“Sometimes I feel people are over-glorifying themselves,” Cole said. “You know, it’s like, dude, you hit a single. It takes two more hits to score you. It takes someone else to drive you in.”
10. The Puig Way to Play Baseball
BEFORE THE DODGERS GAVE YASIEL PUIG $42 million and signed him to his first professional contract, they had never watched him play in a game in person. They didn’t even see him run or throw in a private workout in Mexico.
Puig had played two seasons in Cuba’s highest league, but those games are off-limits to scouts from major-league teams. The Dodgers had only seen a YouTube clip of Puig making a diving catch and throwing the ball back to the infield.
Other Cuban stars had been exposed to the baseball world in international tournaments. Cuban officials rarely put Puig on the roster to travel to events off the island, rightly fearing he would be a strong candidate to defect. Puig reportedly made 13 attempts to leave Cuba before he was finally successful in getting to Mexico.
“He wasn’t in baseball shape,” said Logan White, who led the Dodger contingent in Mexico as the team’s vice president of amateur scouting. “He’d take a swing and gasp for air. But I knew I hadn’t seen an athlete like that.”
He was absolutely an athlete—Dodgers Rookie League manager Matt Martin compared Puig to football star Adrian Peterson before he’d even seen him play in a game—but there was no way he was going to have a feel for the unwritten rules of the game as it is played in the United States. No one should have expected that, especially with the limited time he spent in the minor leagues.
Puig signed with the Dodgers on June 29, 2012. He played his first minor-league game five weeks later in the Arizona Rookie League. He came to the big leagues on June 3, 2013, not even a year after that workout in Mexico.
“I needed to learn about everything,” Puig said. “I learned to play baseball slower, and as a teammate, everybody playing today, to win. There’s only 90 games or so in the season in Cuba. Here there’s 162. You fly across the country.”
Puig had never seen crowds in Cuba like he saw every night at Dodger Stadium, where 37,055 showed up for his debut on a Monday night, and where the Dodgers averaged more than 46,000 a game for the season.
“I want to give back to the community in Los Angeles, because every day and every minute the stadium is full,” he said. “And that’s the way I like it. That’s the fun of baseball.”
By the late summer and early fall of 2018, Puig was giving back to LA in the best way possible, with home runs that mattered in games the Dodgers had to win, and with home run celebrations that could get everyone involved. He homered twice in one crucial game against the St. Louis Cardinals, three times the next day as the Dodgers beat the Cardinals again.
And when he hit a tie-breaking, three-run, pinch-hit home run a few days later in a huge game against the Colorado Rockies, the Puig celebration may have broken some hearts in the Rocky Mountains but broke no baseball rules, written or unwritten.
As Andy McCullough described it in the next morning’s Los Angeles Times, Puig “was an engine of perpetual motion.
“He pointed to his teammates while rounding first base. He asked the group to show him the money. He flexed his biceps. He pounded his chest. He implored the crowd to scream louder and louder before he disappeared into a blur of Dodgers, waiting out a kiss from hitting coach Turner Ward to commemorate the homer.”
Puig had always wanted to show the fans how he felt, but he came to realize that some of the expressions of emotion didn’t go over the same way they would have back home, unless they came at the right time. The game has become much more accepting of open shows of emotion, but Puig has also gained a better understanding of what will be accepted and what could cause friction.
“In Cuba, it’s like in the Dominican or Puerto Rico,” he said. “All the Latin countries, we play with fun, play with love, sometimes play a little bit hard. We might do things like a bat flip. In those countries, it’s not considered so bad, but here, the other team might think it doesn’t show respect for the game.”
Learning all that wasn’t easy for Puig. In December 2015, two and a half years after Puig’s big-league debut, Scott Miller wrote a piece for Bleacher Report headlined: “Is There Anybody Left in Los Angeles Whom Yasiel Puig Hasn’t Alienated?”
“He is the worst person I have ever seen in this game,” one ex-Dodger told Miller. “Ever.”
Puig still didn’t know how to act on the field. He didn’t know how to act off the field, or with his teammates. He ran into outs on the bases. He ran late and often didn’t make it to the clubhouse on time. He fought with teammates.
The following summer, after first trying unsuccessfully to trade Puig, the Dodgers sent him to the minor leagues for what turned out to be a month-long stay.
Eventually, he began to learn what playing in the major leagues—and what being a major leaguer—was all about.
The game’s unwritten rules were no longer such a mystery to him. Puig became a more popular figure in the clubhouse and an everyday player on the field, as the Dodgers went all the way to Game 7 of the World Series in 2017, before losing to the Astros.
During that postseason of 2017, Miller wrote another Bleacher Report column. The headline on this one: “Puig Being Puig Is Back: Bat Flips, Tongue Wags Turn Problem Child to Catalyst.”
“He’s the best,” Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood told Miller. “He does some dumb things sometimes, but we love him.”
And when Carlos Correa of the Astros executed a pretty nice bat flip after a huge home run in Game 2 of the World Series, it was Puig himself who was asked to judge whether Correa had bent or broken any unwritten rule.
“He was happy, and that’s the way you should play in the World Series,” Puig said that night. “He wasn’t batting too well, he was only getting a few hits, and when he hit the home run, it was a moment for him to be happy. I’m glad he was able to celebrate that way.”
By 2018, when Puig had played more than 600 major-league games and had a better feel for American culture, he had changed the way he played. He wanted to fit in, and he was learning exactly what that meant.
He could still find himself in the middle of controversy, as he did that August in a game against the rival San Francisco Giants. Puig fouled off a pitch from Giants reliever Tony Watson, then grabbed his bat by the barrel in frustration. In his mind, he was showing natural emotion at missing what he felt might be the best pitch he’d see from Watson in that at-bat.
But Giants catcher Nick Hundley took exception and had words for Puig, apparently believing Puig was showing up Watson. Before long, they were shoving and the benches were emptying, and one more time Puig was having to explain himself to reporters.
“[Hundley] told me to stop complaining and get back into the box, and when I got into his face he told me to also get out of his face, so that’s when I got upset,” Puig said. “I didn’t like that he was telling me what to do, and then he said some words to me in English that I really can’t repeat, that’s why I was upset.”
Reaction to the incident showed how Puig’s image has changed—many defended him and blamed Hundley, and Dodger Stadium fans cheered him loudly—but also how it hasn’t. He may never escape the role of lightning rod, and he may never convince everyone he can do more good than bad.
In the wake of the battle with Hundley, Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke lit into Puig, calling him “senseless and reckless in allowing Hundley to bait him into a fight” and suggesting the Dodgers should “trade him for a reliever.”
Even Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters he would talk to Puig about controlling his emotions and understanding he needs to avoid getting ejected from games.
“Do I wish he could have stayed in the game? Absolutely,” Roberts said. “He’s more valuable in the game than out of the game.”
He was out of the rest of tha
t game against the Giants, which the Dodgers went on to lose. He was also suspended for two more games by MLB, and the Dodgers split those two against the New York Mets.
When he came back from the suspension, Puig homered seven times in his next 35 at-bats. As the Dodgers were taking control in the National League West, he was one of the biggest factors—and certainly one of the most demonstrative.
It was #Puigtember, as Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen dubbed it on Twitter.
Puig has changed. He hasn’t changed completely. He doesn’t want to, and he shouldn’t want to.
“If I hit a home run, I’ll still flip my bat because it’s in the moment,” he said. “Something exciting is coming into my body. I don’t mean to disrespect the pitcher or the other team, but it’s something exciting.”
No kid raised on the American way to play baseball could have said it any better.
11. Loving the Game the Latin Way
ON A TUESDAY NIGHT IN MARCH 2013, A GROUP of the best baseball players from the Dominican Republic stepped on a baseball field in San Francisco and proved they could win a world championship playing the game their own way.
They could dance and they could chirp, and they could even carry a lucky plantain with them wherever they went. Team Dominican Republic won the World Baseball Classic (WBC) that night at AT&T Park, beating Team Puerto Rico in the final game and showing the baseball world that flair and emotion and fun can go right along with talent on the road to winning.
“I hope people in the U.S. understand the way we play baseball,” Octavio Dotel said on the field that night, after he and his teammates celebrated by carrying a huge Dominican Republic flag from the mound out to center field. “This is how we play the game. We love this game. We have it in our heart. That’s why we can’t hold it in.”
For years, they were told they had to hold it in, that the style they played with at home and in the winter leagues wouldn’t translate to the major leagues or to a 162-game season. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low, and by all means don’t do anything that might cause anyone else to take offense.
In another era, that could even include speaking their own language in the clubhouse. When Hall of Fame first baseman Orlando Cepeda wrote his book, Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back, he included a story about Alvin Dark taking over as the San Francisco Giants manager in the spring of 1961.
The Giants of that era featured more players born in Latin America than any other team, and the group included not just Cepeda (who would finish second in Most Valuable Player voting that season), but also Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal and two of the three Alou brothers, Felipe and Matty (Jesus was still in the minor leagues and would join his brothers with the Giants two years later).
Dark, who was raised in segregation-era Louisiana and debuted as a major-league player a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color line, called the group together behind second base and delivered a message that even in that very different era shocked the players he was addressing.
Some of their teammates, Dark claimed, had complained that the players from Latin America were speaking Spanish in the clubhouse and those players couldn’t understand what they were saying. Dark’s solution: no Spanish in the clubhouse.
“Alvin, I won’t do that,” Cepeda responded. “I’m Puerto Rican, others are Dominican, and I’m proud of what I am. This is a disgrace to my race.”
Later on, Cepeda wrote, Dark also banned Latin music from his Giants clubhouse.
You can imagine how he would have felt about a pitcher dancing on the mound, as Pedro Strop had done in that 2013 WBC final. Or a pitcher punctuating a save by firing an imaginary arrow into the night, as Fernando Rodney did that night and also after many of his 300-plus saves in the major leagues.
Or an American-born kid named Marcus Stroman doing a shoulder-shake as he strutted off the mound four years later, the night Team USA joined the fun and won the 2017 WBC.
A half-century after Dark issued his no-Spanish edict, the language is heard every day in every clubhouse in the major leagues. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese players have become big-league regulars, too, but the numbers and the style of the players from Latin America have had the biggest impact.
A major-league game today still doesn’t look like a winter league game in Santo Domingo or even like a WBC game featuring the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or Venezuela.
“Trust me, the showboating in winter ball is on a different level,” said Jose Mota, a Dominican-born announcer whose father Manny played 20 seasons in the major leagues.
But in terms of style, flair, and out-and-out emotion, baseball in the major leagues now doesn’t look anything like the game Cepeda and others were asked to play in the 1960s, either. It doesn’t look like the game Juan Samuel found when he left the Dominican Republic to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980.
“For me, coming over here, it was just paying attention to what other guys were doing,” Samuel said. “I didn’t see any of that, bat-flipping or whatever. You had a few guys that were doing things here and there, but I didn’t see much. You had a few guys who might flip their helmet when they were running.”
Even at home, Samuel hadn’t been as demonstrative as others, but he quickly learned that added flair might be frowned upon here.
“I didn’t want to draw any negative attention to myself,” he said. “I was going to [get attention] by playing as hard as I can, taking the extra base. If someone in the outfield took too long to get the ball in, then I’m going to take the extra base and embarrass you that way, but not the other way.”
It worked for Samuel, who played 16 years in the major leagues and went on to coach and manage. But as he points out, he really didn’t have much choice.
“We didn’t have a lot of Latinos on the team when I started,” he said.
Samuel’s first full year in the big leagues was with the 1984 Phillies, who had a few players from Puerto Rico but no others besides Samuel from the Dominican Republic.
“I think that helped me [adapt],” he said. “Because when you see more guys [from the same country] together, they start acting more like guys from back home.”
Years later, Samuel was a coach for the Dominican Republic team that won the WBC.
“This is the biggest win our country has ever had,” he said when Team DR won the title.
It was, but it was also a big night for baseball, a night to remember how having fun and celebrating in your own way can still fit in with winning.
“You see major-league stars acting like kids,” said Team DR general manager Moises Alou (Felipe’s son).
As I wrote that night on CBSSports.com, what’s wrong with that?
12. There Will Always Be Some Culture Clashes
THERE’S NO DOUBT BASEBALL HAS GAINED from the influx of players from Latin America, both in terms of the talent coming into the game and the emotions and excitement those players have brought with them. Even if they can’t play the exact same way in the majors as they play at home or in the WBC, many of them have helped bring a flair to the game.
It’s still not easy. You don’t hear it as much as you once did, but every now and then someone whispers that a team isn’t winning because it has “too many Latins.” Philadelphia Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt had to apologize to Phillies outfielder Odubel Herrera in 2017 because Schmidt had said the Phillies couldn’t build their team around a player who wasn’t fluent in English.
“I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game; or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game; or come over to a guy and say, ‘Man, you gotta run that ball out,’” Schmidt had said in an interview on WIP radio.
As then-Phillies manager Pete Mackanin told reporters that day, “It was an ill-advised comment.”
Teams are
doing a better job of making sure players they sign get instruction in English and help with American culture. Two of the young stars who came to the major leagues in 2018—Dominican-born Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals (19 years old) and Venezuelan-born Gleyber Torres of the Yankees (21 years old)—were fluent to the point of being able to do radio and television interviews in English.
More American players, coaches, and managers are learning Spanish, too, and teams understand the importance of having Latin American coaches on their staff.
But the way players from Latin America are scouted and signed presents other issues. While players from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico are subject to a draft and aren’t normally eligible to be picked until the year their class graduates from high school, players from other countries in the Americas can sign as long as they will turn 17 by the end of the first season of their contract (in effect, if they are within two months of their 16th birthday when the signing period begins each year on July 2).
To be seen by scouts and have a chance at the big bonuses that go to the best prospects, players who are much younger than 16 go to camps and prioritize baseball over education. And with the difficult economic situation in some of those countries, kids and their families bet that concentrating on baseball can lead to a contract that could provide life-changing money.
“They’re recruiting young kids from 12 [years old],” complained Martin Prado, who was 17 when he signed with the Atlanta Braves out of Venezuela in 2001. “By the time I started thinking about playing professionally, I was already 15 or 16. Now, 11 years old, they’re already in an academy [for baseball], because when they get to 15, they have to be ready for July 2.”
For those that make it, everything can be great. Even with new rules that have limited the money teams can spend on international signings, there were at least 20 players in 2018 alone that signed for $1 million or more out of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, or Colombia, according to MLB.com.
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