Carlos Gutierrez: The Pitch Man

The grass was green, not gray, and that surprises Carlos Gutierrez, still.

He walked onto the baseball diamond at RFK Stadium, turned to the dugout, to the men in red. "Incredible."

He looked at the outfield. "All the color," Gutierrez said. "The grass. The shiny helmets."

Baseball was black and white in his mind, in his earliest memories -- watching the flickering game on television at home in Havana. Forty-five years after he had fled the communist revolution, the Cuban American was a Cabinet secretary throwing out the first pitch.

So much in his life had changed since he'd sat with his father, a pineapple canner, while the fans cried -- "Arriba! Dura! " -- too loud for his little ears. Since then he had lived in Miami, New York, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Michigan and Washington, D.C.

"I've moved around so much in life," said Gutierrez, 51, the secretary of commerce. But one thing has been constant: the way he likes to relax. "Baseball has always been there."

At Kellogg Co., where Gutierrez, a college dropout, began by selling cornflakes from the back of a van in Mexico and rose to CEO, he played third base on the company team. He coached his two daughters at T-ball, and drilled his son, a high school first baseman.

On a recent Sunday, he brought his wife and two of his children to see the Nationals. His toss would open the game.

At noon, Gutierrez slid out of a black Suburban, his cologne sweetening the parking lot air. He is a tall man who doesn't stoop, lanky and laid-back despite two triple-shot cappuccinos and two cans of Coke for breakfast. His mustache is lush. A salesman in his blood, quick and charming, he met his wife in a Mexico City elevator.

"I'm trying to figure out if I should throw a curve ball, or a slider," Gutierrez said, running his fingers through his hair.

He warmed up outside the stadium, throwing the ball on a 60-foot strip of grass. Gutierrez has been called one of America's top Hispanic businessmen. The year before he came to Commerce, his compensation was $7.4 million. As chairman of Kellogg, he acquired Keebler Foods Co. for $4.4 billion.

But all he wanted right now was the perfect pitch.