More than anything, Curaçao is about accommodating many different cultures and religions. The one way to do things in Curaçao is to do it many ways. It’s how the island established a major international port that would be celebrated by Adam Smith, and it’s how the island accommodates tourists and nurtures niche industries like liqueur and offshore banking—and it’s how the island builds baseball players.
The symbol of the island is Papiamentu, the language that holds the many pieces together, loosely. Only about 200,000 people speak Papiamentu worldwide. Papiamentu began as a Pidgen language—a way for natives to speak pieces of the colonizer’s language. But over the years, it’s become a language of its own, an amalgam of Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and various African dialects. The language’s polyglot character makes it ever accessible.
In recent years, Papiamentu has become a more central part of the island’s life. One experimental school uses Papiamentu as the primary language of instruction and has seen performance improve significantly. But unlike Quebec or Spanishspeaking parts of the U.S., where a native language becomes a means of separation, Papiamentu always invites its speakers to use other languages too. Papiamentu is, after all, just a collection of those other languages.
Speaking a language like Papiamentu becomes a way of life and a metaphor for how to do other things—how to build a small business, how to keep families and communities together, even how to play baseball. Papiamentu reflects a different kind of diversity and toleration.
Sorick Liberia stands on base.
Papiamentu has become the foundation for the island’s modest culture—a way of remaining apart from the homogenizing world, but also for maintaining the ability to range far and wide in the world.
Baseball has started to play the same role on the island. Because of the success of the Little League teams, Curaçao has yet another language, yet another way of life. More people across the world now know about Curaçao because of its Little Leaguers than its oil industry or tourism or polyglot language. Baseball is now Curaçao’s reference point for the world.
When Carl Stotz created Little League almost seven decades ago, he wanted all the kids to have an equal chance to win, year after year. So Little League established a draft system to spread the talent evenly.
But in the Pabou Little League of Willemstad, playing a competitive season is not the point. The point is to create a baseball program that sends teams to the Little League World Series every summer—and, eventually, produces major leaguers.
The teams in the Pabou Little League do not participate in a draft. Instead, the coaches actively recruit the best players. Two teams—the Refineria Isala team from the Santa Maria neighborhood and the Marchena Hardware team from Marchena—dominate the league every year.
“During the regular season, we have a farm system that [places] players according to their abilities,” says Vernon Isabella, the manager of the Pabou all-stars in 2004 and 2005. “Players who want to play for me can find a spot on one of the teams. There are nine teams in the Pabou League, and Santa Maria has three.”
In addition to the three twelve-and-under teams, Isabella oversees six teams from ages five through nine, two junior league teams (mostly ages fourteen and fifteen), and one senior league team (mostly ages sixteen and seventeen).
“I am the main instructor for kids ages five to sixteen. The kids start at five, learn how to catch the ball. And they go all the way to the older boys…Before the tournaments begin, there are about 200 kids involved in the team’s farm system.”
Isabella works with coaches throughout common approaches—strength training, the league to establish fielding drills, hitting mechanics—to coaching the kids. The coaches regularly share information about rising stars, teaching strategies, and game performances. During the season, Isabella spends most of his time at Frank Curiel Field, teaching and getting to know Santa Maria players of all ages.
The difficulty, Isabella says, is turning away boys from his team.
“We have to disappoint some children,” he says on a warm December afternoon at Frank Curiel Field. As he is talking, a worker uses a leaf blower to direct trash into a pile, and day laborers snore in the midday sun.
“The problem is, at one point you have to stop accepting them or else you have to start a new league. The league can have only ten teams. It doesn’t matter to me if the league is split up, because the two top teams will stay in the league where I’m coaching. But it’s more of a challenge for the others involved with the league. We don’t turn them away; if they want to come and practice, they can do it. You get a fair chance if you perform.”
In 2005, the Pabou League’s all-stars came mostly from two teams. Seven players represented Michelangelo Celestina’s Marchena Hardware team: ace pitchers Sorick Liberia and Jurickson Profar, catcher Willie Rifaela, and four other players. Vernon Isabella’s Refineria Isla team had four all-stars: pitcher Naeem Lourens, future shortstop star Darren Seferina, and two others. Jeep of Jandora had two stars, including Christopher Garia, and UTS of Buena Vista had one. The other four teams had no representatives on the team.
When I visited Curaçao, Isabella and Michelangelo Celestina, the manager of the Merchena Hardware team, were enthusing over rising stars in the Pabou Minor League. Everyone in the league was watching Puremi Profar, the younger brother of two-time World Series star Jurickson Profar. As we discussed the younger Profar, the guy blowing trash came over and pointed to a glossy brochure that features the past, present, and future stars of Little League. In 2005, the younger Profar— like his brother, a shortstop—batted .444 in the regular season and .300 in the all-star games.
When Isabella went to the Little League World Series in 2005, he took four players from the 2004 championship team. In 2006, seven of the 2005 players will be eligible to play in Williamsport.
As far as Isabella is concerned, the question is not whether the Pabou League all-stars will advance to Williamsport in 2006 and beyond. The question is which of the seven potential returnees will make the team.
Curaçao sent teams to the Little League World Series four times before the Pabou Little League won the championship in 2004. The players who won that series—Jonathan Schoop, Carlos Pinada, and Jurickson Profar—have become examples of how everyone else should play the game. Curaçao did not dominate the series the way other teams—especially Asian teams—have in the past. But no matter. They won.
Jurickson Profar pitched Curaçao to the international championship.
Schoop was the best of the group. Standing five-foot-eleven, Schoop won two games on the mound and supplied power hitting. After getting hit in the arm with a pitch—at first, everyone feared he’d broken his arm—Schoop returned to the lineup and went two for three against Saudi Arabia. Then he had two big RBIs in a big win over Japan and another win in the title game against California.
But it’s Schoop’s toughness that everyone remembers now.
“He could do anything,” Vernon Isabella says, longingly. “No matter what happened, he did not break down. He was tough. He had a look in his eye. He was stubborn. Some of these other guys aren’t like that. Jurickson, I don’t know. . . he’s not tough like that. He can back off. He doesn’t want it as bad.”
Carlos Pineda gave up just two hits in the opening-day win over Mexico and then won the championship game against California. In that title game, he struck out eleven batters in five innings. Called “Big Papi”—the nickname of David Ortiz, the bearlike slugger for the Boston Red Sox— he also hit three home runs in the first five games of the series.
Profar also won a name for himself in 2004, pitching a one-hit shutout and striking out twelve batters in the international championship game against Mexico. He also starred in 2005, winning two games on the mound and playing flawless shortstop. Profar thinks about situations two or three plays in advance. When a ball comes to him, he knows what to do, how much time he has. He almost never rushes his throws.
His regular-sea
son manager, Michelangelo Celestina, says he’s the best Little Leaguer he’s ever seen. He thinks he has the potential to follow Andruw Jones to the major leagues.
“Jurickson is not like anything I have ever seen,” Celestina tells me after a game at Frank Curiel Field. Celestina is driving me back to my hotel so we can keep the baseball talk going. “He is one in a million, maybe more. He has a chance to be like Andruw Jones if he continues to have the attitude he has. He’s very smart on the baseball field. He knows what’s going on all the time and knows how to prepare and tell his teammates what to expect. He’s just like Schoop, except that he’s much more powerful.”
When I talked with the players and coaches in Willemstad, everyone agreed that Jurickson Profar was the class clown. He prances around with his uniform pants up by his armpits and jokes all day during practice. He’s nicknamed Chokoi, after a local comedian. Sometimes the coaches get frustrated that he’s not tougher or more focused. Then you remind those adults that he’s just a kid, and they’re fine again.
Baseball’s turning point in Curaçao, an event everyone remembers the way a generation of Americans remembered V-J Day, was the 1996 World Series when Andruw Jones hit a pair of home runs at Yankee Stadium. With those two swings of his shiny black bat, the nineteen-yearold Jones created more instant excitement than anything else in the modern history of Curaçao. Houses and sports clubs exploded in celebration, thousands of people spilled onto the streets for a spontaneous party. Fireworks went off. Car horns blared for hours. And the next year, Little League tryouts that once attracted hundreds of boys now attracted thousands. “I can still look back and remember what it felt like when Andruw hit those home runs,” Michalangelo Celestina told me. “It changed everything. Everyone who loved baseball, now we were the center of attention.”
But baseball was already growing on Curaçao when Andruw Jones hit those two home runs at Yankee Stadium.
The two Little League organizations in Curaçao have traveled to the U.S., not only for the Little League World Series in Williamsport, but also for the Senior League World Series in Bangor, Maine (2003). Curaçao has sent five players to the major leagues. Besides the great Andruw Jones, Curaçaoans in the majors have included Hensley Meulens (1989–98), Randall Simon (1997 to the present), Ralph Milliard (1996–98), and Ivanon Coffie (2000). And there are some good prospects in the minor leagues for the Baltimore Orioles, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Atlanta Braves.
The best baseball factory anywhere in the world—the Dominican Republic—also plays in Little League’s Caribbean region. How does Curaçao beat the Dominicans at baseball, again and again?
Curaçao’s Sorick Liberia at the plate
No one I talked with really has a definitive answer. But they offer theories.
The first theory is that, because the Little League organization is so strong in Curaçao, kids learn to play together as a team earlier. Curaçao does not have the abject poverty of the Dominican Republic, so kids have the luxury of playing on organized teams for years. And with the Dutch approach to instruction, coaches teach and kids learn to execute as a team. People like Frank Curiel and Vernon Isabella have made a longterm commitment to winning the Little League World Series every year. If the Dominicans had that same commitment and resources, they would have more success.
Everyone I talked with in Curaçao offered a second theory, impossible to prove or disprove: the Dominicans were strong in Little League before 2001, but got scared away by the fallout from the Danny Almonte scandal. Since then, Curaçao has gone undefeated in the regional tournaments.
“They were bigger, older kids,” says Vernie Jenson, a coach for a Junior League team whose brothers, Ardley and Kaenley, play in the Dodgers and Braves systems in the U.S. “They used to cheat. That’s how it went every year. They made fake papers. The controls of Williamsport were not strong like they are now.”
But both theories pale next to a third factor. By the time the best Dominicans are twelve or thirteen, they’re already playing under the watchful eyes of professional scouts. Major league teams can’t sign foreign players until they’re sixteen years old, but agents can. And they do. So by the time some players move into puberty, some agents are managing their playing time.
Once they sign, the Dominican players are put on strict regimens for exercise, nutrition, and playing time. Most American and Japanese franchises have established “academies” in the Dominican Republic where young players live together in dorms and play ball. Those organizations have scoured the landscape for promising baseball talent, leaving few kids in the neighborhoods to concentrate on Little League. Even so-so players get brought into the academies. Someone has to take the field to give the true prospects competition, after all.
In Curaçao, Little League dominance has not translated into a steady stream of majorleague prospects. Once kids get past Little League, they don’t have as much opportunity for instruction or league play as do the best of Dominican kids.
Christopher Garia pitches.
Norval Faneyte now coaches some of the players who played for the Little League champions from 2004 and 2005. It’s his job to keep developing them so they can remain the elites of their age groups. I asked him to call a practice session so I could see how he works with his kids. On short notice, a dozen players showed up and went through all their paces—long tossing, running, lifting small weights (plastic Coke bottles filled with sand), batting practice (hitting to the opposite field), fugoes, and situational fielding drills.
“Scouts start to look at them in the Junior League,” explains Faneyte, “and our job is to teach them so they can climb to higher and higher levels. But we haven’t always done a good job.”
Hensley Meulens, a Willemstad native who once played for the New York Yankees, is back on the island working with the older teenagers—the ones who might have a chance to sign pro contracts. But finding good competition for those boys can be difficult. Teams can travel to other islands for games, but they don’t have the critical mass of players on Curaçao—or the hunger to escape the island that impoverished communities have—to create a farm system like the Dominican Republic or other Latin hotbeds like Venezuela.
Curaçao’s Raysheldon Carolina gets advice before stepping to the plate. Carolina’s home run in the fifth inning gave Curaçao a 6-3 lead over Hawaii in the championship game.
Even though Curaçao has produced only a handful of major leaguers, baseball has become a marketing tool for the island’s tourist industry, thanks to the Little League’s 2004 championship team. The tourist bureau’s website gives as much prominence to Little League as it gives the beaches, hotels, shopping, and museums.
Tourism has never been the major economic engine in Curaçao as it is in nearby islands like Aruba. Oil refineries, shipping, and international finance have always been a cornerstone of the economy. But developers and tourist officials are working feverishly to bring more outsiders—and their money—to the island. And they are eager to use whatever means they can to advertise the island to the world.
About 250,000 visitors come to the island annually. But Curaçao’s business leaders want more. Curaçao now has a national master plan to build tourism. Two major hotel chains now serve the island, and two more are under construction in downtown Willemstad.
Before the Willemstad all-stars left the island, the island’s tourist agency gave them a party. They all gathered at a restaurant for a pep talk. They were reminded of Curaçao’s championship in 2004 and told to go out there and win another.
“Our Curaçao website doubled in hits last year when you boys won the series,” the bureau’s top man told them in Papiamentu. “Now it is up to you to win again and triple our website visits, and help us increase our tourism. It is up to you, boys!”
The players mostly ignored the win-one-for-the-Gipper pitch. An Atlanta Braves game was on TV and the boys craned their necks to watch the action in Atlanta.
The tourism official then announced a surprise guest. Miss USA
2005, Chelsea Cooley, stopped by. The five-foot-seven brunette from North Carolina came to wish the Curaçao kids good luck.
Cooley had visited Curaçao once before—to participate in the 2001 Miss Teen Universe pageant—and accepted the tourist bureau’s invitation to promote the island as a vacation spot. She has been a baseball fan since she was a little girl and calls herself a tomboy. She watched games on TV with her father and collected baseball cards. And now she has a younger brother playing in Little League.
“I thought it would be neat to meet them,” said the veteran beauty contestant, who has taken a year off her studies in fashion school. “I just wanted to share and express my congratulations for what they accomplished.”
It’s hard to say whether seeing a gorgeous young woman can inspire a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds to greatness. But Curaçao’s tourist people were determined to do everything possible to inspire the kids.
I asked Cooley what lessons her own years as a beauty queen might offer to the Little Leaguers. “Just be proud of yourself, who you are, and where you came from,” she said. “It has to come from deep down inside.”
Finally, after days of media interviews and photographs, Team Curaçao got on a plane in Willemstad’s Hato Airport to begin the defense of its Little League World Series championship.
But disaster almost happened right away.
Curaçao ran into trouble in the very first game of its championship defense at the Little League World Series in Williamsport.
Curaçao took an early 3–0 lead against Venezuela and its powerful starter, Richard Alvarez Jr. The Pabou Little League scored once on a solo home run by Sorick Liberia and two more on four walks and a hit batsman. Then, in the second inning, they increased their lead to 4–0 on a fielder’s choice. So far, so good.
Little League, Big Dreams Page 12