The Eastern Stars (34 page)

Eddy Rodríguez was born on August 8, 1981, in Ramón Santana, San Pedro de Macorís. He is a right-handed pitcher signed by the Orioles on March 11, 1999. He debuted in the major leagues on May 31, 2004, for the Baltimore Orioles and played for the Orioles for 2004 and 2006. He signed with the Florida Marlins on October 30, 2006.

Jerry Bienvenido Manzanillo Gil was born on October 14, 1982, in Placer Bonito. The Arizona Diamondbacks signed him as a shortstop on November 15, 1999. He debuted in the major leagues on August 22, 2004, for the Diamondbacks and played only that one season for them. In 2007 he played one season for the Cincinnati Reds.

Robinson José Canó, the son of José, was born on October 22, 1982, in Villa Magdalena, San Pedro de Macorís. The New York Yankees signed him as a second baseman on January 5, 2001. He debuted in the major leagues for the Yankees on May 3, 2005, and as of 2009 has continued playing for them. As of the end of the 2008 season, he had hit 151 doubles and 309 RBIs and maintained a .303 batting average.

Sendy Aquino Rleal was born on June 21, 1980, in San Pedro de Macorís. A right-handed pitcher, the Baltimore Orioles signed him on June 30, 1999. He debuted in the major leagues on April 5, 2006, for the Orioles. This was his only major league season, which he finished with a 4.44 ERA. The Orioles released him on September 5, 2007.

Agustín Alcántara Montero was born on August 26, 1977, in San Pedro de Macorís. A right-handed pitcher, he was signed by the Oakland Athletics as a free agent on January 20, 1995. He debuted in the major leagues on May 12, 2006, for the Chicago White Sox. In 2007 he went back down to the minor leagues. His major-league ERA was 5.14.

Juan Bautista Morillo was born on November 5, 1983, in San Pedro de Macorís. A right-handed pitcher, he debuted in the major leagues on September 24, 2006, for the Colorado Rockies, who signed him as a free agent on April 26, 2001. As of the close of the 2008 season, he had an 11.42 ERA, mainly because of a slider he has trouble controlling. He throws his fastball up to 100 miles per hour.

José Juan Arredondo was born on March 30, 1984, in San Pedro de Macorís. A right-handed relief pitcher, he signed with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on June 25, 2002. He debuted for the Angels in the major leagues on May 14, 2008, against the Chicago White Sox and gave up a home run to the first batter he faced, Nick Swisher. Nevertheless he finished the season with a promising 1.62 ERA.

 

 

 

600 Tainos drive off the Ciboney and become the dominant population on the island, calling it Quisqueya, meaning “mother of the earth.”

1492 Christopher Columbus arrives.

1493 La Isabela, the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, is founded by Columbus on the north coast of the island.

1496 Santo Domingo is founded.

1506 First Dominican sugar harvest is brought in.

1586 Sir Francis Drake attacks and nearly destroys Santo Domingo.

1605 In an attempt to stop smuggling, the Spanish force settlers to abandon the west of the island. French move in.

1697 Spain cedes the western third of the island to the French, who make it a prosperous sugar colony built on African slavery.

1791 Uprising takes place by the 480,000 slaves in the French colony.

1795 While putting down the rebellion in their colony, French troops take over the Spanish side.

1801 Toussaint-L’ouverture, a former slave, declares an independent nation of Haiti. Napoleon sends his troops.

1804 Napoleon is defeated. Jean-Jacques Dessalines becomes the leader of the first independent black republic and gives it the Arawak name Haiti.

1808 French troops are overthrown by colonists and the eastern side is returned to Spain.

1821 Spanish colonists declare the independent state of Haiti Español and ask to join Simón Bolívar’s Gran Colombia.

1822 Haiti Español invaded and occupied by Haitian forces.

1844 Dominicans declare their independence and drive out the Haitian military.

1845
A Manhattan book dealer, Alexander Cartwright, writes first definitive rule book for baseball.

1861 Country again comes under Spanish rule.

1863 Civil war breaks out between pro-Spanish and pro-independence movements.

1864 During civil war, last documented record of pure Tainos is written by Dominican soldiers who were being attacked by them.

1865 Dominican Republic becomes an independent nation again.

1866
According to popular legend, first baseball game in Cuba takes place in Matanzas.

1871 Annexation of the Dominican Republic is rejected by the U.S. Senate.

1879 Juan Antonio Amechazurra, a Cuban, opens the first
ingenio
, Ingenio Angelina, a steam-powered sugar mill.

1880 San Pedro de Macorís granted permission to become an international port.

1881 Another Cuban, Santiago W. Mellor, founds Ingenio Porvenir.

1882 At the height of a sugar boom, Ulises Heureux becomes the first Dominican dictator. He plunges country so deeply into debt that it has never recovered.

1882 Ingenio Cristóbal Colón and Ingenio Consuelo start up.

1891
Cubans form two competing baseball clubs in Santo Domingo.

1893 Sugar companies in San Pedro start recruiting workers from Saint Thomas, Saint John, Saint Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Antigua, and Saint Martin.

1898
After this season, blacks are completely banned from both major-league and minor-league baseball.

1899 Heureux is assassinated.

1906
Licey team is founded in Santo Domingo.

1911
Licey defeats San Pedro.

1916 United States Marines invade and occupy.

1920
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, known for racist views as judge, is appointed the first U.S. commissioner of baseball.

1922 Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic produce thirty-eight percent of the world’s cane sugar and twenty-seven percent of total world sugar.

1924 U.S. Marines leave.

1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo comes to power.

1936 Santo Domingo is renamed Ciudad Trujillo.

1936
San Pedro’s Estrellas win the championship from Ciudad Trujillo.

1937
Ciudad Trujillo beats Estrellas and bankrupts Dominican baseball in the process.

1937 Trujillo massacres between 20,000 and 30,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

1945
Brooklyn Dodgers sign Jackie Robinson, first black major-league player since 1898. Eleven weeks later, second black player, Larry Doby, is signed by the Cleveland Indians.

1948
Cuban Minnie Miñoso breaks color line for Latinos by playing for Cleveland Indians.

1951
Dominican League is reorganized as professional baseball again.

1954
Estrellas win championship.

1956
Ozzie Virgil becomes first Dominican major leaguer.

1956 Jesús de Galíndez is kidnapped by Trujillo agents in New York, tortured, and murdered.

1959 Mirabal sisters are murdered.

1959
Stadium is built in San Pedro for the Estrellas; later named Tetelo Vargas Stadium.

1961 Trujillo is assassinated.

1962 United States embargoes Cuba.

1962
Amado Samuel, shortstop, is first Macorisano to play in major leagues.

1963 Juan Bosch is elected president but after nine months is overthrown by military.

1965 A pro-Bosch rebellion leads to civil war. U.S. invades.

1966 U.S. military leaves after engineering an election that brings former Trujillo puppet president Joaquín Balaguer to power.

1968
The Estrellas win championship.

1978 After twelve years of Balaguer, opposition leader Silvestre Antonio Guzmán is elected president.

1982 Jorge Blanco from Guzmán’s party is elected.

1986 Balaguer returns to power.

1994 Although this is Balaguer’s third corrupt election victory in a row, international outcry is so great, he agrees to hold another election in two years.

1996 Leonel Fernández, from Juan Bosch’s party, is elected. Unlike Bosch, he emphasizes infrastructure for international business rather than social programs and claims to be building “Singapore of the Caribbean.”

2000 Fernández is barred by law from running a second term. Opposition candidate Hipólito Mejía comes to power on popular platform of social programs.

2004 Mejía uses legislative majority to end term limit. His opponent Fernández is elected.

2008 Fernández is reelected.

 

 

 

Me gustaría agradecer a Manuel Corporán, mi hermano Manolo, por toda la ayuda, la buena conversación, la perspicacia y las risas y para dejarme conocer su familia valiente y afectuosa. I thank Major League Baseball for their cooperation, and particularly Ronaldo Peralta for answering all of my questions for years with the utmost courtesy, speed, and professionalism. Thanks to José Canó for his openness and help, even though we still haven’t gone fishing, and to Arturo D’Oleo.

My deep-felt thanks to my friend of many years now, Bernard Diederich, whom I first met on Hispañola—no longer remember which side first—and who writes of this world with rare insight and grace. And to Elizabeth Macklin for her help in translating Deligne: I could translate the lean twentieth-century lines of Mir but could never have done Deligne without her poet’s touch.

I owe a debt to Tim Wiles and Freddy Berowski, who pleasantly and efficiently helped me in the library of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Thanks to Geoffrey Kloske for doing it all and so well, to Rebecca Saletan for her great advice, and to the whole Riverhead family for being such great partners. A special thanks, as always, to my dear friend Charlotte Sheedy for representing me. And thanks to Susan Birnbaum for all her help.

Thank you, Marian Mass, my beautiful Marian, for a hundred things, but especially for having stopped rooting for the Yankees.

Atkins, G. Pope, and Larman C. Wilson.
The Dominican Republic and the United States: From Imperialism to Transnationalism.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.

Balaguer, Joaquín.
Historia de la Literatura Dominicana.
Rafael Calzada, Argentina: Gráfica Guadalupe, 1972.

———.
La Isla al Revís: Haiti y el Destino Dominicano.
Santo Domingo: Fundación José Antonio Caro, 1983.

———.
Memorias de un Cortesano de la “Era de Trujillo.”
Santo Domingo: Fundación Corripio, 1988.

Black, Jan Knippers.
The Dominican Republic: Politics and Development in an Unsovereign State.
London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Bosch, Juan.
Composición Social Dominicana: Historía e Interpretacion.
Santo Domingo: Alfa y Omega, 1981.

Brown, Isabel Zakrzewski.
Culture and Customs of the Dominican Republic.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Crassweller, Robert D.
Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator.
New York: Macmillan, 1966.

Deligne, Gastón F.
Obra Completa
vol. 1:
Soledad y Poemas Dispersos.
Santo Domingo: Fundación Corripio, 1996.

Diederich, Bernard.
Una Cámara Testigo de la Historia: El Recorrido Dominicano de un Cronista Extranjero, 1951-1966.
Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 2003.

———.
Trujillo: The Death of the Goat.
Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1978.

———, and Al Burt.
Papa Doc and the Tonton Macoutes: The Truth About Haiti Today
. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.

Fuller, Captain Stephen M., and Cosmas, Graham A.
Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Marine Corps, 1974.

Galíndez, Jesús de.
La Era de Trujillo: Un Estudio Casuístico de Dictadura Hispanoamericana.
Buenos Aires: Editorial Americana, 1976.

Leopoldo Richiez, Manuel.
Historia de la Provincia y Especialmente de la Ciudad de San Pedro de Macorís.
Santo Domingo: Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliófilos, 2002.

Moya Pons, Frank.
El Pasado Dominicano.
Santo Domingo: Fundación J. A. Caro Alvarez, 1986.

Nelson, William Javier.
Almost a Territory: America’s Attempt to Annex the Dominican Republic.
Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990.

Pacini Hernandez, Deborah.
Bachata: A Social History of a Dominican Popular Music.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.

Peguero de Aza, Maximiliano.
Quinientos Años de Historia de los Pueblos del Este (Origen y Evolución).
Santo Damingo: Soto Castillo, 2004.

Rood, Carlton Alexander.
A Dominican Chronicle.
Santo Domingo: Fundación Corripio, 1986.

Sellers, Julie A.
Merengue and Dominican Identity: Music as National Unifier.
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.

Valldeperes, Manuel. “La Temporalidad Histórico-Espiritual en el Poeta Gastón Fernando Deligne,” in
Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia
14, no. 2 (1964), pp. 151-58.

Ayala, César J.
American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898
-
1934.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.