The Eastern Stars (22 page)

Others followed. In San Pedro there was increasingly tough competition among ex-players, including George Bell, who had bought plots and were looking for major-league organizations to rent them. Salomón Torres, a native Macorisano, was most remembered for his first major-league season, 1993, when in the last game he gave up three runs in as many innings and cost the Giants first place in the division. In San Pedro he was also remembered for losing control of a fastball in 2003 and hitting fellow Macorisano Sammy Sosa in the head and shattering his batting helmet. But Torres also took a part of his major-league earnings, cleared a cane field on the edge of San Pedro, built diamonds and dormitories and offices, then rented it to the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers. He called it Baseball Towers, a play on his name, Torres, which means “towers.”

The compound was gated, with an armed guard—one of those ubiquitous sleepy men with a beat-up pump shotgun who stood watch at most gates in the Dominican Republic. Inside it was prim and clean vanilla concrete buildings with red and blue trim, pristine interiors, and sparkling tile floors, all surrounded by careful groomed gardening—nothing too lush, but it is easy to grow things in the tropics. Of course, the grounds, like all grounds in the Dominican Republic, are grazed by chickens—free-range chickens, the national dish. Rent was $35,000 a month, food and maintenance included.

There were four manicured diamonds, two for the Braves and two for the Rangers. The Braves’ academy, which moved to Baseball Towers in 2006, had twenty employees. Dario Paulino, coordinator of the Braves’ academy, said, “This is the first step in the Braves’ system.” It was used as a Latin American center: signed prospects from throughout the region were brought to San Pedro.

Some academies sent players to a language school to learn English. The Braves had their own English teacher at the academy. Other courses were also taught so that the players, most of whom had dropped out of school to sign, could finish their high school education.

“The teams are trying to make them believe that they are intelligent people who can learn,” Paulino said. “A lot of players don’t make it because they can’t speak English.

“Most of the players here are illiterate,” Paulino continued. “They were too poor to go to school, though some have been to university. If they have never been to school, it is easier to teach them in the field. They are using a glove and you tell them it’s called a glove.”

The first phrase of English learned by many San Pedro teenage boys is “I got it!”—grammatically questionable but important words to know if you are ever going to catch a fly ball in an English-speaking game without a collision.

“Then, when we feel they are ready,” said Paulino, “we send them to school.” Many of the San Pedro programs use a locally produced book titled
English for Dominican Baseball Players.
It explains phonetically such critically important instructions as “Du nat drap de bol” as well as terms like the verb
ejaculate
—something all boys everywhere are told to avoid before a game.

T
he young ballplayers, even those from San Pedro, sleep at the academy in bunk beds, eight boys to a room. The rooms are kept spotless, as though ready for military inspection, with shoes neatly lined up under the bunks.

The academies all have gyms with weights for bodybuilding and trainers to guide the boys. Gary Aguirre, trainer at the Braves’ academy, said, “Many of these Dominicans, because of cultural background and nutrition, are undersized. I try to build them up.” The teams were considering a variety of protein supplements, such as energy bars. Aguirre added, “They are sixteen and seventeen when they sign and they have a very high metabolism. They can burn 1,500 to 2,500 calories a day, sometimes more.” They were fed three, four, and sometimes five times a day and encouraged to eat copiously. Most of it got burned off in exercise.

Typically, the Braves’ academy in San Pedro had about forty-five to fifty young, signed prospects at a time. This included some from other Latin American countries, but as in most academies a few American boys were also sent there to get some additional practice.

It all unfolded rhythmically. The big signing was July 2. Dominican Summer League ran through mid-September, then Instructional League began in October and ran until December 12, when players were either sent to farm teams in the U.S. or released and sent home. In the Braves’ camp, out of the forty-five or fifty prospects, about thirty-five would move on to the U.S.

The program was designed to teach players by providing games for them to play. José Martínez, a Cuban who played and coached for the major leagues, now worked as special assistant to the Braves’ general manager. “You have to play these kids until you have them figured out,” he said.

Sometimes one organization would sign so many players that they needed to create two teams. In 2006, the Braves had two Summer League, teams. José Tartabull, the manager of their instructional league, said it was “for kids who need more swings or have issues of development to work on.” Tartabull, a Cuban who played in the major leagues in the 1960s, was famous in Boston for throwing out Chicago White Sox center fielder Ken Berry at home plate, saving the 1967 American League pennant for the Red Sox.

Tartabull believed that Latino players had a much easier time in the major leagues than they did in his day because the academy system slowly integrated them into baseball as they came up: “Everyone thought you were trying to get their job. Today players help new guys. Back then they wouldn’t talk to you.”

They still don’t always. No one at the end of a distinguished career enjoys seeing a kid of any nationality brought in to replace him. In a classic example, the Baltimore Orioles superstar shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr., was moved to third base so that the young Manny Alexander could try out at the shortstop position. Alexander later complained that Ripken would not talk to him. The older star, a huge, towering man, just stared at Manny with his ice-gray eyes.

But Dominicans were becoming more accepted. Things had changed a great deal in a few decades. Dominicans were getting to Rookie League ball in the U.S. speaking a little English and having been trained in the fundamentals of the game. Older players, like Rogelio Candalario, the son of a Consuelo sugar maker, remembered how they learned baseball with little instruction: “It wasn’t like now. There was no organization. I trained myself. We used to watch American major-league ball on television and try to do what they did.”

 

T
he Angels also had their academy in San Pedro, on the city’s east side, in the rich ocher soil of the sugar fields that stretched to La Romana. Up the dirt road, in lush tropical growth that men hacked clear with machetes, was the fenced-off, spacious compound with two big diamonds and no guard, a striking change in a country where almost everything had an armed guard.

The facility was owned by the Universidad Central del Este in San Pedro. The Angels had been using it on and off since 1992 but full-time since 1998. This was an older, more threadbare facility than Baseball Towers, with a smaller dining room, one big room for bunk beds, worn tile floors, and no landscaping around the diamond—just a very serious baseball program. Rough-hewn and without the corporate feel of the Braves’ academy, it had red paint peeling from the shutters, and no air-conditioning. But it was clean—again with an almost military sense of orderliness.

Major League Baseball, which regulates academy conditions, did not require frills like air-conditioning. Aaron Rodríguez, who inspected the academies for Major League Baseball, said he mainly made sure there were no dangerous conditions, such as holes in the outfields, and that the kitchens were clean and provided nutritious food.

The Angels had six scouts around the Dominican Republic. When they found someone they wanted to sign, they called Charlie Romero, a lean, fit black man from La Romana who was the Angels’ program coordinator at the academy in San Pedro. Romero then traveled to where the prospect played and had a look before the player was signed. He usually signed between fifteen and twenty Dominicans in a year.

At the Angels’ academy, baseball began at eight in the morning with organized ball games. Then they spent the afternoon working on fundamentals, such as fielding ground balls and baserunning. They were served three meals a day and two snacks. It was mostly Dominican food—rice, beans, chicken—but it was considered part of their education to slowly introduce a few American foods, such as hamburgers for lunch and pancakes for breakfast. Romero said, “Most of our kids go to the States, and when they come back—wow—they put on twenty pounds. It’s the training and the nutrition.”

English was taught five days a week at the Angels’ academy, and twice a week the boys had to play entire games during which everything on the field had to be said in English. “We have to teach them English, and how to open a bank account, and baseball fundamentals,” said Romero.

Some were quickly sent up to U.S. farm teams. Others were patiently developed there in the cane field, sometimes for four years.

“Some kids—as soon as you put them in the field you can spot them—haven’t played twenty games in their life,” said Julio García, Latin American field coordinator for the Cubs. He blamed this on
buscones
. “They find a kid with a good body and say, ‘Do you want to be a Major League Baseball player?’ They teach them throwing and hitting fundamentals and get them a tryout and take between twenty-five and thirty percent of the signing bonus. My job gets harder because they don’t have playing experience.”

This was the main point of the academy system: to give them experience playing games. But also they worked on developing specific skills, especially with pitchers. The Braves organization was the first to emphasize pitching, but now most of the franchises do. José Serra of the Cubs said, “Baseball is about pitching. The Braves decided that a long time ago.” But the young pitchers at the Cubs’ academy are seldom allowed to throw more than fifty pitches.

A young pitcher is easily destroyed, so they are not encouraged to do a lot of breaking balls, which can damage a young arm. José Martínez of the Braves said, “Most of the time, pitchers are asked to throw only fastballs. It builds up strength and doesn’t strain ligaments like other pitches.”

A third or more of the players signed by the Cubs are pitchers. Julio García, a big cigar-smoking Cuban of charm and insight—as long as he was kept off the subject of Cuban politics—said, “We sign pitchers because the arms down here are incredible. My boss came down and told me after watching training that it would take months to see that many arms in the States.”

They have them throw mostly fastballs and changeups. A changeup is a hard pitch to master. It looks like a fastball but the speed is reduced. If the delivery is slow, the batter will see that it’s a slow pitch and hit it far. The motion and speed of the arm must be identical to those when the pitcher throws a fastball. A fastball is held across the seams with a space between the ball and the palm, which causes the wrist to whip it faster on release. A changeup is the same throw but with the ball snug against the hand, which causes no wrist action on release and a backspin on the ball that slows it down. It used to be called a palm ball. If an academy can take a young pitcher with a hard fastball and teach him a truly deceptive changeup, he can be a dangerous pitcher. But it is not entirely enough. Garcia said, “We let them throw occasional breaking balls. They are hard on the arm, but it’s a fine line, because you have to throw breaking balls to develop them.”

 

A
long the road to Consuelo was a compound with a guarded gate. Inside was one of the better-appointed academies. Started in 1991, San Pedro had the only Japanese camp in the Dominican Republic, the Hiroshima Carp Baseball Academy.

There were some clear disadvantages for a young Dominican in signing with a Japanese club. Asked what the Japanese signing bonuses were like, Yasushi Kake, assistant general manager, a husky, gray-haired Japanese man, said, “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.” Then he mischievously put his hand over his mouth and pretended to whisper,
“Muy barato”
—Very cheap—and he laughed.

There were some advantages to the Japanese system, money not being one of them. A top Japanese salary is $200,000—minuscule by the standards of the major leagues, but better than the American minor leagues—and when a player signed with a Japanese team, his chances of making it to the top were much better. There was only one level of minor-league ball between a signing and the major-league teams. And the Japanese released very few players once they were signed.

But there were tight controls on letting foreigners in. Each team was allowed only six foreigners, and there were only twelve teams. Typically, there were about twenty-five foreigners playing in Japanese baseball. It could be a route to American Major League Baseball. Alfonso Soriano at age seventeen, with no good offers from the Americans, signed with the Hiroshima Carp and played well. He might not have gotten to the major leagues had it not been for Gordon Blakely, a Yankees vice president, who learned that the pitcher Francisco Delacruz was going to be available from the Japanese. He went there to see him play but also noticed the Dominican shortstop.