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A League of Their Own
We couldn't have escaped the game even if we had wanted to. The deities of Dominican baseball were smiling on us, bringing us one lucky encounter after another. In Santo Domingo we stayed in a hotel favored by scouts and players, located 10 blocks from the stadium. In the hotel elevator, the guy standing next to us turned out to be Wendell Magee, the current Detroit Tigers player who'd hit two home runs for the Escogido Lions earlier in the day. In no time, we got our makeshift scorecard signed by the game's hero. Baseball nirvana.
And the salsa clubs would be opening soon.
Our goal was to visit as many of the country's baseball shrines as we could squeeze in. After taking a look at all the dented cars, vehicle-devouring potholes, horse-drawn carts, motor scooters and bicycles on overloaded city streets, we did what many outsiders do and hired a taxi driver by the day. He seemed thrilled with the full day's work, and we could concentrate on the lush landscape and the roadside stands selling fish, tropical fruit and fighting cocks.
Our first excursion was a wild 45-minute ride from Santo Domingo northeast to the Dodgers' facility, Campo Las Palmas, the driver veering around potholes and children soliciting money. At first he missed the entrance, but as we streaked past, we glimpsed a pair of the white baseball lights with red seams similar to the ones we had loved at Dodgertown, the spring training facility in Vero Beach, Fla. The security guard was trimly dressed in a Dodgers outfit.
In a country where litter control isn't a major priority, the Dodgers camp was an immaculate and elegantly landscaped 250-acre complex. Manny Mota Field, named for the pinch-hitting great and Santo Domingo native, is ringed gloriously by tall palm and acacia trees. As we watched young Dodger recruits go through their stretching exercises, a maintenance worker was carefully brushing dirt from the warning track off the grass. The red tile floors in the clubhouse looked clean enough to eat off. The smell of garlic-tinged chicken wafted from the Tommy Lasorda Dining Room.
Young prospects -- most but not all Dominicans -- are brought here to train intensively, get decent meals and medical care, and see if they are of professional caliber. Since its opening, in 1987, the camp has helped move the likes of Jose Offerman, Raul Mondesi and Pedro Martinez into the major leagues. Between 35 and 90 players train here under the eye of Peguero, the camp manager, who caught in the Dodgers' minor league system for years. He also manages the San Pedro de Macoris Eastern Stars.
Tourists are welcome here, though it's a good idea to call ahead -- sometimes as many as 500 outsiders show up to watch practice games. As we walked with Peguero over the fields, we marveled over the inventions of camp founder Ralph Avila, who is now retired. We kept hearing loud clumping noises coming from the first floor of a dormitory. The culprit was a blue metal ball cleaner, an Avila machine that mixed dirty baseballs with rubber erasers, to cleansing effect. Off to the side of a practice field, pitchers threw into another Avila aid, a simple cat's cradle of string that marked off the strike zone. We had just missed Orioles rookie pitcher Juan Guzman, who had come by his old camp to work out the day before, and whose huge spikes were gleaming, thanks to camp employees who clean all the players' shoes.
Our pilgrimage to San Pedro de Macoris began at Tetelo Vargas Stadium, home of Peguero's Caribbean champion Eastern Stars. This is where Sammy Sosa played before leaving for the United States. Inside the dim concourse, young boys were taking batting practice. Children pretended to make heroic catches against the outfield wall, while in the infield, roosters and chickens pecked at the grass.
From there we planned to visit some of the other baseball academies, but neither we nor our driver had a firm fix on where they were. Not to worry. In this country, you just sit and wait, and the baseball gods take care of you.
We reluctantly chose a large hotel complex for lunch because we couldn't agree on any of the roadside restaurants. As our daughter lounged by the hotel pool, we heard cleats. We looked and saw 40 young players in Red Sox uniforms, coming in for lunch after their morning workout. It turned out that this complex, the Hotel Macorix, is used from November through June by the Red Sox and Houston Astros academies and the Eastern Stars.
At the front desk, we bumped into Eddy Thomas of the Ministry of Sport, who was arranging an old-timers game. Born and raised in a Dominican mill town, Thomas had reached Triple A ball in Columbus, Ohio, before returning to his homeland. He took us outside to show us the trunk of his car. It held an Orioles bag filled with bats, glove, uniform and spikes, which he keeps there in case he runs into a game -- which is a near-certainty around here.
Thomas had just hit three doubles in an old-timers game the day before. This from a man who is 63 years old. "Rico Carty still plays with us," Thomas said, pointing outside the hotel to San Pedro's Malecon, the waterfront boulevard where the 61-year-old Carty, who played 15 seasons in the major leagues, now holds court nearly every night.
Realizing that he had fellow baseball maniacs on his hands, Thomas escorted us to his home town of Santa Fe, about 30 minutes north of San Pedro de Macoris, where the dilapidated park is now used for practice by Astros prospects as well as locals. We passed the mill smokestack painted with the words "Santa Fe," now bent in half and rusting. As we drove up in midafternoon, 20 local teenagers were practicing, with the hope of gaining a place in one of the big league camps. They were working out under the eye of a "chicken hawk," an older player who works as an agent for undiscovered talent. Their intensity picked up a few notches when they realized Eddy Thomas was watching, and they kept up the pace even when Thomas started hitting golf balls.
The next morning our taxi driver picked us up at our Santo Domingo hotel, and we headed out for El Tamarindo, half an hour east. This is a
town of shacks, populated by Dominicans uprooted by urban renewal projects. Many residents wear plastic bags over their shoes to keep out the mud from the unpaved streets. Here Manny Mota has created a baseball center for hundreds of neighborhood children. It was opening day, and children in team T-shirts filled Mota's hillside park. Under the thatched roof of a huge cabana, 42 boys sat holding hands and singing the national anthem. Mota's wife, Margarita, was supervising lunch in the kitchen. (Even when the Motas return to Los Angeles for eight months of the year, three cooks continue to provide free daily hot meals.) In the outfield, two kids mopped up rainwater with hunks of foam rubber as merengue music floated up from the town below.
After handing out new gloves to each player, Mota, now 63, started umpiring a game of 11-to-13-year-olds. The backstop was in place, but there was no screen, so Mota sent the kids into the bushes to chase foul balls. He stopped umpiring to help a struggling lefty take a proper stance and make a stronger swing. Bang. The youngster drilled the ball into left-center field. Thirty minutes later, Mota stopped again at a game of younger kids. Just half a minute of instruction and -- bang, another line-drive base hit. "Two for two," he yelled, with a big smile.
The next day, we drove east toward the coast. We spent the morning at Altos de Chavon, a re-creation of a 16th-century Spanish village that is a cobblestone artists colony. We checked out the huge stone amphitheater where concerts are held; Frank Sinatra inaugurated it in 1982.
By nightfall, we were in the city ballpark at La Romana, watching the Escogido Lions play the La Romana Sugar Cane Cutters. Commercialism hadn't arrived. It took us two innings to find a team hat to buy. A vendor lugged through the stands a silver cookstove that must have weighed 50 pounds. He used a machete to cut open a pastel de platano, a spicy beef and plantain mixture. Merengue and salsa music blared throughout the game, and a photographer from the tabloid Hoy took our picture. The next day, we found two of our happy faces in the newspaper, under the headline "En el Play" (At the Stadium). The perfect souvenir to bring back home.
As we headed back to Miami on the return flight, we figured our Dominican luck had expired. But just when we were about to exit the plane, we spotted a diamond-studded World Series ring. "Are you a Yankee?" we asked. "Yes." "Which one?" "Soriano," he replied. "How many rings?" we asked. "Two," answered reserve infielder Alfonso Soriano, another native of San Pedro de Macoris to make it to the big leagues -- and, in the off-season, to make it back home again, too.