By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; E01
Maybe it was getting off a plane in Hiroshima, Japan, more than a decade ago, his first trip outside his native Dominican Republic, wondering where to go and what to do. "I was like, 'Oh my God,' " Alfonso Soriano said. "Something's not right here."
Or maybe it was settling into the Japanese League, thinking about a future in this far-off land, and then being told that no, his future was in the United States, in the major leagues. "I was starting over -- again," Soriano said.
Or maybe it was moving from third base to shortstop as a teenager, then from shortstop to second as a 25-year-old. Maybe it was moving from New York to Texas, from Texas to Washington, from second base to the outfield, his head spinning all the while. At some point, change became the defining ingredient in Soriano's life, and whether the Washington Nationals' left fielder likes it or not, it could continue to define his next several months. It is not a thought he relishes, not a theme he wants to continue.
"It's difficult, because when you get comfortable, you don't want to leave," said Soriano, seated quite comfortably on a folding chair in front of his locker at RFK Stadium. "When you're comfortable, it's good. That's what I want: To be comfortable."
In this case, "comfort" translates roughly to "stability," and it is the one quality Soriano -- who will play in his fifth straight All-Star Game tonight -- craves above all others, the one that has eluded him over the course of his career. Derek Jeter is and always will be a New York Yankee. At some point, long ago now, Soriano expected the same for himself.
All that movement, from country to country and position to position and city to city, can make a 30-year-old man jumpy, unsettled, needy. During his first three months in Washington, Soriano has shown nearly every skill coveted in a baseball player, power that drops the jaws of his much larger peers, speed that comes in a blur of high knees and churning elbows. And those traits come up only after coaches and teammates mention his intensity, his effervescence, his demeanor.
"He's the same," Manager Frank Robinson said. "That's one of the refreshing things about having him here. He goes 0 for 4 or has the game-winning hit, whatever, he's in here smiling the next day: 'Hey, let's go. Let's go get 'em.' "
If Soriano is the same, he figures his surroundings should be, too. Soriano's comments in an interview last week -- saying that, even though he is a free agent at season's end, even though he could be traded before the July 31 deadline, he would like to remain in Washington -- are the result not only of his enjoyment of his time with the last-place Nationals, but of his experience as a professional baseball player. He is talented and he is proud, and it is clear that he wants the opportunity to represent one franchise, to live in one place and play one position, for the foreseeable future.
"I feel comfortable when I play for the Yankees," Soriano said. "When I leave, because they trade me to Texas, I had to get comfortable. I got comfortable with Texas, and then they trade me here.
"And now, I feel comfortable here, with new friends. That's the tough part, making new friends. You never know who likes you, who no likes you. I'm glad everywhere I go, I don't have no problem with nobody, and nobody have no problem with me."
'Getting Off of the Island'The problems, it would seem, came long ago, when he was growing up in the tiny town of Ingenio Quisqueya, in the Dominican province of San Pedro de Macoris, a place that has long been baseball-rich but money-poor. His mother, Andrea, raised him with help from his grandfather, and he found himself following his older brothers, Julio and Federico, to the town's fields to play baseball. He was a small, skinny third baseman, "not too fast," he said, because his legs weren't chiseled then as they are now. He and his friends would imitate the batting stances of the players they saw on TV.
"I would be Cal Ripken," Soriano said. "Then I would be Tony Fernandez. I had heroes. I wanted to be like them," and he stood to mimic the upright stance of Ripken.
Andrea Soriano wanted the youngest of her four children to go to school, so Alfonso followed orders. But it presented a problem. Other kids would eschew classes to play baseball in the morning, working out at the academies sponsored by major league teams, the places where American clubs developed talent and hid it away so they could pounce, signing prospects as soon as they turned 16.
"I was in school," Soriano said. "The American scouts, they never see me."
Instead, playing in the afternoons in a community program, his teams would face those from Japanese academies. He drew the attention of their scouts. It was his intention to earn money playing baseball somewhere, sometime. Japan? The United States? To a teenager in Ingenio Quisqueya, the difference seemed negligible.
"Dominican players, they're not always educated on how to make it," said former major league pitcher Jose Rijo, a special assistant to Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden who is a Dominican himself. "They just think about getting off of the island to play baseball. They're hungry, and they'll go anywhere to feed the hunger."
So in 1994, Soriano signed with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of the Japanese League. He was assigned to their minor league affiliate. He reported for instructional league in 1995, two months away from home for the first time ever. He arrived in Hiroshima and somehow found the bus to take him to the players' quarters. He still remembers how the steering wheel was on the right side, how the driver followed the left side of the road.
"I was getting confused," Soriano said. "And when I get to the place that everybody stays, I see the food."
Much of it was raw. "There was no sauce," he said. A week in, he wanted to come home. Some veteran players from the Dominican persuaded him to stay. He hit .214 in the minors in 1996, .252 the following year and then was called up. In nine games in Japan's Central League, he managed two hits in 17 at-bats. Yet he learned Japanese and found someone who could reasonably replicate Dominican food.
"I thought that's where my future is," he said. "I'm not even thinking about coming to the majors, to America. When I go to Japan, I think about playing in Japan for all my career."
He had grown comfortable. Stability, for all of a few seconds.
Japanese DepartureLast week, Soriano strode into the home clubhouse at RFK Stadium, designer shades over his eyes, designer bag over his shoulder, designer loafers on his feet. His smile was broad, as usual, and he bumped fists with a clubhouse attendant. He called out to Nick Johnson, his friend from his minor league days with the Yankees. "Hey, Papi!"
"What's up, Papi?" Johnson said back, lowly. Their lockers are next to each other along the right wall in the clubhouse, and Johnson was the one player who knew what to expect when Soriano came to the Nationals.
"He's always been the same," Johnson said. "Always smiling, always laughing."
"The energy," said veteran reserve Matthew LeCroy, "you could always see that. But I didn't know he was this kind of leader. I mean, the guy's a superstar. You never know what you get from those guys. But this guy, he's accessible to everybody."
The transition into the Nationals' clubhouse appears seamless now, halfway through a season in which he has hit 27 homers, stolen 20 bases and, on a game-to-game basis, been the barometer for whether the Nationals' offense will produce or not.
But eight years ago, it took a contract squabble with the Hiroshima club to put all this into motion, to bring him to the majors. Soriano wanted more money, and the matter ended up in arbitration in early 1998. Soriano's agent wanted almost four times what the club offered. A week after arbitrators ruled in favor of the team, Soriano refused to report and was released.
And that led him to the Yankees. One of New York's scouts saw him in Japan. And who better to win a bidding war for his services than the Yankees? He signed for a bonus worth roughly $2.5 million, and that September, he was working out at the club's spring training facility in Tampa.
"But I didn't speak English," he said. "I speak Japanese, Spanish. I got to go back again, start all over. The people, I don't know. I see those guys in instructional league, and I'm so shy that I just don't talk."
Yet he found a slice of home at a Tampa Latin restaurant, Las Delicias. Comfort food, and more. He would go every day. It was there that he met a young woman, a waitress named Angelica. She came from Panama.
"She was my friend first," he said. "Now, she is my wife."
But when they were just friends, Angelica would take Soriano to the movies. He would listen, and he would whisper to her: "What is the Spanish word for . . ."
"I would take the word," he said, "and I would put that in my mind."
His baseball, though, improved more quickly than his English. He began the 1999 season at Class AA, where he hit .305 and earned a brief September call-up to a major league club that would go on to win the World Series. The shortstop on that team, of course, was Jeter. If both Jeter and Soriano were going to remain with the Yankees, one would have to move. And in a precursor of things to come, Soriano didn't exactly volunteer.
"I'm a shortstop," he told the New York Daily News that summer. "But if I have to, I'll play another position."
By the spring of 2001, Soriano was a full-time second baseman, though not a very good one. In his five years at the position -- three with the Yankees, two with Texas -- he committed 105 errors, 46 more than anyone else during that time period.
"He made mistakes," said Jeter, his double-play partner. "But most of the mistakes he made were understandable. People say he made this many errors and whatever, but what if he gets to a ball someone else doesn't get to? Does that make him a worse second baseman? I don't think so. I think he played well."
The errors, too, were secondary to Soriano.
"I got comfortable at the second base," he said. "That's what's important to me."
Uncertain Ground, StillEven less than four months later, the imbroglio over Soriano's switch from second to the outfield -- a move engineered by Bowden, who traded three players to Texas for Soriano without being allowed to consult as to whether Soriano was amenable to a switch -- seems distant. His mere presence in tonight's All-Star Game in Pittsburgh points to that. His adventures in left field -- leading major league outfielders in both assists and errors -- show that this is still very much an experiment. But each day, each play, he is more relaxed.
"I [did] not believe in myself in spring training," he said. "That's why I not want to play the left field, because I [did] not believe in myself. Now, I believe I can play there, and, oh, man, it's so much better."
Yet even with his newfound serenity in the outfield, even with his now-stated desire to remain in Washington, the questions that will dog Soriano until the end of July are simple: Where will he play out the rest of 2006, and where will he play in 2007 and beyond?
Soriano, who earns $10 million this year, wants a long-term contract, wherever he winds up. "That's what's important to me, to know where I'm going to be," he said. "And I would like to be here."
There are, however, problems with that hope, because the Nationals are developing a long-term plan to build with talented, young players, and Soriano is the commodity that could bring the most in return. Unless he signs a deal with the Nationals before this season is over, he will be a free agent in the fall whether he is traded or not.
So there is a possibility that each day in the Nationals' clubhouse could be his last. He will land somewhere, and it will start again. Those first days in Hiroshima, those first days in Tampa, those first days in Texas all over again.
"I know I have no control if they trade me," Soriano said. "But in three months, if I [do] not sign, I get to decide. And I want to stay someplace a long time. I want to be comfortable."
More than anything. More than anything.