The Eastern Stars (27 page)

“I understand,” Bell said. “You don’t like to get beaten by a foreigner, and I was a good hitter and I was black. It’s all part of the mix.”

But what was disturbing to other Macorisano players was Bell’s claim that charging the mound was something he learned in San Pedro—that it was the San Pedro way of playing baseball. A later generation of San Pedro players developed a sense that baseball had become something extremely valuable that they had to handle with considerable care.

Fernando Tatis, asked about Bell’s assertion that his aggressiveness was the San Pedro way, said, “Some people play like that and some people don’t. I don’t. I think you have to respect the game. It is what is going to give me and my family a better life.”

The better
buscón
programs emphasized that such antics are unprofessional and not good for them or for baseball.

George Bell was not the only San Pedro player with the Latin-hothead reputation. Pitcher Balvino Galvez, born on a
batey
, would have been infamous had his career lasted longer. He threw a hard fastball, often while sticking out his tongue. His control of the pitch was flawless, but the pitches started drifting when he had the pressure of runners on the bases. He pitched only one season in the majors, 1986 for the Dodgers. He then had a career in Japan, where he was known for his tantrums, more than once expressing his anger at an umpire’s call by throwing the ball at him. Galvez almost made it back to the majors in 2001, when he was slated to join the starting rotation of the Pirates. But at spring training he got into an argument with the pitching coach, Spin Williams. Galvez threw down his glove, stomped into the clubhouse, and without saying a word packed up and flew back to the Dominican Republic. He was immediately released, never again to play.

Joaquín Andújar was infamous for his erratic behavior. He once removed himself from the mound, complaining that his crotch itched, and after one game went badly he demolished a toilet with a baseball bat. In 1985 he took off after an umpire in a World Series, had to be restrained by his teammates, and started the following year suspended for ten days. Then there was a drug scandal that might explain the erratic behavior. In between the Chicago World Series fixing scandal of 1919 and the steroid scandal of the twenty-first century, the biggest scandal to shake baseball was the 1986 investigation into widespread amphetamine and cocaine use among important major-league players. During the investigation Andújar confessed to using cocaine.

Even in retirement back in San Pedro, Andújar maintained his reputation. Alfredo Griffin kindly said that it was just that “Joaquín has too much blood.” When Griffin was building his new house next to Andújar’s in 1986, the pitcher dropped in, had a tirade about the carpet being too dark, shook everyone’s hand, and left. Even people in San Pedro thought he was a little crazy. Bell once said, “A lot of North Americans, some Dominicans as well, say that Joaquín is
muy malo
, a bad guy. But I know he’s honest.” Nor did Andújar have any objection to Bell’s public persona. Andújar repeatedly described himself to the American press as “one tough Dominican” and was fond of characterizing himself as “born to be macho,” which to American readers seemed more true than interesting.

 

J
uan Marichal remained the only Dominican inducted into the Hall of Fame, although several good prospects waited in the wings. To be elected, a player must be retired for five years. Entry is voted on by only the members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who are currently working and have been active writers for at least ten years. To be inducted into the Hall of Fame, at least seventy-five percent of the members have to vote favorably. The number of voters varies, but in 2009, for example, this meant receiving a minimum of 405 votes. Few players are assured entry. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb easily made it their first voting year with over ninety-five percent. But Cy Young barely made it with seventy-five percent. Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Hank Greenberg were all turned down the first time they came up for a vote. So it is difficult to predict this process, but the most likely Hall of Famer from San Pedro, according to his records, would be Sammy Sosa.

And yet if Macorisanos were asked who was the best ballplayer they ever produced, it is unlikely many would say Sosa. They would probably say Tetelo Vargas. Sosa was not a five-tool player. Early in his career, when he was stealing twenty-five bases each season, he was a three-tool player, but mostly he was an extraordinary hitter who in 2007 became only the fifth player ever to hit more than six hundred home runs. He also drove in more than 140 runs year after year. He was the leading home-run hitter in baseball in two different years, he had the most home runs in a four-year period in history, he was the only batter to hit sixty or more home runs for three consecutive seasons, and he was famous for the record-breaking season of 1998, when he beat the long-standing sixty-one home-run record of Roger Maris, the most celebrated record in baseball, by hitting sixty-six—only to be beaten by Mark McGwire, who hit seventy home runs.

Yet at the opening of the Winter League in San Pedro in 1999—at the height of his record-making career—when Sosa threw out the first ball, people booed. Then others cheered, but he was clearly booed first. The reason was that San Pedro had been devastated by a hurricane and Sosa had made a great show in the American press of hurricane relief, but Macorisanos were not believing it. The mayor at the time, Sergio Cedeño, said, “He asked for money to help the people of San Pedro de Macorís. That’s what we are asking—where’s the money?” In the U.S. also, Sosa’s much-trumpeted charitable work was called into question. But for baseball fans, other questions were to arise. By 2004 the onetime Chicago superstar was being regularly booed in Wrigley Field, and his T-shirt was so unpopular in the Wrigleyville Sports store near the field that it had been marked down thirty percent.

In 2002 the steroid scandal was beginning to overtake baseball. Steroids were found in the locker of Sosa’s home-run competitor, Mark McGwire. The other home-run king, Barry Bonds, denied using steroids but had tested positive several times.

That left one home-run champion, Sosa, for whom a grandstand was more than just where he sent the ball. With his customary bravado he took to saying that if baseball started testing for steroids, he wanted to be first in line. In an interview,
Sports Illustrated
columnist Rick Reilly asked him if he meant it, and he said emphatically yes.

Then Reilly asked, “Why wait?”

“What?” said Sosa.

Reilly, thinking that Sosa could clear the air and give a lift to baseball by proving that he, at least, had come by his home runs honestly, wrote down the telephone number and address of a diagnostic lab that could test him only thirty minutes from Wrigley Field, where he was playing for the Cubs.

Sosa became enraged, accused Reilly of trying to “get me in trouble,” and stopped the interview, calling Reilly a “motherfucker.” Reilly said that the lesson for sportswriters was to always ask the steroid question at the end of the interview.

The public and many sportswriters began suspecting Sosa of steroid use. Anabolic steroids are drugs related to testosterone, a male hormone.
Anabolic
comes from a Greek word meaning “to build up.” The drugs were first developed in the 1930s and are used today to treat patients suffering from bone loss and to counteract deterioration in cancer and AIDS patients. But steroids can also be used to build up muscles, and consequently strength, in athletes. The risks are many, including increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, infertility, liver damage, and heart disease. Some studies indicate a physical altering of the structure of the heart and personality changes, including extreme aggression. Since the 1980s the possession of anabolic steroids without a prescription is a crime, in the United States. Not only were baseball players who used them committing a crime, but they were violating the rules of Major League Baseball. Like the Olympics committee, the National Football Association, and basketball, hockey, and most other sports organizations, Major League Baseball considered steroids to be an unfair trick to enhance performance and had banned their use. A baseball player who used steroids was considered a cheater.

Sosa, once a fan favorite for his ready smile and his maudlin talk of remembering the poor, had other problems. In 2003 he was at bat for the Cubs in the first inning against Tampa Bay, a notoriously ineffective pitching team that year. But Sosa, the home-run king, was having a bad year. It was June and he had hit only six home runs—none in the past thirty-three days. Sosa took a swing; the pitch shattered the bat and sent a ground ball to second base. The alert catcher, Toby Hall, gathered the broken pieces and showed them to the umpire, who promptly ejected Sosa from the game. The pieces revealed that the bat had a cork interior.

It is not clear if corked bats are an advantage. They make the bat lighter for a faster swing, but Robert K. Adair, a Yale professor who authored
The Physics of Baseball
, claimed that because cork is a softer substance, it may actually slow down the ball. But corked bats were used by hitters who believed they sent the ball farther, and Major League Baseball had banned their use. Players caught using them were officially cheating. Baseball rules state that a bat must be a solid piece of wood.

The following day, seventy-six bats were confiscated from Sosa in the Cubs locker room while a game was still going on; the bats were all X-rayed and found to be “clean.” Sosa had claimed that his use of the corked bat the day before had just been a big mistake, that he had accidentally pulled out a bat that he used for home-run exhibitions. Major-league officials said they believed his story and cut his eight-day suspension to seven days. But the fans and the press felt Sammy Sosa had been caught cheating.
USA Today
sports columnist Jon Saraceno called Sosa’s explanation a “highly implausible defense.”
USA Today
conducted a poll in which sixty percent of respondents said they didn’t believe Sosa and thought he had used the corked bat intentionally. The press wrote variations on the “Say it isn’t so, Joe” line to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson after the 1919 World Series had been found to be fixed. The
New York Post
, with their traditional love of tabloid headlines, ran the story with “Say It Isn’t Sosa,” a line that was being used by Chicago fans. Jackson, by the way, got only two votes when his name was brought up in the Hall of Fame in 1936. Baseball writer Roger Kahn in the
Los Angeles Times
linked Sosa to Pete Rose, a player who has not been voted into the Hall of Fame because he was caught betting on baseball.

Things got worse for Sosa. In 2004 it became clear that the Cubs organization wanted to trade their onetime star, and the fans wanted them to also. The relationship reached a low point when they fined Sosa $87,400 for arriving late and leaving early for the last game of the season. Being late to work is one of those things that is not—not ever—supposed to happen in baseball, and sneaking out early is also unacceptable. Sosa tried to claim he left in the seventh inning, but the security videotape in the player parking lot showed that he had actually left in the first. His teammates were furious.

Fairly or unfairly, in both the U.S. and San Pedro in the last years of Sosa’s career, a cloud of suspicion hung over the once smiling hero from Consuelo, and it remained there even after his 2007 retirement. In 2009 lawyers leaked to the press that Sosa had been shown positive for steroids in a 2003 test that Major League Baseball gave on condition that the results remained secret. Such a cloud can do a lot of damage to a player’s reputation. It can keep a significant number of sportswriters from voting positively for a Hall of Fame candidate.

There is already a growing sentiment among some sportswriters, old-time players, and fans that it is not fair to compare modern players’ records with old-time players’ achievements, even without performance-enhancing drugs; steroid use further complicates the issue. How can a Roger Clemens be compared with Bob Feller, Juan Marichal, or Sandy Koufax, when Clemens pitched only six- or seven-inning games every four or five days and the earlier pitchers had to keep their arms in shape for complete games every three days? In 1965, Sandy Koufax pitched a complete game seven of the World Series on two days’ rest, a feat that would be unimaginable to today’s pitchers.

How do you compare the home runs hit in one season by McGwire or Sosa with those hit by Ruth or Greenberg, when the earlier hitters played 154-game seasons in which to make their records and modern hitters play 162 games?

Then, when it is added to the mix that Clemens and Sosa may have also used steroids, and that McGwire did, the old-time players, fans, and, most important, the sportswriters start to get angry.

 

B
aseball had its share of scandals in the U.S., but in the Dominican Republic—where it dangled millions of dollars in front of underfed, impoverished teenagers and their desperate, often uneducated families—occasional incidents of corruption could not be surprising.

In 1999 there was the marriage scandal. Signed major-league prospects from the Dominican Republic were taking money from local women to say they were married so they would be eligible for U.S. visas. The only problem was that the U.S. consulate started noticing that suddenly a lot of young players, especially from San Pedro, were married. They uncovered the scam and denied visas to players who had been caught. One of the players who lost his visa this way was Manny Alexander, but he pleaded that he was just trying to help out his cousin, and the State Department gave him back his visa. Alexander had other problems. In 2000, while playing for the Red Sox, steroids and syringes were found in his car. When he played for the Yankees, he was accused of stealing items from Derek Jeter’s locker and selling them to memorabilia dealers.

The signing prospect, an uneducated teenager from a small town, had a dizzying array of people swirling around him, mostly looking for part of his fat check. Players’ agents signed them up even though it would be years before they needed an agent. Scouts and
buscones
were ready with ideas.