Alou

by Felipe Alou

  There were many times when, with God’s help, I fought back, when I resisted temptation. But temptation was always there. One time, when I was in a hospital bed in Houston, recovering from surgery, I awoke to discover that the nurse had climbed into my bed with me. I stopped that before it went any further. Another time I was invited to an evening party by some Venezuelan guys. When I got there everybody was naked, swimming, standing around. Beer, wine, and liquor were everywhere. It was early in the evening and things had not yet gotten too wild, but I could tell it was about to. Somebody told me where I could go take off my clothes and join the party. Instead, I left. Another time I was invited to a house party, only to be greeted by the overwhelming scent of marijuana smoke as I walked through the front door. There were women everywhere, and not one of them had a stitch of clothing on. I saw people having sex. I turned and left.

  So I fought it. I fought the temptation. Yes, there were too many times when I failed, but there were also many times when I succeeded in honoring God.

  Those failures took their toll on my failed marriages. I admit that. But I will also say this: it takes two to tango. I do not believe that it is all one person’s fault when a marriage fails. With Maria I take most of the blame. We married young. She was my first love. We were from the same hometown. Not only was it a marriage I thought would last, but for years after we divorced in 1968 I had it in the back of my head that we would get back together. We never did. But in our ten years of marriage we did have four children together—Felipe, Maria, José, and Moisés.

  In the late ’60s I met a woman in Atlanta, Beverly Martin, who in 1969 became my second wife. She was American, college educated. The home I still have in the Dominican Republic I built for her and the three beautiful daughters we had together—Christia, Cheri, and Jennifer. But Beverly would openly complain, in front of other people, that there was no way her children were going to live in the Dominican Republic, that it was no place to live. This was at the time when my career was winding down, which meant that our home in the Dominican wasn’t going to be for the offseason. It was going to be our permanent home. Now, from the distance of time, I can see Beverly’s fears. It was a nice house, but many times the electricity could go out and not come back for several days. Sometimes you could lose water for a week and would have to rely on truckloads to come by and provide water that was good enough only for the toilet. Beverly’s concerns were valid. But at the same time, if you are demeaning my country, you are demeaning me. Both happened too often, and our marriage lasted only five years.

  Without a woman who wanted to live in the Dominican Republic, I then chose to marry a Dominican. In this case it was my third wife, Elsa Brens. We had two boys—Felipe José and Luis Emilio. Elsa worked as a secretary for the owners of the new Dominican summer league, so she was aware of the culture. Maybe it was because of that, knowing how ballplayers could be, that she was always suspicious of me, always accusing me of infidelity. One day I was served divorce papers, and that was the end of our marriage.

  The ones who suffer the most from failed marriages are the children. You go from being in their lives, under the same roof, to snapshots of time with them. It’s difficult. I’m proud that all of my eleven children were the products of a marriage, and depending on where they were born—in America, Canada, or the Dominican Republic—they came into the world with either Alou or Rojas as their surname. But no matter where they were born, none of my children was born in the street, and all of them have become outstanding adults. Not one of them has ever done anything to disrespect the family name, something I preached from the time they were old enough to understand. Though I’m not proud that I’ve been married four times, I am proud that my children are products of those marriages and not of affairs. That’s not me. I’m not a man who likes to be unmarried. I like having a wife. And I like having children.

  When my children with Maria were young, it was the best feeling. You remember the little things. Sweet memories. Innocent pleasures. Those tender young children would try their hardest to wait up for me at night to come home from the ballpark. I would bring them bubble gum from the clubhouse, and they would be thrilled. You miss simple moments like that.

  You also miss big moments, too. Thank goodness I was still married to Maria when Moisés was two years old and we were at the beach together in the Dominican Republic. Moisés was out of my eyesight for what seemed like a second, when I saw him facedown in a small puddle of water, no more than five inches deep, his belly bloated and his body turning blue. I lunged into action. I believe I must have helped little Moisés vomit a gallon of water. It was scary. Moisés didn’t leave my eyesight after that, and what I noticed fifteen minutes later was that he went straight back to the same spot where he almost drowned. As a parent you file away those moments, moments you might miss if there is a divorce. When Moisés was only two years old I could already see that he was like Uncle Matty. Fearless.

  Other stories you’re not there for. Instead, you hear about them from a distance, from what is now talking to your ex-wife on the telephone, often over the static of an international connection. Like the time when Moisés was seven, playing with matches underneath his bed, setting a fire ablaze. Thankfully, his sister, Maria, acted fast enough and called the fire department before it raged out of control. Then there was also the time when Moisés was nine and dislocated his thumb playing with firecrackers. And another time, when Moisés was eleven, he hopped a neighbor’s fence to retrieve a rubber ball, only to have a German shepherd maul him so viciously that to this day he still has scars on his chest.

  The biggest event I missed, the one that haunts me, arrived on March 26, 1976. I say event, but it was really a tragedy, the biggest tragedy of my life. My playing career was over, and I was invited to be a spring training instructor for the Montreal Expos. We were playing a Grapefruit League game against the Minnesota Twins at Tinker Field in Orlando. I was coaching third base that night when I heard my name over the loudspeaker.

  “Mr. Alou, please come to the Twins’ office!”

  A few moments later the same message again boomed across the loudspeaker: “Mr. Alou, please come to the Twins’ office!”

  My heart raced. My parents were up in years, and I thought something happened to one of them. I came off the field and, still in uniform, went to the Twins’ office. Calvin Griffith, the Twins’ owner and general manager, was there, and I could see in his eyes that I was about to hear something dreadful.

  “I have bad news,” he said. “Your son died in a swimming pool accident.”

  I fainted. Mr. Griffith caught me before I hit the ground.

  How long I remained passed out, I don’t know. What I do know is that I probably didn’t sleep for days. I had a home for Maria and our children in the best neighborhood in Santo Domingo. Felipe, my firstborn, was sixteen at the time—a good-looking boy, a good athlete, an aspiring ballplayer, with so much life ahead of him. He was with his friends when they came across a swimming pool that was under construction. Thinking that the water was deep, Felipe dove in. The water was shallow. He broke his neck and died in that pool.

  Our trainer drove me to our spring training camp in Daytona Beach so I could get my passport and other documents I needed, and then to Miami, where I was to catch a Dominicana Airlines flight. Tears streamed down my cheeks much of the way. I made the flight, but we sat on the plane outside the terminal for one hour, then two hours, then three hours. I lost it, especially when I learned that the delay was because of a late flight coming in from New Orleans that had a Dominican Republic general on it. They were delaying an entire flight just to accommodate him. I started yelling at the cockpit, uncontrollable. It was horrible. Only a parent who has lost a child can possibly understand.

  When I got home and to the funeral home, I saw my firstborn son’s body lying in an open casket, wearing a gray-and-white-checkered suit. Family, friends, and relatives were there, crying and wailing. I was crying. I noticed that the only one not crying
was my youngest son, Moisés. Nine years old and his face was like steel, defiant at death. He sat there in a chair as if he were guarding his big brother, as if he were ensuring that nothing more was going to happen to him. My tears fell heavier when I saw that. I will never forget the look on Moisés’s face. He pulsated anger, anger at the fate of his big brother. Moisés hated what happened. Hated death.

  I felt the same anger, along with despair. I was afraid of sharks, but I found myself snorkeling alone, descending deeper into the dark depths of the Caribbean Sea than I had ever done before, holding my breath for so long I wondered if I would make it to the surface in time. As for sharks, I yearned for one to confront me.

  I had a round-trip ticket to go back to the United States, but I never used it. I truly believed I was done with baseball, done with life. I wanted to retreat into the Dominican, deep into my sorrow. That might sound dramatic, but for the next decade I drifted. People sometimes ask me why it took so long before I got a Major League managerial job. There were a lot of factors, one of them being the obvious reason that field-managing jobs were slow to come to Latinos. But I have to be honest in saying that for many years baseball and life didn’t seem that important. I was haunted. I had nightmares. Many times I wanted to be left alone. For about a dozen years I couldn’t even talk about my son’s death. And then one night, while I was sleeping, I swear I felt Felipe’s hand on my head—a brief reassuring touch. It was only after that when I believed I could move on with my life.

  But you never really move on.

  20

  Winding Down

  A ballplayer’s career ends in two ways—gradually and suddenly. It happens to everyone who has ever played this game. You might be able to outrun a baseball, but you won’t be able to outrun baseball itself. The game catches up with you. It catches up with everyone.

  You start to notice little things. Things that fans don’t see. Things that the box score doesn’t record. They say numbers don’t lie, but sometimes they don’t tell the whole story. You notice that going from first to third on a single to right is no longer a guarantee. I could sense that I had lost a step or two, or maybe three, which can make all the difference on a baseball field.

  In 1968, my penultimate season with the Atlanta Braves, I put up good numbers. But I was thirty-three years old, and I could tell my strength was declining. Two seasons earlier, in 1966, I had hit a career-high 31 home runs. But even with all the good numbers I posted in that ’68 season, I hit only 11 homers. Those numbers weren’t lying.

  Players will do just about anything to stay on the field and also to get an edge—or to at least maintain the edge they once had. By the late ’60s amphetamines had flooded into the game—uppers as well as downers. It wasn’t uncommon to see trays with different colored pills in the clubhouse—like jellybeans. Mostly it was green amphetamine pills, or what came to be called greenies. Players were also drinking something called red juice. Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey was the liquor of choice to relax. Traveling through time zones, and the daily grind of games can wear you down—and at the same time it can make it difficult to relax and sleep. I was never much for liquor, and I never had a problem with energy, not to the point where I felt like I needed to take any pills. I took a couple of B-12 shots late in my career, and that was it.

  Years later, when steroids overtook the game, I told a reporter that ballplayers will do anything to get an edge, and I used the example of amphetamines in my day. That comment came back to haunt me in 2006, when I was called to testify all day for former senator George Mitchell’s investigation into steroid use in baseball—or what came to be known as the Mitchell Report.

  But no matter what you do, or don’t do, your body is going to eventually let you know that your time has come and gone. The game will let you know, too. After 1968 I played for five teams over the next six seasons. That’s an obvious indicator to let you know your career is winding down. It’s also a good opportunity to see how different organizations do things and also to make a few more lifelong friends and connections.

  The second time you’re traded is not as traumatic as the first time. But it’s still not easy. I played six years for the Braves, the same number of years I played for the Giants, so it felt like my second home in the big leagues. But the Braves traded me to the Oakland A’s on December 3, 1969, for pitcher Jim Nash, who played only three more seasons in the big leagues, going 23-25. So it was back to the Bay Area for me. Only this time it was on the other side of the bay. I would look across the water at the San Francisco skyline, and I realized that I missed it terribly.

  The 1970s Oakland A’s had a young team with a lot of talent, and they were looking for a veteran presence. You stick around in baseball long enough, and that’s what you become—a veteran presence.

  One of the young talents was a kid coming off a 47 home run, 118 RBI season. His name was Reggie Jackson. His middle name was Martinez, which was the first name of his father, who was half Puerto Rican. Reggie was proud of his Hispanic roots, and he was always close to the Latinos, always trying to talk with us in Spanish. Broken Spanish. But Spanish nonetheless. Reggie was cocky, but he was cocky because he was good. We could all see that. His power was obvious. But what people tended to overlook is that Reggie had a tremendous arm in right field. He could have been a pitcher; his arm was that good. His only flaw is that he didn’t have a quick release. Reggie would wind up before he threw. But what an arm! And he could run, too.

  The other talents on that A’s squad were guys who would go on to form the nucleus of three straight World Series championship teams in 1972, 1973, and 1974—Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Joe Rudi, and Gene Tenace. And the young pitching was outstanding—Jim “Catfish” Hunter, John “Blue Moon” Odom, Vida Blue, and Rollie Fingers.

  I believe your leaders are not always your best players, or even your starters. You need both. That A’s team I joined had leadership in the everyday lineup and on the bench. Three of us went on to become Major League managers—myself, Marcel Lachemann, and an intelligent twenty-five-year-old middle infielder who didn’t play very much but who was passionate about the game, always paying attention, always keenly observing, analyzing, asking questions.

  One day I went up to him and did something I never did before or since. I told him he should think about getting into coaching. He laughed, and I’m sure he thought I was being a smart aleck or disrespectful. But I was serious. To my eye I was looking at a future big-league manager.

  Forty-four years later that young kid was inducted into the Hall of Fame . . . as a manager. His name? Tony La Russa. Tony managed for three different big-league teams—the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland A’s, and the St. Louis Cardinals. He won three World Series titles and six pennants. At his side as his pitching coach for all that success was one of our teammates on that 1970 A’s team—backup catcher Dave Duncan. Like La Russa, Duncan was an intelligent guy. It wasn’t surprising to me that he became one of the game’s premier pitching coaches.

  People remember all the personalities around those Oakland A’s of the early ’70s, mainly because of the way the owner, Charlie Finley, marketed the team with the nicknames, the white shoes, the sleeveless uniforms, and the mustaches. He gave us $300 to grow mustaches, which a lot of us, including me, did. I still wear a mustache to this day. Charlie got Major League Baseball to adopt the designated hitter. He even got them to experiment with an orange baseball, which didn’t catch on.

  To me one of the oddest things about playing for the A’s was that our mascot was a mule. A real mule! I would be taking batting practice and would look over and see a mule eating hay. I thought maybe I was back in the Dominican Republic.

  Unfortunately, I played barely more than a year for Oakland and thus never got to enjoy playing for those three World Championships teams. I also didn’t get to enjoy playing together again in the Bay Area with my brothers Matty and Jesús. Matty played for Oakland in 1972 and Jesús in 1973, each of them earning the World Series ring I nev
er got as a player.

  Just three games into the 1971 season, on April 9, A’s manager Dick Williams called me into his office and told me they were going with Joe Rudi as their regular left fielder and they were trading me to the New York Yankees. In return, the A’s got a couple of journeyman pitchers who won a combined total of twenty-two Major League games in their careers—Rob Gardner and Ron Klimkowski. Nothing against Gardner and Klimkowski, but this was yet another indicator that my playing career was winding down. I was essentially unloaded.

  Although I was going to the most iconic franchise in all of sports, these weren’t the Yankees of my youth or even the Yankees I played against in the 1962 World Series. These Yankees were on a steady decline since their last World Series appearance in 1964. Starting in 1965 the Yankees finished sixth, tenth (last place), ninth, fifth, and fifth (second to last since MLB went to the division format in 1969). In 1970, perhaps as a harbinger, they finished second, mainly on the strength of their Rookie of the Year catcher, Thurman Munson. Three years later things really moved forward when a shipbuilder from Ohio named George Steinbrenner purchased the franchise, becoming its principal owner.

  Because of the abruptness of the trade at the start of the season, the Yankees were kind enough to allow me to drive across the country rather than catching a flight and reporting right away. I hadn’t even found an apartment yet in Oakland, and my family still hadn’t arrived, although all our belongings had been shipped to me. I had an Oldsmobile 88, and I loaded it with bats, duffel bags, gloves, pots, pans, my clothes, my wife’s clothes, children’s clothes . . . and on Easter weekend I headed on the highway. My car was so packed I barely had enough room to move. I first had to drive south and then head east on I-40. Somewhere on the outskirts of Kingman, Arizona, on a stretch of open road that sloped downward, I was cruising at 100 mph. In my rearview mirror, far back in the distance, I saw a car, and I could tell that it, too, was moving at a pretty good clip. It got closer, closer, closer . . . then lights started flashing. It was an unmarked police car.