentiful.

  That there was a lot of food was a good thing because there were some hungry Cincinnati Reds Minor League ballplayers there, Latino guys, including this young Cuban kid, very skinny, with big eyes. Thank goodness the portions were big, I thought, because this kid needs to eat. He was that skinny. He hadn’t played a Major League game yet, but some of the Reds’ Minor Leaguers who knew him were telling me he was going to be a really good player. That was the night I met a future Hall of Famer named Tony Pérez.

  So an evening that began with Rico Carty and the rest of us arguing at a restaurant ended rather well. I can’t say that about other evenings with Rico.

  One year with the Braves we played a Jimmy Fund charity game against the Red Sox in Boston. Leading up to the game, I had been playing every inning of every regular-season game. During the Jimmy Fund charity game, our manager, Bobby Bragan, came to me and Hank Aaron and took us out after five innings. For some reason this rankled Rico Carty.

  “You are the bobo of the manager,” he barked at me. The implication was that I was some type of teacher’s pet who had gotten that way because I brownnosed our skipper. He didn’t say anything about Hank—that incident would come later—only me.

  I had finally had it. I was tired of Rico trying to intimidate me and others. This time I wasn’t going to give in to his tactics. I immediately got in his face. “Listen, I am fed up with you! You’ve made everybody afraid of you! I’m not afraid! I am from the same place you are from! You are going to have to prove to me that you’re a boxer! But I’m telling you right now, you will have to kill me! If you want to fight me, one of us is going to die!”

  I watched the rest of the game in the dugout, waiting for Rico to make his move. But he didn’t. After the game, nothing. I showered, keeping an eye on him. Still, nothing. On the bus ride to Logan International Airport, Rico started mouthing off again, saying everyone should steer clear of Felipe Alou.

  “He has a pistol in his briefcase,” he said.

  I had a briefcase, but no pistol. I opened it and showed him and anybody else who was curious that there was no pistol inside. Then I gave my briefcase to my roommate, our second baseman Félix Millán. I was ready to fight. When we got off the bus and ready to board the plane, guys were standing around, watching to see what would happen. But Rico never did anything or said another word.

  Many moons later, after both of our playing careers were over, Rico approached me at Juan Marichal Stadium in Santo Domingo. I could see in his eyes that he was carrying a burden and wanted to talk. Rico apologized that day, not only for that incident but for the way he behaved during his playing days.

  “I don’t know why I was like that,” he said, shaking his head. “You never did anything to me.”

  We hugged like men, and I was really touched by that.

  Carty later became mayor of San Pedro de Macorís in our country and managed the Catholic Relief Services, working with children. He is a well-respected man in the Dominican Republic, and I’m happy for that—and for him. He’s also become a great mentor for ballplayers in our home country, with Robinson Canó and Alfonso Soriano among his pupils.

  I don’t know if Hank Aaron ever patched things up with Rico. The difference that erupted between them has been documented, and the date—June 18, 1967—has been dutifully recorded, mainly because we were no-hit that day by Houston Astros pitcher Don Wilson, who also recorded fifteen strikeouts against us. What really has never been told is the backstory of that dustup between Hank and Rico, which I believe I am the only one privy to.

  My roommate was Mike de la Hoz. Mike was Cuban, born in Havana, but because of Fidel Castro’s regime he hadn’t been to his home country in years, with little hope of ever returning. While we were in Houston Mike went for a walk and came back with a bottle of Bacardi rum. That might not seem like a big deal because Bacardi is so prevalent today, as it was back then. But what people might not realize is that while Bacardi is identified today as a Puerto Rican rum, it was originally from Cuba. I don’t know how, but Mike came back from his walk with a bottle of Bacardi rum that had been bottled in Cuba. He probably found it on some dusty shelf at an old liquor store, where the bottle had likely been sitting for years. Mike was so proud that he had a bottle of Bacardi directly from Cuba, showing me the proof on the label. It was as if he had found a treasure.

  That night we were on a Delta charter flight from Houston to Los Angeles, and the guys at the back of the plane were doing what they normally did—playing cards and drinking, though probably not in that order, since we were still stinging from being no-hit and striking out fifteen times. I was not a card player, but I liked watching. Mike had his prized bottle of Bacardi next to him, drinking a little bit from it here and there.

  Without asking, Hank reached over and picked up the Bacardi bottle.

  “Hey, hey, don’t drink my rum,” Mike said.

  I think Hank was a little startled.

  “How much is the bottle?” he asked.

  Hank had no idea it was a treasure to Mike. He didn’t know what the big deal was. He was sincerely offering to buy him another bottle of Bacardi. Had he known how special it was to Mike, I know Hank would not have touched the bottle.

  It would’ve ended there, except Rico Carty had to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. I think he might’ve known from Mike that the bottle was from Cuba. “You don’t have enough money to pay for it,” Rico mouthed off in his typical defiant and belligerent way.

  It wasn’t the first time Carty’s obnoxiousness annoyed Hank. Hank particularly didn’t like the way Carty would occasionally loaf; something that also rankled other guys. Joe Torre also recalls that Hank would tense up whenever Rico started getting mouthy. This time, as it was with me at the Jimmy Fund charity game in Boston, Hank apparently had enough. The one thing about Hank is that he hated any kind of racial slur. Knowing that, I marveled years later at how he handled th
e overt racism he endured when he was breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. But here Carty was, mouthing off in English and Spanish, and for some reason, as Torre recalls, he called Hank “black slick.” I don’t know what he meant by that, but Hank didn’t wait around for an explanation.

  In a flash wild punches were flailing. Hank dented the overhead luggage compartment above Carty’s head. Both exchanged blows to the face. Guys were soon all over them, rushing from the front of the plane, trying to get in between and separate them. Included in that scrum was our four-foot-two traveling secretary, Donald Davidson. A couple of flight attendants were back there, too, pushing people and yelling. Apparently, the pilots were struggling to right the plane with all the weight concentrated at the aft. Soon everyone was back where they belonged, the pilots got the plane stabilized, and we continued en route to Los Angeles, with tensions as high as our altitude.

  I fully expected Carty to be traded the next day—if not, then sometime in the next few days. But he wasn’t traded. He spent the rest of that season and five more seasons with the Braves. There were no more problems between Hank and Rico, but they didn’t talk much with each other anymore.

  It was sad and unnecessary. You would have thought Rico had more important things to be angry about, things related to our home country, which was going through years of turmoil and revolution that claimed thousands of lives.

  One of them was almost my brother Juan.

  17

  Trouble at Home

  There have never been four brothers who have all played Major League Baseball in the modern era. In this and the last century there have been other three-brother combinations—such as the DiMaggios, the Boyers, and the Molinas—but never four brothers. I think about that when I think about my brother Juan.

  Not many people know there was a fourth Alou brother. Not many people ask. When people do learn there was a fourth Alou brother, the immediate question is, could he play baseball?