“I saw the determination in Pedro’s eyes,” said Eleodoro. “He did not have anything else. He was short, he was skinny, his pitches were not impressive, his arm wasn’t that good. What he had, though, was determination. It was etched on his face. Not determination in his pitches, but in his eyes. He knew what he was looking for.”
Eleodoro told Ralph Avila, who was in charge of the academy for the Dodgers, “I’ll work with him, but I’ll need time. It’s good if he stays here.”
They called Ramon to tell him that they wanted to take a chance on me. He said to please wait to sign me. I was still in the middle of school when I had the tryout, and Ramon said, “No, wait. Let him finish school, he has to stay in school.” So I had no choice, really. I had to listen to Ramon.
Eleodoro said it was easy to keep an eye on me on the practice field: just look for the small and skinny one. In drills, I ran the fastest. I was the one running to pick up balls, doing whatever I could to catch the eye of the coaches and stand out from players and pitchers who were bigger, stronger, and more skilled than I was. I had questions about everything, and when coaches told me what to do, I was able to translate their expertise into solid results. Little by little, I improved and my skills “unfolded with impressive charm,” said Eleodoro. “This was his best weapon. He knew that he could not let himself be carried away by emotions and commit errors.”
No matter how enthusiastically and hard I practiced or played, I still could not mask the 8- to 12-mile-per-hour differential between my best fastball and what everyone else was throwing. I just did not have the size and strength. My fastball also was not explosive, nor was my curveball the best. I had no changeup.
I needed something besides determination.
What I had was location.
Loads of it. I could hit the farthest corners of the black on home plate if I wanted to, which meant that I could dominate a batter equally as well as a pitcher who was throwing 90 to 92 miles per hour.
“He began to enjoy the art of pitching, and his buddies could appreciate that he could get batters out in spite of his small size,” said Eleodoro. “If Pedro had been a power pitcher from the beginning of his career, perhaps he would not have been so great. The fact that he had to compete with so much talent that was at Campo Las Palmas forced him to develop his ability to concentrate, his intelligence, and above all, the ability to throw all of his pitches with excellent control.”
I got the nickname “El Finito,” which translates roughly to “skilled,” “finely tuned,” “fine”—a nod to my desire and ability to throw to the farthest corners of home plate. Nobody had taught me that control. It came with me from Manoguayabo. And thank goodness I had it.
Because Eleodoro had worked with Ramon and understood our family situation, he was curious and willing to see if another brother could make it too. He was very direct with me, though. He told me that if I stayed at the academy, I couldn’t live there. I had to come in the afternoon, after I had finished my classes, play my baseball, then go home in the evening, sleep at home, and come back the next day after school. The bus rides totaled one to one and a half hours each way—two bus lines, the Guerra and the San Isidro Guerra. Each day Eleodoro would give me exact change, not a single peso more, for the round-trip bus fare. What he didn’t tell me then—and I’m glad he didn’t—was that my shot at becoming a ballplayer who could ever pitch his way off the island was not a good one.
“I thought he was okay,” said Eleodoro, “but he was not a professional baseball player. He needed to be a student.”
Those were long, long days during the school year when I was going to the academy. Once I got out of my school clothes, I’d play baseball, working out and training in the hottest part of a Dominican day. There was a workout room with five-pound cuff weights, tube pulls for the elbows, and this little machine that Eleodoro designed with a ball attached in the middle of a wire. I’d spin the ball, over and over, with no resistance, just to get the feel of the ball rolling off my fingers and fingertips. I would spend so much time in there, building up my shoulder, my elbow, my hands, my fingers. Some of the pitchers worked as hard as I did, but not all. And those who did keep up with me, most of them never made it.
When school was over for the year, I could stop commuting back and forth from Manoguayabo and just stay at the academy like everyone else. The food was good, and there was plenty of it. One of the workers would head into the sugar cane fields each day, collect the canes, clean them up, and get the juice out. Every day that would be our juice: sugar cane juice. There were mango trees everywhere too. When they were in season and we were hungry, we’d just go over to the nearest tree and snack on one.
We worked hard, but we were allowed some downtime. A rec room had a Ping-Pong table, three pool tables, and a TV. We’d watch baseball games if there were any on, or I’d go down to the back field after dinner with Marino maybe, lie down in the outfield, read the Bible there, or just lie back and take a nap. It would be so peaceful and quiet once the games stopped.
I remember Ralph Avila once gathered everyone into the workout room. Someone had been goofing off, and Avila was pissed. It wasn’t me, and I really didn’t know who it was who had broken a rule. Raúl Mondesí was always a solid suspect. Raúl and a couple of his friends were always the hardest to control. This time Avila came in and he started pounding the table, berating all of us for messing around when we should have been focused on why we were all there.
“I don’t see anybody here who’s good enough to become a big leaguer. Nobody. If anybody here feels like they’re going to be a big leaguer, raise your hand. Go ahead—I want to see who thinks they belong.”
So I stood up and raised my hand.
I was all alone.
“I don’t know about everyone else, but I am going to be a big leaguer,” I said.
Everybody laughed.
I was serious, though. I was also young enough not to recognize that Ralph really didn’t want anybody speaking up right then and there.
Avila told me, “Shut up and sit down.”
I had to pay off Cibao with 20 pesos, just so he wouldn’t shoot me.
Cibao was the guard at Campo Las Palmas, and in his guardhouse next to the rolling gate, Cibao kept a shotgun. And a bottle of rum too. At dusk, when the two baseball diamonds quieted down in the sweet, cooling air, the only action was in the buildings that separated the two fields. One field sat right off the main road and the guardhouse, and the other diamond backed right up against a field of sugar canes. The buildings were the only ones at the academy, and the only place for players to be. There was the rec room, the small workout room, the classroom, which had a glass case filled with Dominican Summer League trophies along one wall, plus the academy’s offices, the coaches’ locker room, and the coaches’ office.
Soon after I signed, all that running had become a problem. I’d run from field to field, back and forth from the kitchen to the fields, taking a few laps around the outfields. When there were actual running drills, I’d always make sure I finished first, even if that meant sprinting from the pack at the end. I wanted to be first. The only time I couldn’t win, I remember I lost to this tall kid from San Pedro de Macoris. He could really fly—we called him “the gazelle.” Before switching over to baseball, he had been a track and field guy, so I didn’t take it too hard if he finished ahead of me.
The coaches, especially Eleodoro, thought I worked out too much and ran too much. At the end of the day, if I had to get from the back field to the dormitory—it was no more than a quarter of a mile—the coaches wouldn’t want me to run even that distance.
I never listened. Eleodoro was on to me, though. One late afternoon he scared the crap out of me.
“Martinez!”
I froze at the sound of that voice of his. Even when he spoke at normal volume, his high voice sliced through the air like a sword. His voice terrified me. I looked up and there he was, standing on the back balcony of the dormitory, someplace where you
never saw a coach. He had seen me running up to the dormitory.
“Martinez, didn’t I say not to run too much? Didn’t I? If I see you running again, I’m going to fine you.” Eleodoro did not issue idle threats, I knew that. None of the coaches did, and none of us ever spoke back to them or questioned them. We’d be in big trouble if we did, and the threat of being sent home was always on my mind. I’m sure it was on everyone else’s too. I was Eleodoro’s special project, anyway. He was in charge of packing some pounds on me. Running only hurt that effort. They had me on all kinds of multivitamins and medicine after they saw how little I would eat. I never ate a lot, even as a kid. I was skinny when I got to Campo Las Palmas, and I was skinny when I left. But they tried to get me to eat, just like they tried to stop me from running.
Not much changed in the end.
I never stopped running because that’s what Ramon had taught me: “That’s how you’ll build strength—it’s all in your legs, your lower body.” The Dodgers had told Ramon to stop running for the same reasons as me, but he never listened to them.
So I waited until after Eleodoro and the other coaches had left, and I didn’t go out until after the sun set, a better time to run anyway, when the day had cooled off.
Once they were gone, my only worry was to make sure that in his haze, Cibao would not be startled into thinking that I was an intruder or some large upright animal that needed to be brought down. Plus, I needed him to be my lookout in case a coach was lurking.
“Cibao, here’s 20 pesos—I’m running. If anybody comes, just scream.”
He never screamed, and I never got shot.
When I ran, I flew, just flew away. I was out. I could sweep aside the whispers of the doubters, those who didn’t think I belonged at the Campo. I could clear my mind of any doubts that had crept in that day, any fears I had of whether or not I would ever leave the camp the way I wanted to leave it: headed to the States, not back to Manoguayabo.
I had enough time during the day to improve my fundamentals, refine the command of my pitches, get my mechanics under control, and build up arm strength with cuff and wrist exercises. My runs were when I could simply spin and dance through my mind. Jogging along the dirt of the warning tracks and dirt paths along the perimeter of the Campo, I’d focus on the rhythmic scrapes of my sneakers landing on the sand and dirt, the in and out of my breathing, and I would run and run and run.
My time in the Dominican Summer League in the summers of 1988 and 1989 were not so much about results as about establishing a solid foundation for pitching. My numbers were good, but more importantly, Eleodoro kept my head on straight and facing in the right direction.
“He learned every day, he worked hard, he would help the players in tryouts, and he became a man who began drawing comments from other summer teams, but still as Ramon’s brother,” said Eleodoro. “He liked this, since his idol was Ramon.”
I still battled bouts of wildness as a pitcher. My velocity crept up into the mid to upper 80s, but my ball started to move all over the place—I wasn’t ready yet to harness the speed I had in my hands. For the first time, I watched video of myself, and I learned what it meant to be “flying open,” which is when you rotate your upper body too soon before the ball’s release and you lose control.
When I flew open, or sometimes when I didn’t, my wildness got me in trouble. One time we were playing Montreal’s Summer League team and I had nothing. I started off with four balls, and then I walked the next two batters. The bases were loaded, no outs, and the next batter hit a double off the wall. All the base runners scored. And I was furious. Eleodoro came out for a quick chat and said, “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, just keep pitching.”
So I was still mad when this little kid from Bani, wearing a helmet with a double flap on it, came up to bat and I fell behind again. With my next pitch, I hit him square in the head—right on the ear flap with a 90-mile-per-hour fastball.
Pow.
The kid fell to the ground, and he started to go into convulsions. Everyone came running out of the dugouts, and somebody dragged out a hose and started to spray him down, hoping to cool him off. Eleodoro ran out to the mound and started to speak sternly to me.
“So, you hit him on purpose?”
I shook my head and looked down at the ground.
“Look at me. Tell me—did you hit him on purpose?”
“No, it wasn’t on purpose.”
“Pedro, did you hit him on purpose?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
I was telling the truth, but I didn’t think he believed me. I was devastated. I had been pitching so poorly, I thought he was going to yank me off the mound. He didn’t, though. I stayed in for a little while longer, but when I did come out, I sat at the far end of the bench, miserable and terrified about what lay in store for me. Eleodoro told me that we were going to talk once we got back to the academy.
When we got back, I didn’t want to get off the bus. I was the last one off. I had my cleats in my hand, my glove and my jacket, and as I passed by the door to the coaches’ office in my socks, I was tiptoeing.
“Hey, Martinez, let’s talk.”
All I could think was, Whoa. I thought I had snuck by him.
Eleodoro asked me again, “Did you hit him on purpose?”
I thought, Oh, man.
All I could say was, “No, I didn’t hit him on purpose.”
Eleodoro stared into my eyes. I could barely look back. Then I saw what looked like the tiniest smile flash across his face.
“On purpose or not on purpose—don’t stop doing that! You better continue doing exactly that. That’s the only way you’re going to have success in the big leagues. I know it wasn’t on purpose, but you have to do that sometimes.”
And then he told me a story about how he was pitching to his brother once, and his brother got him the first time, then a second time. The third time Eleodoro’s brother got a pitch in the ribs.
Eleodoro’s eyes locked in on me.
“Never quit pitching inside.”
PART II
1990–1993
3
Dodgertown Blues
TRUST ME, IF you throw a party and invite me, I won’t be that person who knocks on your door 15 minutes early. You may be putting away the dishes by the time I show up, but I’ll get there eventually. It’s an attitude toward time and punctuality shared by a few of us Dominicans, and it’s not going to change now, no matter how much time I spend in the United States, where everyone is so preoccupied with being places on time. That’s not me. The sole exception is if I’ve got a plane to catch. I don’t miss planes. But when it came time for the first plane trip of my life, the flight that took me from Santo Domingo to Miami to begin my stateside baseball career one morning in late March of 1990, I was sweating it.
The issue was finding someone who could help me knot a tie. The rule was that every new Dodger player who showed up at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida, had to be wearing a suit and tie. I had one suit, a white shirt, my pair of nice shoes, and the tie—but I didn’t have a clue how to tie it. My family got up with me to say good-bye, but none of them knew how to knot a tie either. The sun had not risen yet, but I had to start waking up neighbors. After a few failed attempts, I finally found somebody, but by then we were late.
My stepbrother Rafo had to step on it for us to shave off about half of what’s usually an hour’s drive from Manoguayabo to the airport. Because everyone drives like a maniac in the Dominican, we would have had no shot if it had been rush hour, but it was early enough so that Rafo had zero competition on the roadways, where the traffic lights are only suggestions anyway. We took his old jalopy, this beat-up Volkswagen Beetle with body parts patched together from what looked like Chevys and Toyotas, a real piece of crap that was missing a muffler. Even when it idled, you could hear the engine parts grinding away at each other, metal on metal. As we peeled away from the house, me in the passenger seat sweating through my crisp white shirt with
the hastily tied tie, any neighbors we hadn’t already woken up were up by the time we pulled out, Rafo’s car blaring its bbrraahhh, bbrraahhh all the way to the airport.
We weren’t too late, and I could finally allow myself to get excited. The five other players from the academy were already there; they had taken a minivan that I’m sure had left on time. We all thought we looked pretty ridiculous all dressed up. That gave us something to rag each other about, a good diversion for me at least. As sad as I was to say good-bye to my mom and my dad, sisters, brothers, and cousins, I could not wait to be someplace new and different. I was 17 years old, and I had been visualizing going to America for a long, long time.
Still, I was jittery about taking my first plane ride.
As we took off and entered a thick layer of clouds, I fought off flashbacks from movies I had seen, the ones where the pilot gets distracted and then loses control of the plane in the clouds and the tube of flying steel crashes into the side of a mountain in a mushrooming fireball that leaves no survivors.
We had a good pilot that flight.
When we neared the end of our descent into Miami, we passed over a residential neighborhood, with its checkerboard pattern of streets, all perfectly straight, organized, and orderly. Even from the plane, I thought Miami looked clean. I had heard from Ramon and others who had been in the States about how there was no trash in the United States and that you’d be pulled over if you threw trash out of your car. I couldn’t picture it then, but as we were about to land I understood what “neat” meant.
It was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive due north from Miami International Airport to Dodgertown in Vero Beach. The Dodgers sent a minivan with a blue Dodgers logo on it to pick us up. I remember having my nose glued to the window for almost the whole drive. As we got close to my new home, we started passing by miles of orange groves. I was so impressed by how many orange groves there were, and how the oranges were such a bright orange color and looked so ripe. In the Dominican, we had orange groves too, but the trees were coated in dirt and dust and the oranges were a paler orange or often green and yellow. In Florida there were also ponds and lakes everywhere. I remember asking “40-10,” our driver, why there was so much water everywhere, and he told me about the low water table in Florida—you only had to dig a little bit in the ground in order to hit water.
Pedro Page 3