The Eastern Stars

by Mark Kurlansky

  Dominican League teams wanted the major leaguers not only because they wanted to win games but also because they wanted to earn money and these were the players who drew the crowds, especially when they played in their hometowns. Another reason why the crowd did not turn out in Tetelo Vargas Stadium for the critical game was that neither Cabrera nor Canó was playing.

  Although the pay was low by Major League Baseball standards, star quality was important. When Griffin was a player, the Estrellas wouldn’t use him regularly until he won Rookie of the Year. Julio Guerrero, the very tall, lean, broad-shouldered pitcher from Porvenir, in his best year made Triple A for the Pirates for three weeks. That was enough to get him a salary of 40,000 pesos a month from the Estrellas the following winter. But when he dropped down from Triple A, the Estrellas paid him less. A top salary for a major leaguer was only about 300,000 pesos—about $10,000.

  Mercedes said, “When I was playing in the major leagues, I didn’t even think about the money here. But any kind of baseball—you have to love baseball to play it.”

  “But I’ll tell you something,” said Bonny Castillo in spring 2008. “Young players improve when they play winter baseball. Ervin Santana is having a better year for the Angels this year because he pitched for Licey last winter. He threw thirty innings. Young players need added experience.”

  Young major-league players, not all of them Dominican, came down to the Dominican Republic to play winter baseball and improve their game.

  In the Dominican Republic, time is an approximation. So even though the baseball games started late, many fans did not get there for the first inning. The poor were more punctual. The cheap seats, benches along right and left field, were filled at game time, but the better center seats, which could be as high as $6 or $7, only filled gradually during the course of the early innings.

  The worst seats in Tetelo Vargas were in the press box. It was an enclosed room with a long window with rumbling air-conditioning. Being sealed off in air-conditioning gave the press a sense of superiority, and they sat in there drinking rum and beer and arguing about Middle Eastern terrorism. It was hard to concentrate on the game from the press room because, unable to hear the pop of the bat or the snap of the pitch hitting the mitt or the screams of the crowd, the people in the press box were not involved.

  Noise was part of Dominican baseball, as with most things Dominican. Estrellas fans were equipped with incredibly loud green noisemakers. Vendors sold them. Estrellas fans wore green. The women wore it in such tight clothes that they appeared to have green skin. The women were dressed in their most spectacular and revealing outfits because the games were televised and in between plays the cameramen liked to zoom in on women who caught their eye. If you were done up right, you could get on television. That, too, was Dominican sports. The sports pages in the newspapers always featured cheesecake photos of women, with no further explanation offered.

  When the Estrellas scored, the sound system trumpeted jungle-stirring elephant noise. Someone in an Estrellas uniform with an elephant head was on the field dancing merengue at propitious moments. Vendors sold homemade confections of wrenching sweetness. Between innings there were cheerleaders in skintight white and green with suggestive hip movements and a lot of skin showing in many different shades.

  The Estrellas would have to win this game or be eliminated. Then they had to win the next game to come to a tie and force yet another game, which they would also have to win to be in the playoff. There was no room for mistakes now. Any loss in the next three games and Las Estrellas would once again go down in defeat.

  As the Águilas came onto the field, old friends among them came over to Griffin and they hugged. Given the situation, Griffin seemed remarkably calm. He explained, “There is so much pressure in playing a game seven of a World Series that, once you’ve done that, you never feel pressure anymore.” Griffin was on three World Series-winning teams.

  Griffin started right-hander Kenny Ray, mainly a relief pitcher, who had played with Kansas City but in recent years was struggling with injuries to his arm. The Águilas started with Bartolo Colón, a hometown hero in their Cibao region who started for Griffin’s own Angels, for whom he had won pitching’s highest honor, the Cy Young Award, in 2005. Despite this seemingly unequal match, Ray pitched well, and with some good hitting the Estrellas had a 4-to-3 lead in the middle of the game. Elephant sounds were heard. Then the Águilas scored four runs. But to the trumpeting of plastic horns, the Estrellas came back with two more runs. The Estrellas had their last chance in the eighth inning, when they were down by only one run, 7 to 6. They loaded the bases with only one out. Then they did a typical Estrellas maneuver: they hit into an inning-ending double play. Another disappointing year for the Estrellas Orientales.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  San Pedro’s Black Eye

  When George Bell was a teenager playing in Santa Fe, he fell while avoiding a flying bat and hit his right eye on the corner of a bench. The discoloration under his right eye never went away, and so Bell always looked as though he had just been in a fight and gotten a black eye. When he was a player, the press constantly asked him about his black eye. This was in part the image of a Dominican player—a brawler—but it was also who George Bell was. Once when he was playing for the Blue Jays in Toronto’s Sky Dome, he delivered an unmistakable gesture with his middle finger to some 50,000 booing fans. Bell was booed a lot, and he always said that it was bigotry directed against him because he was a Dominican. But some of the fans said that it was because he was a bad outfielder. He often failed at critical plays and was booed for that. Eventually, over his angry protests, he was taken out of the field and made a designated hitter who only stepped in to bat for the pitcher. Batting was what made him valuable.

  Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy once wrote, “Baseball fans hear the name ‘George Bell’ and they think of tantrums, bumps with umpires, confrontations with pitchers and public pouts.” He went on to say that Bell would “never get the recognition he deserves as long as he wears the badge of the Loco Latin.” The “Loco Latin” badge has kept many Dominicans from getting their due, but Bell was particularly insensitive to this problem. Bell played baseball as a contact sport. Not only was he known for running over catchers and even basemen—an accepted practice to make them drop the ball—but he was also notorious for “charging the mound.” If he was hit by a pitch, he ran up to the pitcher’s mound and threw a punch at the pitcher. At least once he tried out the karate kick he had learned in karate school back in San Pedro. In his autobiography, Hard Ball, published in 1990 when he was still a player, he attempted to explain this behavior:Some games the fans get angry because they can’t understand the way I act, but part of my game, along with hitting homers and driving in runs, is fighting back. If I hit a home run with two men on and the next time up the same pitcher knocks me down, I’m going to get up and charge the mound. I don’t care whether it’s a home game and the place is sold out, or we’re in Cleveland and no one is watching, or the game is the TV Game of the Week. If a pitcher tries to intimidate me, I’m going to go out there to kick his ass. That’s the way I grew up playing the game.

  Eighteen years later, in a 2008 interview in La Romana, Bell—now a middle-aged man—hadn’t softened in the least. “Every time I got hit I would kick their butt,” he stated.

  You mean literally?

  “Fuck yes. They are trying to intimidate you.”

  Bell felt justified because he believed, as Pedro González had before him, that pitchers were hitting him intentionally because he was a Dominican. He would hear angry fans shouting pejorative comments about Dominicans. He always remembered a restaurant in Milwaukee in 1989 that refused to serve him and two other Dominican players.

  “I understand,” Bell said. “You don’t like to get beaten by a foreigner, and I was a good hitter and I was black. It’s all part of the mix.”

  But what was disturbing to other Macorisano players was Bell’s claim that charging the
mound was something he learned in San Pedro—that it was the San Pedro way of playing baseball. A later generation of San Pedro players developed a sense that baseball had become something extremely valuable that they had to handle with considerable care.

  Fernando Tatis, asked about Bell’s assertion that his aggressiveness was the San Pedro way, said, “Some people play like that and some people don’t. I don’t. I think you have to respect the game. It is what is going to give me and my family a better life.”

  The better buscón programs emphasized that such antics are unprofessional and not good for them or for baseball.

  George Bell was not the only San Pedro player with the Latin-hothead reputation. Pitcher Balvino Galvez, born on a batey, would have been infamous had his career lasted longer. He threw a hard fastball, often while sticking out his tongue. His control of the pitch was flawless, but the pitches started drifting when he had the pressure of runners on the bases. He pitched only one season in the majors, 1986 for the Dodgers. He then had a career in Japan, where he was known for his tantrums, more than once expressing his anger at an umpire’s call by throwing the ball at him. Galvez almost made it back to the majors in 2001, when he was slated to join the starting rotation of the Pirates. But at spring training he got into an argument with the pitching coach, Spin Williams. Galvez threw down his glove, stomped into the clubhouse, and without saying a word packed up and flew back to the Dominican Republic. He was immediately released, never again to play.

  Joaquín Andújar was infamous for his erratic behavior. He once removed himself from the mound, complaining that his crotch itched, and after one game went badly he demolished a toilet with a baseball bat. In 1985 he took off after an umpire in a World Series, had to be restrained by his teammates, and started the following year suspended for ten days. Then there was a drug scandal that might explain the erratic behavior. In between the Chicago World Series fixing scandal of 1919 and the steroid scandal of the twenty-first century, the biggest scandal to shake baseball was the 1986 investigation into widespread amphetamine and cocaine use among important major-league players. During the investigation Andújar confessed to using cocaine.

  Even in retirement back in San Pedro, Andújar maintained his reputation. Alfredo Griffin kindly said that it was just that “Joaquín has too much blood.” When Griffin was building his new house next to Andújar’s in 1986, the pitcher dropped in, had a tirade about the carpet being too dark, shook everyone’s hand, and left. Even people in San Pedro thought he was a little crazy. Bell once said, “A lot of North Americans, some Dominicans as well, say that Joaquín is muy malo, a bad guy. But I know he’s honest.” Nor did Andújar have any objection to Bell’s public persona. Andújar repeatedly described himself to the American press as “one tough Dominican” and was fond of characterizing himself as “born to be macho,” which to American readers seemed more true than interesting.

  Juan Marichal remained the only Dominican inducted into the Hall of Fame, although several good prospects waited in the wings. To be elected, a player must be retired for five years. Entry is voted on by only the members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who are currently working and have been active writers for at least ten years. To be inducted into the Hall of Fame, at least seventy-five percent of the members have to vote favorably. The number of voters varies, but in 2009, for example, this meant receiving a minimum of 405 votes. Few players are assured entry. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb easily made it their first voting year with over ninety-five percent. But Cy Young barely made it with seventy-five percent. Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Hank Greenberg were all turned down the first time they came up for a vote. So it is difficult to predict this process, but the most likely Hall of Famer from San Pedro, according to his records, would be Sammy Sosa.

  And yet if Macorisanos were asked who was the best ballplayer they ever produced, it is unlikely many would say Sosa. They would probably say Tetelo Vargas. Sosa was not a five-tool player. Early in his career, when he was stealing twenty-five bases each season, he was a three-tool player, but mostly he was an extraordinary hitter who in 2007 became only the fifth player ever to hit more than six hundred home runs. He also drove in more than 140 runs year after year. He was the leading home-run hitter in baseball in two different years, he had the most home runs in a four-year period in history, he was the only batter to hit sixty or more home runs for three consecutive seasons, and he was famous for the record-breaking season of 1998, when he beat the long-standing sixty-one home-run record of Roger Maris, the most celebrated record in baseball, by hitting sixty-six—only to be beaten by Mark McGwire, who hit seventy home runs.

  Yet at the opening of the Winter League in San Pedro in 1999—at the height of his record-making career—when Sosa threw out the first ball, people booed. Then others cheered, but he was clearly booed first. The reason was that San Pedro had been devastated by a hurricane and Sosa had made a great show in the American press of hurricane relief, but Macorisanos were not believing it. The mayor at the time, Sergio Cedeño, said, “He asked for money to help the people of San Pedro de Macorís. That’s what we are asking—where’s the money?” In the U.S. also, Sosa’s much-trumpeted charitable work was called into question. But for baseball fans, other questions were to arise. By 2004 the onetime Chicago superstar was being regularly booed in Wrigley Field, and his T-shirt was so unpopular in the Wrigleyville Sports store near the field that it had been marked down thirty percent.

  In 2002 the steroid scandal was beginning to overtake baseball. Steroids were found in the locker of Sosa’s home-run competitor, Mark McGwire. The other home-run king, Barry Bonds, denied using steroids but had tested positive several times.

  That left one home-run champion, Sosa, for whom a grandstand was more than just where he sent the ball. With his customary bravado he took to saying that if baseball started testing for steroids, he wanted to be first in line. In an interview, Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly asked him if he meant it, and he said emphatically yes.

  Then Reilly asked, “Why wait?”

  “What?” said Sosa.

  Reilly, thinking that Sosa could clear the air and give a lift to baseball by proving that he, at least, had come by his home runs honestly, wrote down the telephone number and address of a diagnostic lab that could test him only thirty minutes from Wrigley Field, where he was playing for the Cubs.

  Sosa became enraged, accused Reilly of trying to “get me in trouble,” and stopped the interview, calling Reilly a “motherfucker.” Reilly said that the lesson for sportswriters was to always ask the steroid question at the end of the interview.

  The public and many sportswriters began suspecting Sosa of steroid use. Anabolic steroids are drugs related to testosterone, a male hormone. Anabolic comes from a Greek word meaning “to build up.” The drugs were first developed in the 1930s and are used today to treat patients suffering from bone loss and to counteract deterioration in cancer and AIDS patients. But steroids can also be used to build up muscles, and consequently strength, in athletes. The risks are many, including increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, infertility, liver damage, and heart disease. Some studies indicate a physical altering of the structure of the heart and personality changes, including extreme aggression. Since the 1980s the possession of anabolic steroids without a prescription is a crime, in the United States. Not only were baseball players who used them committing a crime, but they were violating the rules of Major League Baseball. Like the Olympics committee, the National Football Association, and basketball, hockey, and most other sports organizations, Major League Baseball considered steroids to be an unfair trick to enhance performance and had banned their use. A baseball player who used steroids was considered a cheater.

  Sosa, once a fan favorite for his ready smile and his maudlin talk of remembering the poor, had other problems. In 2003 he was at bat for the Cubs in the first inning against Tampa Bay, a notoriously ineffective pitching team that year. But Sosa, the home-run king, was h
aving a bad year. It was June and he had hit only six home runs—none in the past thirty-three days. Sosa took a swing; the pitch shattered the bat and sent a ground ball to second base. The alert catcher, Toby Hall, gathered the broken pieces and showed them to the umpire, who promptly ejected Sosa from the game. The pieces revealed that the bat had a cork interior.

  It is not clear if corked bats are an advantage. They make the bat lighter for a faster swing, but Robert K. Adair, a Yale professor who authored The Physics of Baseball, claimed that because cork is a softer substance, it may actually slow down the ball. But corked bats were used by hitters who believed they sent the ball farther, and Major League Baseball had banned their use. Players caught using them were officially cheating. Baseball rules state that a bat must be a solid piece of wood.

  The following day, seventy-six bats were confiscated from Sosa in the Cubs locker room while a game was still going on; the bats were all X-rayed and found to be “clean.” Sosa had claimed that his use of the corked bat the day before had just been a big mistake, that he had accidentally pulled out a bat that he used for home-run exhibitions. Major-league officials said they believed his story and cut his eight-day suspension to seven days. But the fans and the press felt Sammy Sosa had been caught cheating. USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno called Sosa’s explanation a “highly implausible defense.” USA Today conducted a poll in which sixty percent of respondents said they didn’t believe Sosa and thought he had used the corked bat intentionally. The press wrote variations on the “Say it isn’t so, Joe” line to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson after the 1919 World Series had been found to be fixed. The New York Post, with their traditional love of tabloid headlines, ran the story with “Say It Isn’t Sosa,” a line that was being used by Chicago fans. Jackson, by the way, got only two votes when his name was brought up in the Hall of Fame in 1936. Baseball writer Roger Kahn in the Los Angeles Times linked Sosa to Pete Rose, a player who has not been voted into the Hall of Fame because he was caught betting on baseball.