by Felipe Alou
We respectfully declined Bosch’s request. He seemed to understand, as if he knew in advance what our answer would be. He didn’t pressure us. The meeting was cordial and brief.
When we left I didn’t turn to see if Bosch returned to the book about Bob Feller. I doubt he did. Baseball had not been important to him prior to our meeting, and I doubt it was any more important afterward. I know one thing for sure: it no longer seemed important to me.
18
Hitting the Sweet Spot
You would think I would’ve been too distracted with the turmoil in my country to accomplish much during the 1966 season. Plus, my fourth child, Moisés, was born in the middle of the season—on July 3. It can be difficult to keep focus when so much is going on—not only back home but in your own home.
But somehow not only did I keep focus, but I also had what many believe was my best big-league season. I still personally point to my 1962 season as my best, though I can certainly see where others can make a strong statistical argument for 1966. That season I led all of Major League Baseball in at-bats (666) and hits (218), tied Frank Robinson for runs scored (122), led the National League in total bases (355), was named the Braves’ MVP by the Atlanta writers, finished fifth in the National League for MVP, and made the All-Star team.
Oh, and my .327 batting average was the second best in all of baseball. Second, that is, to my brother Matty.
It was quite a season, which earned the respect and praise of my teammates. “I’ve never seen anyone stand out head and shoulders the way Felipe did,” Joe Torre told Sport magazine. “Everything he hit, he hit hard. You can’t imagine some of the line drives that were caught.” And in the same article, Hank Aaron added, “We think he should have been the league’s Most Valuable Player. I’ve never seen anyone hit so consistently well all season long.”
There was one other thing nobody had ever seen—not before or since. For the first and only time in Major League history, two brothers finished first and second in batting average. As proud as I was for the Alou family name, I was also proud for my country. Not only had two Dominicans finished with the best batting averages in the big leagues, but coming in at third was Rico Carty. Yet another Dominican, Manny Mota, might’ve been in the mix, too, had he accumulated enough plate appearances. Manny batted .332, but with only 359 plate appearances, which was roughly 143 fewer than what was needed to qualify.
Still, to have three Dominicans finish first, second, and third—Matty with a .342 batting average, me at .327, and Carty at .326—was quite a feat. I believe it also solidified that the Dominicans were here to stay in Major League Baseball. Not only were players from my country making our mark only eight years after I entered the league as the first to go from Dominican soil to the big leagues, but more elite players were coming. The pipeline was open, and it wouldn’t be too long before the trickle turned into a flood.
That season was Matty’s first in Pittsburgh. The Giants traded him on December 1, 1965, to the Pirates for pitcher Joe Gibbon and our friend catcher-outfielder Ozzie Virgil Sr. I guess I can’t blame the Giants. After all, Matty batted .264 and .231 the previous two seasons as a part-time player. But in retrospect, Gibbon went only 12-13 for the Giants over the next three-plus seasons, while Virgil batted .213 in 1966, before being sent to the Minor Leagues. He finished with only one more big-league at-bat, in 1969.
Meanwhile, Matty became one of baseball’s best hitters. After leading the Major Leagues in hitting in 1966, he went on to bat .338, .332, and .331 over the next three seasons and finished with a .307 career batting average. Matty was a good all-around athlete, with great reflexes and hand-eye coordination. He even pitched the final two innings in an August 26, 1965, mop-up game that the Giants lost 8–0 to the Pirates at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. He gave up three hits but didn’t surrender a run and also struck out three—including Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, twice.
But Matty wasn’t in the big leagues to pitch. He was there to hit. And it was during that spring training in 1966 when Roberto Clemente and Pirates manager Harry Walker turned Matty from a pull hitter into a line-drive hitter. The transformation was dramatic.
I can’t say I was surprised. From the time we were kids, I always knew Matty was a hitter. We used to play with little coconuts and a makeshift bat, and no matter how hard I tried I could never get him to swing and miss because of that incredible hand-eye coordination he possessed. Plus, even though Matty was generously listed at five foot nine, he was fearless. So tough. One time, during a Winter League game, Matty and Rico Carty ran into each other chasing a fly ball in the outfield. It was a horrific collision, and as both men lay on the ground, I thought Matty was dead. But it was Matty who got up and Carty who was carried off the field on a stretcher, muttering, “Now I know for sure that the Alous are witches.” No, not witches. But strong. Matty had our father’s height and build. He was barrel-chested with Popeye forearms.
When I saw Matty during that 1966 season, I noticed he had developed a beautiful left-handed swing. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton once called Matty “the worst .300 hitter I’ve ever seen.” But as I’ve always believed, everyone has their own hitting style, unique to them, like a fingerprint. Another Hall of Famer, Ted Williams, once told The Sporting News that Matty “violates every hitting principle I ever taught.” Yet he was a career .307 hitter who could hit gap-to-gap line drives and also bunt and run. The tools were all there, and Matty was maximizing them.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t aware that my brother and I were battling for the batting crown. I would also be lying if I said I was rooting against Matty. I was enormously proud of my little brother and was, in fact, rooting for him. When a writer from The Sporting News asked me about the batting race between my brother and me, I told him, “It would be a wonderful thing for Matty to win it. Wonderful for the Alous, and wonderful for baseball in the Dominican Republic. We always sort of took care of Matty because he was so small. Now look at him, leading all of us in hitting.”
At the same time, I purposely stayed away from checking the newspapers to see what the latest statistics were. I was more aware of what Rico Carty was doing because we were teammates, and as such I was also rooting for him. Although Rico wasn’t always a pleasure to be around, he was a joy to watch at the plate. He was one of the best right-handed hitters I ever saw and hands down the best two-strike hitter I ever saw. If not for injuries and also that Rico contracted tuberculosis during the prime of his career, there is no telling what kind of numbers he might have amassed. He was some kind of special talent with a bat in his hands.
The media took note that two Alou brothers and three Dominicans were battling for the batting title, but this was really nothing new for us. In the Winter League—Matty, myself, Carty, my other brother Jesús, and Manny Mota—we were always the best hitters. The only difference is that now it was translating to the Major Leagues.
But here is the crazy part. I saw Matty during the season when the Pirates were in Atlanta. I ran into him during batting practices, and we stopped and chatted briefly, just a few pleasantries. The next day both of us received telegrams from Major League Baseball, telling us we were each fined for fraternizing. Back then they would situate an umpire behind home plate during pregame to see if opposing players would talk to each other. It was beyond silly, and at some point over the past fifty years baseball stopped doing that. Just watch players today, hugging before games when they see each other, chatting and laughing. To tell me I couldn’t exchange a few sentences with my own brother was ridiculous. I could not believe it. The very definition of fraternizing is to associate as brothers. Well, this was my brother. Flesh and blood. And now we were being fined for doing what brothers should do, which is to behave like brothers. Incredible. Instead of using the opportunity to promote that two brothers were the two best hitters in the game, Major League Baseball chose to fine us. I still cannot believe it.
Toward the end of
the season, people were noting that Matty’s batting average was higher based on fewer at-bats—and presenting that as a negative. To me that put more pressure on Matty. An 0-for-4 day would damage his batting average more than it would mine. So I rejected the notion that it was easier for him because he finished with 131 fewer at-bats. I also bristled when people said he was a slap hitter and a bunter. Matty had nine triples that year. You don’t reach third base that many times slapping at the ball or by bunting.
All in all, it was a fun year. I was in a good groove. Sandy Koufax won the Cy Young Award and finished second in the MVP voting, thanks to his 27-9 record with a 1.73 earned run average. Yet that year I hit three home runs off Koufax, two of them coming in one game.
It was my best statistical season, but it ended on an ominous tone. A Sammy Ellis pitch when we played the Cincinnati Reds on September 18 caught me inside, hitting my left hand and breaking a small bone near the first knuckle on my index finger. I missed six days and returned just in time to face Juan Marichal and the Giants. I didn’t miss a beat, going 2 for 4 against Juan. But missing those 6 games meant that I finished with 666 at-bats during the ’66 season. I’m really not superstitious, but I am a believer in the Bible, and that’s too many number 6’s for me.
For whatever reason, I could feel my body starting to rebel against me after that. In the seasons that followed I started to understand how, when I was a younger player, I would see veterans spending extra time in the whirlpool and seeking the trainer’s hands more. Now that was me.
I had abused my body. Baseball will take its toll. But the main abuse came from how I grew up in the Dominican Republic. It was time to pay the dues for the hard work I did in my father’s blacksmith shop and especially the grueling work I used to do in a rock mine. I worked the mines during the summers when I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, and to this day it is the hardest work I’ve ever done. It also permanently damaged me.
The work wasn’t only hard; it was relentless. I would work eight hours straight, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., picking up boulders with my friend Carlos Rojas and throwing them into an automated crusher. It helped that Rojas was left-handed and I was right-handed. We would bend over, pick up those boulders, and toss them into a crusher we called Korea because of how relentless and unyielding it was. That machine never seemed to get enough boulders to crush, and we were constantly struggling to keep up. There were no breaks, either, other than maybe a quick gulp of water out of a dusty tin cup. Trucks were constantly arriving from the quarry with more boulders. Three shifts worked around the clock, with fifteen men to a shift. At the end of the week the shift that did the most work got a bonus of 10 pesos, which we never saw. Instead, it went to the man in charge of that shift.
It was the kind of work an animal would do, and I hated it. But I was the oldest child, and I had to help feed the family. The work did two things. It earned me $16 a week, which would go straight to my dad, who was a foreman at the rock mine. And it also permanently wrecked my right arm.
Nobody knew it, but when I entered professional baseball, my right arm was damaged goods, thanks to the rock mine and working with my father in his blacksmith and carpentry shop. Then I jammed my arm sliding headfirst during the 1962 World Series. After that I noticed I couldn’t totally extend my arm—a condition I kept quiet. To this day my right arm remains crooked. If I want to get a nice suit, I have to get it tailored to accommodate the difference in length between my right and left arms. And it hurts. It always hurts. To this day there is a dull pain at my right elbow, especially if I touch it.
Toward the end of the 1967 season I started to feel numbness in my throwing hand, particularly at my pinkie, and it was causing me trouble to hold and throw a baseball. Gripping a bat was even more difficult, much less swinging it with any authority. They discovered twenty-six bone chips and a damaged ulnar nerve, and subsequent surgery shelved me for the last month of the season.
I rebounded in 1968, leading Major League Baseball in plate appearances (718) and at-bats (662) and tying Pete Rose for the lead in hits (210). I also batted .317, an MLB third-best behind Rose and—who else?—my brother Matty. Batting over .300 that season was no small feat, given that the NL average dipped to .243 and only six hitters in all of baseball batted better than .300. After that 1968 season, which was known as the year of the pitcher, the mound was lowered from fifteen inches to ten inches and the size of the strike zone reduced.
Although it was a nice comeback season for me, the aches and pains were getting worse, and my recovery time was taking longer. I could sense the end approaching, and I guess so did the Braves. After batting over .300 the first couple of months in 1969, I suffered a broken finger when St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Chuck Taylor hit me with a pitch. To fill my spot the Braves acquired left-handed hitting Tony González from the San Diego Padres. When I returned the Braves platooned Tony and me in the outfield, which sent me a big signal.
The next signal came in the divisional series, the first ever in Major League Baseball. As the NL West champs, we went against the 1969 Miracle Mets from the NL East—and were swept three straight games in a five-game series. I appeared only as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning of the final game, ripping a line drive off Nolan Ryan right into the glove of shortstop Bud Harrelson for an out.
During the 1969 offseason what seemed inevitable happened. The Braves traded me on December 3 to the Oakland A’s, beginning what would be a five-year final stretch where I played for four different teams.
I could see the finish line to my playing career. But that wasn’t the only thing coming to an end. So had my marriage to Maria.
19
Family Matters
Baseball is hard on families; there is no getting around it. A man is on the road a lot, away from his wife and kids, in an environment fraught with temptations. There are always women hanging around baseball clubs. Beautiful women. At the ballparks, at hotels, at restaurants, on the street, everywhere. And the last thing on their mind is your family.
My family was always on my mind. I remember a night game on July 2, 1966, when all I could think about prior to it was my wife, Maria. The Atlanta Braves were in San Francisco for the third of a four-game series against the Giants. It also was the third day of what would be an eleven-game road trip. But my mind was in Atlanta, where Maria was pregnant with our fourth child. I flew my mother and sister Virginia in to help her, but there were still so many details I needed to tend to, and I didn’t like being away.
I called Maria before the game. She was having a difficult time with this pregnancy, but she assured me all was fine. Comforted with that report, I went 4 for 5 that night, with three singles and a two-run home run, to help lead my team to a 3–1 victory against the Giants.
What I learned later was that Maria was not fine. She had not been feeling well, but she did not want to burden me with any concerns. Later that night, right about the time I was hitting that two-run homer, Maria was en route to the hospital. The next morning she gave birth to our third son, Moisés. Later that same day, on July 3, 1966, after I learned the news of our new family addition, we exploded for twenty hits and seventeen runs against the Giants. Our pitcher that day, Tony Cloninger, made history. Cloninger became the first National League player, and to this day the only pitcher ever, to hit two grand-slam home runs in one game. Tony drove in nine of our seventeen runs in addition to pitching a complete game in a 17–3 cakewalk victory. Every starter in our lineup had either a hit or a run scored—or both—except for one player: Felipe Alou.
Sometimes when a ballplayer is having a bad day, or a bad stretch, the public isn’t aware of what is going on behind the scenes. Is he distracted with domestic concerns? Are there problems at home? Is one of the children sick? Did he and his girlfriend just break up? Is there an aged parent or a grandparent in failing health?
In my case I went from a 4-for-5 day where I got almost half of my team’s 9 hits and accounted for all 3 of our runs by way of 2 RBI and 1
run scored, to an 0-for-3 game with no runs scored on a day when our team pounded out 20 hits and scored 17 runs. What changed?
The birth of my third son and fourth child while I was playing baseball on the opposite end of the country—that’s what changed. The box score can tell a lot, but it cannot tell the whole story. It cannot tell you what is going on in life.
By the mid-1960s societal mores were rapidly changing—especially sexual mores. The freedom of sex blew wide open during that decade. Add to that the reality that when you’re young and successful in sports, the temptations can be overwhelming. I admit they were for me. It wasn’t uncommon for us as ballplayers to check into our hotel on the road, and waiting for us would be three or four messages from women we didn’t even know. How does a man in his twenties or thirties resist that again and again? But that’s the baseball culture. Marriages can be difficult enough without those types of extra challenges.
Of course, nobody goes into a marriage thinking it’s not going to last. I’ve been married four times. Only one has lasted—my current marriage to Lucie, which is now thirty-two years strong. We have two children together—Valerie and Felipe Jr. (a name we had to quickly give him because we were told we were having another girl). I’m not going to blame baseball for what happened to my three other marriages. I blame myself. But baseball didn’t help. I wasn’t immune to the evils of a traveling ballplayer. Even still, as a believer it pains me to know that I gave in to temptation. For that I accept my responsibility before God. He knows everything—all my steps, my thoughts, my weaknesses, my failures. Instead of honoring God, as I was told to do in the Bible, I listened to the offers of Satan. Once you become a believer, you become a bigger target to sin. And I was vulnerable to sin. I had a weakness with women, which Satan attacked. Alcohol and drugs were never a temptation for me. I was spared from that, for which I thank God. But with women it was different. Sin humbles a man. I thought I was invincible. But no man is. The minute we get careless with God . . . well, it doesn’t take much.