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$Unique_ID{BAS00170}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Baseball in the Caribbean}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Ruck, Rob}
$Subject{Caribbean Cuba Mexico Nicaragua Dominican Republic Venezuela Puerto
Rico Panama Colombia winter league Liga de Beisbol Latino Latinos Serie del
Caribe latin leagues}
$Log{}
Total Baseball: Other Leagues
Baseball in the Caribbean
Rob Ruck
Soon after the World Series marks the season's end in the United States,
baseball springs back to life in and around the Caribbean. There, to the beat
of salsa and merengue and against a backdrop of palm trees and seasonal labor,
some of the best baseball in the world is played each winter. While most of
South America follows football and the British West Indies follows cricket,
the rest of the Caribbean basin plays baseball--and has for the better part of
a century.
Since baseball fever first infected Cuba in the 1870s, the game has
infiltrated the sporting psyches of Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic,
Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Colombia. Although tied to major league
baseball in four of these countries through a set of winter leagues and as a
source of fresh talent, Caribbean baseball is not simply an appendage of the
game that is played in the United States. Rather, baseball has acquired an
autonomous persona as the peoples of the region have made the game into their
own national pastimes.
More than simply recreation or a display of grace and competence,
baseball has catalyzed national consciousness and cohesion in the Caribbean
basin. A critical part of the fabric of everyday life, the sport has also
influenced how these societies have come to define themselves, their relations
with each other, and their ties to the United States. "It's more than a
game," Dominican winter league general manager Winston Llenas once remarked.
"It's our passion. It's almost our way of life."
Pedro Julio Santana stands at his office window in what was once the
colonial zone of Santo Domingo. A sportsman at the center of Dominican
baseball's evolution earlier this century, he searches for words to describe
how the game penetrated his country and the rest of the basin. Glancing below
to the hulking walls of the first Catholic cathedral in the western
hemisphere, Santana finds his metaphor. "It is much the same as that which
happened with Christianity. Jesus could be compared to the North Americans,
but the apostles were the ones that spread the faith, and the apostles of
baseball were Cubans. Even though the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico were
occupied by the North Americans, the Cubans first brought baseball here, and
to Mexico and Venezuela, too."
Caribbean baseball's first epicenter was Cuba, which had fallen into
orbit around the United States by the late nineteenth century. Baseball
arrived there last century, brought by sailors, students, and businessmen from
the United States as well as by Cubans who had traveled north. The U.S.
military occupations that followed the 1898 conflict with Spain stimulated
baseball's expansion there and across the basin. By the time the Good
Neighbor Policy had supplanted the Big Stick in the 1930s, baseball was
entrenched. Moreover, Cuban baseball had become the focal point of an
international network that stretched from the Caribbean basin through the
Negro Leagues.
What was likely the first ballgame in Cuba with local participation
occurred in June 1866, when sailors of a U.S. ship taking on sugar invited
Cuban longshoremen to play. El Club Habana (Havana) began two years later,
crushing a team from Matanzas in the first organized contest of two Cuban
teams.
Havana's victory over Matanzas featured two of Cuba's sporting pioneers,
Esteban Bellan and Emilio Sabourin. Bellan became the first Latino in U.S.
organized baseball, playing three seasons in the National Association
(1871-1873). Sabourin, the A.G. Spalding of Cuban baseball, was the
motivating force behind the Liga de Beisbol Profesional Cubana, whose
inaugural tournament was won by Sabourin's reconstituted Havana club in 1878.
Sabourin proselytized for his sport as well as for the cause of Cuban
independence from Spain until his contribution of baseball revenues to the
independence movement incurred the wrath of Spanish officials. They
imprisoned Sabourin until his death and banned baseball in parts of their
colony.
While initially a game of the more affluent and those with contact with
the United States, baseball soon spread to all classes of Cuban society, both
urban and rural. U.S. military occupations, support by companies and
businessmen, and close ties to political elites would shape its subsequent
development, much as these forces would elsewhere in the basin.
The game was organized on three overlapping levels in its early years.
The first was an ad hoc player-organized, self-directed network of teams. The
second involved clubs sponsored by businessmen, companies, and politicians who
sought the promotional advantages of such patronage. The third level was that
of professional (sometimes semiprofessional) baseball, which organized
championships from 1878 until 1961, with a changing cast of teams and format.
In some years, no tournaments were held, while in others both a summer and
winter season took place. Havana, Almendares, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, and
Marianao were the league's mainstays.
Until the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the ensuing U.S. blockade, Cuba set
the standard for Caribbean baseball. It sent the most players to the major
and Negro leagues while its winter and summer tournaments featured the highest
caliber of Latin ball and attracted players from both the States and the
basin. Cuban players, radio broadcasts, and emigrants, in turn, became
baseball's emissaries to the rest of the region.
In the Dominican Republic, Cubans who had migrated to escape the turmoil
of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) were the first to form teams. Young
Dominicans emulated them and joined with compatriots who had studied in the
United States to establish a self-organized matrix of teams and tournaments
well in place before the U.S. Marines arrived in 1916 for their eight-year
occupation. Santo Domingo's Licey, the oldest of the six professional
Dominican clubs, formed in 1907, while the forerunners of San Pedro de
Macoris' Estrellas Orientales, Santiago's Aguilas Cibaenas, and Santo
Domingo's other club, Escogido, took to the field soon afterward.
While Dominicans refer to these early decades as the romantic epoch of
baseball, commercial forces were already at work there and across the basin.
Teams occasionally recruited players with the lure of financial reward and
soon began importing Cubans and Puerto Ricans for championship tournaments.
Moreover, local clubs often induced talented players with payment in cash or
work. North American oil companies in Venezuela, rum distilleries and tobacco
manufacturers in Cuba, and sugar cane companies in Nicaragua, Puerto Rico,
Cuba, and the Dominican Republic sponsored or assisted workplace teams for
recreation and community entertainment, but with an industrial agenda,
too--winning their workers' hearts and minds.
During these "Yankee years", between 1898 and 1933, when the Marines hit
the beaches thirty-four times in ten different basin countries, they found
baseball already implanted in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the
Dominican Republic. They never made it to Venezuela, but would have found
baseball there, too, as early as the organization of the Caracas club in 1895.
The occupations, though, helped to push the sport along. While Nicaraguans
had played on their Atlantic coast since 1888, the nation's longest-running
pro team, Boer, was founded by the U.S. consul in Managua. In the Dominican
Republic, U.S. marines and sailors played ball to bolster morale; they were
frequently challenged by Dominican teams, for whom these contests were both a
test of sporting abilities and national character. Far more baseball was in
evidence by the end of the U.S. stay on the island.
While Cubans and some other basin natives had broken into baseball in the
States during the first half of the century, the center of gravity for
Caribbean baseball remained a regional one. A "Have Glove--Will Travel"
mentality soon took hold of basin baseball and its ablest practitioners made
the rounds of national tournaments. A core of the finest black players from
the States--then barred from major league play by the color line, as were most
Latinos--joined them in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela,
and Mexico.
Caribbean baseball's apogee was probably reached in the summer of 1937 in
the Dominican Republic during a national championship dedicated to the
re-election of the then state-of-the-art dictator Rafael Trujillo. Top
Dominican players were joined by the best Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Negro
league talent that the Dominican peso could buy to form a three-team league.
Santiago boasted the services of Martin Dihigo, Luis Tiant Sr., and Horacio
Martinez; San Pedro de Macoris countered with Tetelo Vargas, Ramon Bragana,
and Cocaina Garcia, while the eventual victor, Ciudad Trujillo (a merger of
Licey and Escogido that represented the city Trujillo had renamed in his own
honor) relied on future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and
Satchel Paige, as well as Silvio Garcia, Perucho Cepeda, and Sam Bankhead.
Baseball on the island was the equal of that played anywhere that summer.
These players barnstormed year-round, and many of them later played together
as Santa Clara in Cuba and as La Concordia in Venezuela.
The proprietary interest taken by caudillos such as Trujillo or
Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza ensured baseball of its most-favored sport status
and contributed to the growth of strong regional rivalries. Caribbean
participation in the Mundiales, the world amateur baseball championships that
began in 1938, and later the Caribbean Series of pro circuits, which started
in 1949, reinforced the game's hegemony.
Latin ball was an opportunity for North American players to supplement
their income and hone their skills in encounters that sometimes surpassed the
caliber of major league play. However, it was also a threat to organized
baseball in the States. Major league teams had played in Cuba before the turn
of the century, and afterward Negro league squads as well as individual black
and white pros journeyed south. The 1937 raids on the Negro leagues by
Dominican teams destroyed the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and other Negro league
squads frequently lost their best players and gate attractions to basin teams.
From 1939 until the demise of independent black baseball a decade later,
Venezuelan and Mexican franchises vied for Negro leaguers during the summer
months, enticing Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge, and other stars to jump their
Negro league teams. They offered better pay and a different atmosphere. "Not
only do I get more money playing here, but I live like a king," Willie Wells
wrote to Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith in 1939 to explain his
switch from the Newark Eagles to Vera Cruz. "I am not faced with the racial
problem. . . . I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found
in the United States. . . . Here, in Mexico, I am a man."
The major leagues were less vulnerable to such competition, but even they
blanched when Mexican liquor mogul Jorge Pasquel sought major leaguers in
addition to Negro leaguers to bolster the six-team summer Mexican League in
1946. Railroad workers from the States taught the game to their Mexican
colleagues as early as the 1880s and a strong semipro league formed in the
1920s. In Sonora and Mexico City, the game felt the pull of baseball across
the northern border, which Mexican and black teams frequently crossed. In the
Yucatan, baseball pointed more toward the Caribbean, especially Cuba.
Pasquel, pumping new capital into the league, persuaded Mickey Owens, Sal
Maglie, and Max Lanier to desert their major league teams, prompting the
latter to ban them. Pasquel also pursued Stan Musial, reportedly placing
$50,000 on the bed in his spring training hotel room at a time when the
Cardinals' outfielder was making but $13,000 a season. Other basin leagues
also lost top players in the Mexican effort to upgrade. Pasquel's challenge,
however, was blunted by organized baseball in the States, which tried to limit
any competition for its players, and by the Mexican League's own logistical
and financial difficulties. The challenge faded after the 1948 season. In
the aftermath of the Mexican raids and with integration imminent, major league
baseball began to sign accords with professional leagues throughout the basin,
formalizing player movement and institutionalizing winter play.
That was especially important, for with the end of the color line in 1947
Latinos soon renewed their assault on major league ball. By the 1970s, the
basin would constitute the freshest source of talent in the majors, especially
important as the black community turned away from baseball as part of a
general shift toward other sports in the United States. But Latin
players--black and white--had played pro ball in the United States long before
Jackie Robinson's historic debut.
Colombia's Luis Castro broke ground in baseball's modern era, after the
creation of the National and American Leagues, but Cubans for the most part
led the way. While Castro played only part of the 1902 season, Rafael Almeida
and Armando Marsans spearheaded a Cuban invasion in 1911 that left its
imprimatur on the game and numbered over thirty players before integration.
Another ninety or so Cubans played major league ball after that divide.
The crucial factor controlling the entry of Cubans and other basin
players into the major leagues was skin color. Barnstorming their way through
black communities from the early century on, Cuban teams had become a mainstay
of the Negro leagues that began in 1920. Popular draws, the Cuban Stars and
the New York Cubans featured Latinos too dark to pass the color line into the
majors. Playing most of their contests on the road, these Caribbean squads
injected talent and a tropical allure to the game. Cubans Martin Dihigo,
Alejandro Oms, Luis Tiant Sr., Orestes "Minnie" Minoso, and Silvio Garcia were
joined by Dominicans Horacio Martinez and Tetelo Vargas, Puerto Rican Peruchin
Cepeda, Panamanian Pat Scantlebury, and sometimes several black North
Americans who passed for Cubans, on these pan-Caribbean aggregations. A few
Cubans, such as Cristobal Torriente, a powerful outfielder, and Jose de la
Caridad Mendez, "El Diamante Negro," who took a no-hitter into the ninth
inning the first time he faced the barnstorming Cincinnati Reds, became
mainstays of other Negro league franchises.
Lighter-skinned Cubans from that predominantly mixed island played on the
other side of sport's racial boundary in the States, in the major leagues.
Perhaps the greatest pre-Jackie Robinson Cuban major leaguer was Adolfo Luque,
a pitcher whose twenty big league seasons were capped by a brilliant 27-8
record in 1923 and a winning relief stint of shutout ball in the seventh game
of the 1933 World Series. Following that game, Clark Griffith, whose
Washington Senators had lost the Series, decided to back a scouting exhibition
to Cuba. He sent Joe Cambria.
"Papa Joe", as many still refer to Cambria, stocked the Senators with
Cubans. Among his first signees was Roberto Estalella, from the sugarcane
milltown that Hershey Chocolate operated in Cardenas. The Cincinnati Enquirer
had greeted the signings of Almeida and Marsans in 1911 with relief,
introducing them as "two of the purest bars of Castilian soap to ever wash
upon our shores," but the darker-hued Estalella was more controversial. No
one challenged this indirect breaching of the color line, although it prompted
Red Smith to write his classic column in which he suspected that "there was a
Senegambian somewhere in the Cuban batpile where Senatorial lumber was
seasoned."
The player regarded in the Caribbean as the best Cuban ever, and arguably
the finest ballplayer of all time, never played major league ball. Martin
Dihigo displayed his talents in Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela,
and the Dominican Republic, and is enshrined in the Hall of Fame of three of
these nations. Dihigo excelled at the plate, on the mound, and as a manager,
but integration came too late for him. His bust at Havana's Estadio
Latinoamericano reads simply, El Immortal.
The contradiction that some Cubans played in the majors and others in the
Negro leagues was not lost upon blacks in the States or on Latin ballplayers.
As early as Almeida's and Marsans' 1911 debut, the black press began to hope
that black ballplayers would soon follow them into baseball's most exclusive
league. And while Negro leaguers went south to adulation and greater pay,
dark-skinned Latinos who came north encountered prejudice based on both skin
color and nationality. As major leaguers such as Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and
Carl Hubbell traveled south to play in winter ball, black North Americans and
Latinos found that they could more than hold their own. These symbolic
victories were appreciated both in the States and throughout the basin. North
American blacks and the peoples of the region shared each other's athletes and
appropriated each other's sporting heroes and symbols. If a proving ground
was necessary to show that blacks could compete with whites, that the two
could coexist on the same squad, or to dispel any other racial shibboleth,
Caribbean baseball was just that.
Following integration, the more farsighted owners began scouring the
islands for prospects. Soon a fresh wave of Latinos arrived in the majors,
including three future Hall of Famers: Venezuela's Luis Aparicio, Puerto
Rico's Roberto Clemente, and the Dominican Republic's Juan Marichal. They
signaled, moreover, a shift away from Cuba as the primary spawning waters for
Caribbean players.
With the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the subsequent deterioration of
relations with the United States, Cuba fell out of organized baseball's
system. The Havana Sugar Kings, an International League franchise affiliated
with the Reds since 1954, were on their way to winning the Little World Series
of the AAA minor leagues in 1959, just months after Fidel Castro came to
power. The revolutionary government offered to underwrite the Sugar Kings'
debts, and Castro sought to keep the franchise there, "even if I have to
pitch," but the International League shipped the club to Jersey City during
the 1960 season. Baseball in Cuba was cut off completely from baseball in the
United States, and the movement of players and equipment halted. Cuba
developed its own sporting goods industry and relied on the repatriated
Dihigo, a political exile during the 1950s who had given money to Che Guevara
and who now returned to help teach the game. Cuban baseball soon shed its
commercial skin and sought instead to advance the social and political aims of
the revolution. Cuba has remained the powerhouse in world amateur baseball
ever since, but the island stopped producing new major leaguers. After the
Zoilo Versalles, Tony Oliva, Tony Perez generations passed out of baseball,
the next set of Cubans to reach the majors were those who, while born on the
island, had grown up in the United States.
The fulcrum of baseball power, meanwhile, shifted one island to the east,
where the Dominican Republic shared Hispaniola with French-speaking,
soccer-playing Haiti. After the star-studded 1937 season, pro ball in the
Dominican Republic entered a fourteen-year hiatus. While an occasional
tournament celebrated an event such as the nation's centennial, Dominican pros
Horacio Martinez and Tetelo Vargas plied their trade in Cuba, Venezuela, or
the United States. But several forces revitalized Dominican baseball in the
1940s, and after the reappearance of a professional league in 1951, these
dynamics propelled over a hundred players to the major leagues.
The first catalyst was the birth of the Mundial, an international
championship tournament for amateur baseball. After its inauguration in
England in 1938, the Mundial moved to the Caribbean. Held in the basin
throughout the 1940s, with Cuba hosting five consecutive tournaments, the
Mundial had a decidedly Latin flavor and became the most important sporting
competition in which these nations competed on something approximating equal
footing, both with each other and with the United States. Basin nations won
every championship from 1940 through 1972, with Cuba winning eleven out of
eighteen times.
National aspirations and international rivalries sometimes were injected
into the Mundial. An irate Anastasio Somoza fired the Nicaraguan manager in
the midst of one and took to the dugout to direct the team himself.
Nicaraguan national honor was restored by a victory over Cuba in the final
game of the 1972 series, an event still celebrated as one of the Central
American nation's greatest sporting exploits. The Dominican victory in 1948,
coming just months after virtually the entire national championship team
perished in a plane crash by the Rio Verde, captivated the Republic and lent
impetus to pro ball's rebirth there.
A second factor in Dominican baseball's rejuvenation was the creation of
the Direccion General de Deportes. Modeled in part after the comparable Cuban
agency, this government body organized regional and then national tournaments
for amateur baseball (often with semiprofessional overtones) that gave further
purpose to local, company, and armed forces support. Many of the Dominicans
that entered the majors from the late 1950s on, including Marichal, Manuel
Mota, and the three Rojas Alou brothers, played on these squads.
The final catalysts to Dominican ascendancy were bananas and sugarcane,
and the concentrations of baseball fervor and expertise which they fostered.
While the sugarcane milltowns of the southeast produce the most prospects
today, the banana region along the northwest border with Haiti was
instrumental in cultivating the first contingent of pros in the late 1950s.
There the Grenada Company, a United Fruit Company subsidiary, began two teams
for its workers and their sons in the 1940s. The squad won three national
championships, and Juan Marichal and Guayubin Olivo passed through its ranks
to the majors.
Dominican sugarcane milltowns, like those in Cuba, had long spawned
ballclubs. The six-month long tiempo muerto, or dead season, when the cane
required minimal attention and most workers were unemployed, contributed to an
intense sporting environment, first for cricket and ultimately for baseball.
In the 1920s and '30s, Central La Romana's Papagayo team was an amateur
powerhouse, and in the 1940s the milltowns in and around San Pedro de Macoris
made their play. There the descendants of cricket-playing migrants from the
British West Indies brought to cut cane and work in the mills displayed an
aptitude for playing baseball and an approach to organizing the game that made
San Pedro baseball's Mecca. Since Rico Carty's breakthrough in the 1960s, San
Pedro has contributed about one-third of the Dominicans to play in the big
leagues. The town currently sends more of its native sons to the majors on a
per-capita basis than any town ever has. There is probably no other place on
earth where the game is played as well and as widely.
Since the end of the color line, ballplayers from Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia, and
even the Bahamas have played major league ball. Although the Dominican
Republic leads this basin contingent, substantial numbers of Puerto Ricans and
Venezuelans are present, too. Mexico, despite a population that dwarfs the
rest of the region combined and its well-developed pro leagues, sends few
players to the majors. Unlike the other basin leagues, Mexican teams retain
first rights to sign any native amateur. A major league club, therefore, must
buy the contract from a player's Mexican club, usually for more than it costs
to sign a prospect elsewhere in the region. This relationship, the summer
Mexican league, and perhaps cultural factors, too, persuade native ballplayers
to remain in Mexico.
Cuba opted out of this network after its revolution, and Nicaragua, whose
eleven-year fling with the pro winter leagues ended in 1967, followed suit
after its 1979 revolution. Panama and Colombia have also tried winter ball,
but financial pressures made play sporadic.
The flow of players continues to run both north and south. Minor and
major leaguers from the United States still play in the winter leagues, which
presently operate in Venezuela, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and
Mexico. In their heyday during the 1950s and '60s, these winter leagues
featured major leaguers like Tommy Lasorda, Whitey Ford, and Willie Stargell.
But as major league salaries soared in the 1970s and unfavorable rates of
exchanges weakened basin economies, the winter leagues restricted the number
of North American imports. Minor leaguers and inexperienced major leaguers
have replaced them. For them, these leagues provide the chance to play in the
winter months, developing the potential that might allow them to crack a big
league roster. They also earn higher pay than they do in the minors,
encounter competition from top Latino players, and are treated as demigods by
the impassioned fanaticos of the winter game.
The winners of the winter leagues have met in a Serie del Caribe since
1949. Between 1949 and 1960, the pennant-winning squads of Cuba, Panama,
Puerto Rico, and Venezuela played in early February to determine a champion of
the Caribbean. Cuba won over half of these tournaments, but after the
revolution, the series was discontinued. When it resumed in 1970, Mexico and
the Dominican Republic replaced Cuba and Panama. The current round-robin
format sends the teams that win their postseason tournaments to the Serie del
Caribe along with a number of reinforcements, including North Americans, from
their defeated opponents. Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Camilo Pasqual, Rico
Carty, and Vic Pellot Power are among those who have starred in these
postseason celebrations.
Winter ball has descended from its zenith of the 1950s and '60s largely
due to economic dynamics beyond the control of the Caribbean franchises.
Rising player and fuel costs, devalued currencies, and underdevelopment pushed
many into deficits, with government subsidies often vital to their
continuation. Government support, long a feature of basin baseball, helps to
keep current the Dominican saying that there will never be political trouble
during the baseball season, only afterward. But by the middle of the 1980s,
fewer of the established Latin major leaguers suited up for the
October-through-January campaign. The demands of the regular season, the
threat of injury, and the relatively inconsequential pay of winter ball
suggest that this trend will continue. The pattern, however, has given
younger Latin ballplayers the chance to play before knowledgeable fans and
against competition that is often at a major league level.
While winter ball in the late 1980s was troubled and other sports were
making inroads, baseball remains el rey de deportes (the king of sports)
throughout the basin. From the rocky hillsides and arid plains of northern
Mexico through the canefields of the islands to the basin's southernmost flank
in the Andes, baseball commands a fascination approaching reverence.
Baseball's significance derives from the role that it has played in the
coming together of these societies in the twentieth century. Knitting a
common cultural fabric, serving as a vent to social and political tensions,
and offering a vehicle not only for individual mobility but collective social
affirmation, baseball indeed has been more than a game. It has offered the
citizens of the basin a chance to enter a ritual kinship embracing all fans
and players. And while reflecting the progressive penetration of the United
States in the region, baseball has been more than a cultural transmission belt
for North American values. Beating each other and excelling in the major
leagues and international competitions at a time when the Caribbean basin has
encountered difficulties in asserting either its political or economic
autonomy have been tremendous sources of pride. And that symbolic recognition
has become a catalyst to national cohesion and consciousness for the region in
its troubled evolution this century.
The lights are going out in Santo Domingo, and like so many aspects of
this nation's descent into economic chaos, it's affecting baseball. They
still play the game, but this year the ballparks are eerily quiet, mute
testimony to winter baseball's deepening crisis. And those close to the game
are asking what it will take to ensure professional baseball's survival in the
1990s.
The streets outside Estadio Quisqueya in Santo Domingo are dark; the
players sprawl in clusters on the grass inside. A few take a form of batting
practice, hitting balls tossed laterally from a few feet away, into a net.
Soon, as darkness becomes nearly complete, they hit off a tee. Then, even
that becomes impossible.
Gradually, the Big Dipper becomes visible, standing straight up to form a
celestial question mark that might as well be asking if tonight's game will be
played.
The question is answered when the generator kicks in with a
fireworks-like flourish and bulbs pop on in the light stanchions. At first,
nobody moves, then gradually bodies rise stiffly from the grass and walk out
onto the field.
This barely averted blackout offers an exaggerated example of winter
ball's woes. But the crisis, which has halved attendance here and in Puerto
Rico, knocked one franchise out of action, and threatens others, has been
brewing for over a decade.
"Dominicans haven't lost their love of the game," Winston Llenas,
Aguilas' general manager attests. "But this society is in trouble, serious
trouble. It's living dangerously now."
Over two years into an economic downturn in which inflation and the
exchange rate for the peso with the U.S. dollar have soared and living
standards have fallen, the Dominican Republic suffers from severe electrical
shortages, a lack of potable water, and a transportation system in suspended
motion. The ballparks, once a beacon of light in the evening sky, now often
remain dark until shortly before game time.
The nation's collapse is part of a continental decline that has seen much
of Latin America regress to an economic level last seen during the 1930s.
"Perhaps our biggest problem," Llenas adds, "is the lack of desire on the
part of the established Dominican players to play." Indeed, as major league
salaries have spiraled upward, the incentive for the better-known Latins to
play winter ball has all but disappeared.
Llenas points to the benefits that have accrued to major league baseball
from winter ball. "It's been a good partnership. Look at the resumes of
players, managers, and even umpires in the United States. You have a saying
there, 'What's good for General Motors is good for the USA.' Well, what's good
for winter baseball is what's good for the major leagues. They should not let
us die. Not when we need their help."
A few nights later in San Pedro de Macoris, La Romana's Jose Offerman
goes deep in the hole, spins, and nabs the runner at first in a play that has
even a few of San Pedro's players exchanging high fives. In La Romana's
dugout, manager Victor Ramirez raises one hand in the air as if to give
religious testimony and exclaims, "What a talent!"
Winter ball's lack of established major leaguers means that youths like
Offerman are experiencing an accelerated development. By the end of the 1990
season, Offerman will be in the majors, and in coming years, he will attract
Dominican fans back to the park. The cycle of regeneration is already at
work.
But that process will take a few years--years that are not guaranteed.
As the game concludes and a squadron of boys leaps from the top of the dugout
onto the field, it seems improbable that such a vibrant institution as winter
ball could end in the near future. But it could.
Postscript 1992: San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic
Luis Perez stands in the outfield grass, shaking his Hiroshima Carp cap
in the air and chanting his Japanese team's slogan: "We will not tire. Our
song is work." Then, the twenty-one-year-old second baseman from a nearby
sugar milltown sprints to the dugout.
Besuboru has arrived in the tropic of baseball. In November 1990 the
Hiroshima Carp inaugurated a state-of-the-art baseball academy amidst the
canefields north of San Pedro de Macoris. "Its goal," says Cesar Germonimo,
the former Cincinnati Red directing the camp, "is to make Dominican kids into
Japanese major leaguers. We want to make a good ballplayer, but one who
thinks like the Japanese."
A few months later, Luis Perez and four of his compadres were training in
Japan, the third group of recruits to cross the Pacific. There they impressed
their hosts, especially after Perez drilled a fastball into the stands off
Carp ace Hiroshi Nagatomi in a showcase exhibition in Fukuyama, and two of
them made the Hiroshima farm team for the 1992 season.
The Caribbean academy reflects a new Japanese approach to acquiring
foreign talent, one that will reduce a onesided U.S. export. The Carp are
recruiting and developing their own prospects, circumventing the U.S. major
leagues and tapping the Dominican Republic, the best source of fresh talent in
the game over the last twenty years. Since constructing the $4 million
facility, the Carp have signed thirty-two Latin players, most of them
seventeen- or eighteen-year olds. A dozen have left the team or been
released; the remainder live at the academy or are with the Carp in Hiroshima.
"Japan is a different culture than the U.S. and baseball there is
different, too," explained Takashi Tanaka, the academy's general manager,
after the camp opened. "Your major leaguers have often been difficult for us
and quite expensive. With what it would cost to sign two Americans, we can
sign many Dominicans of high quality."
The Japanese recognize that foreigners inject new dimensions into their
game, but cringe at the cultural fallout. U.S. major leaguers have offended
their sensibilities by arguing with coaches and easing up on arduous pregame
drills. Others deserted in midseason or placed family ahead of team, such as
Randy Bass' much criticized absence from the Hanshin Tigers to be with his
dying father.
Cultivating young Dominican talent is perceived as an alternative to
United States players and as a way to infuse Japanese play with the verve of
the Caribbean game without jeopardizing its overall stress on wa, or team
harmony.
"Japan needs strong batters like Pedro Guerrero and George Bell," Tanaka
contended. "What we don't want is the temperament of a George Bell," said
Tanaka of the San Pedro slugger who once told the city of Toronto that "They
can kiss my Dominican ass." "With these boys, we will teach the comportment,
self-control, that they will need to play in Japan."
The camp, with two fields, a clubhouse, a weight room, a dining room and
dorm, as well as indoor batting cages and pitching mounds, surpasses the dozen
or so training complexes that major league teams operate on the island. It
will be the hub of the Carp's Caribbean program, says Geronimo, who plans on
scouting talent in Venezuela, Panama, and Nicaragua, too.
Living full-time in the enclave, the players are tightly supervised.
They were not allowed to venture into nearby San Pedro for most of their first
year here. The coaches, Dominicans who trained in Japan, have adapted the
Carp approach to their regimen. That means less "play ball" than "work ball"
under an unforgiving sun and the coaches' relentless scrutiny, where attitude
is evaluated along with athleticism and grasp of the game.
A plume of smoke from the nearby Santa Fe sugar mill reminds any player
who can't make it on the ballfield that the canefields await him. The monthly
wage in one of San Pedro's five sugarmills is about 1000 pesos, about $80 U.S.
Luis Perez, infielder, makes between 2500 and 3000 pesos playing for the Carp.
Perez and his teammates welcome anyone seeking to harvest the Dominican
baseball crop, but U.S. clubs see the penetration of what had been their
exclusive sporting preserve as a threat.
"It's a free enterprise system and they can do what they want in looking
for talent," said Major League Baseball director of operations Bill Murray
after the academy opened. "A number of clubs don't welcome the competition."
Hiroshima is the only one of the twelve Japanese pro teams to open a
Caribbean academy. That could give them an advantage over other Japanese
teams, which traditionally rely on a draft of Japanese amateurs supplemented
by a few U.S. pros.
Since Japanese rules limit a club to three foreigners, the Carp cannot
flood their roster with inexpensive Latin talent. They could sell these
players to other Japanese teams, teams in Taiwan and Korea, or even U.S.
clubs, Tanaka said.
These boys are hungry, Geronimo notes. The Carp seek to tap that hunger,
which has made this nation of 6 million such a fecund source of talent. If
they are successful, Japanese baseball will attain a new level of play,
fueling speculation that the hidden motive is to take on the major leagues
some day.
"I can't speculate on the Japanese agenda for global competition,"
answers Cleveland Indians GM John Hart, "but this inevitably spells
head-to-head battle with American clubs. They're in the same business we are,
which is to procure talent." But Hart evinces little concern over a larger
Japanese challenge.
Geronimo offers a simpler explanation of the Carp's intentions. "The
Japanese are losing games because they're holding back aggression on the
field. I think our aggressive way of playing will help make Japanese baseball
better."
First Major Leaguers from Caribbean Basin Countries
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Country Player Year Team
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Belize Chito Martinez 1991 Baltimore Orioles
Cuba Esteban Bellan 1871 Troy Haymakers
Rafael Almeida 1911 Cincinnati Reds
Armando Marsans 1911 Cincinnati Reds
Colombia Luis "Jud" Castro 1902 Philadelphia Athletics
Mexico Baldomero "Mel" Almada 1933 Boston Red Sox
Venezuela Alejandro Carrasquel 1939 Washington Senators
Puerto Rico Hiram Bithorn 1942 Chicago Cubs
Panama Hector Lopez 1955 Kansas City Athletics
Humberto Robinson 1955 Milwaukee Braves
Dominican Republic Osvaldo Virgil 1956 New York Giants
Virgin Islands Joe Christopher 1959 Pittsburgh Pirates
Nicaragua Dennis Martinez 1976 Baltimore Orioles
Honduras Gerald Young 1987 Houston Astros
Curacao Hensley Meulens 1990 New York Yankees
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Serie del Caribe
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Series Year Site Winning Team/Country
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I 1949 Cuba Almendares/Cuba
II 1950 Puerto Rico Carta Vieja/Panama
III 1951 Venezuela Santurce/Puerto Rico
IV 1952 Panama La Habana/Cuba
V 1953 Cuba Santurce/Puerto Rico
VI 1954 Puerto Rico Caguas/Puerto Rico
VII 1955 Venezuela Santurce/Puerto Rico
VIII 1956 Panama Cienfuegos/Cuba
IX 1957 Cuba Marianao/Cuba
X 1958 Puerto Rico Marianao/Cuba
XI 1959 Venezuela Almendares/Cuba
XII 1960 Panama Cienfuegos/Cuba
1961-69 Not Held
XIII 1970 Venezuela Magallanes/Venezuela
XIV 1971 Puerto Rico Licey/Dominican Republic
XV 1972 Dominican Republic Ponce/Puerto Rico
XVI 1973 Venezuela Licey/Dominican Republic
XVII 1974 Mexico Caguas/Puerto Rico
XVIII 1975 Puerto Rico Bayamon/Puerto Rico
XIX 1976 Dominican Republic Hermosillo/Mexico
XX 1977 Venezuela Licey/Dominican Republic
XXI 1978 Mexico Mayaguez/Puerto Rico
XXII 1979 Puerto Rico Magallanes/Venezuela
XXIII 1980 Dominican Republic Licey/Dominican Republic
1981 Not Held
XXIV 1982 Mexico Caracas/Venezuela
XXV 1983 Venezuela Arecibo/Puerto Rico
XXVI 1984 Puerto Rico Zulia/Venezuela
XXVII 1985 Mexico Licey/Dominican Republic
XXVIII 1986 Venezuela Mexicali/Mexico
XXIX 1987 Mexico Caguas/Venezuela
XXX 1988 Dominican Republic Escogido/Dominican Republic
XXXI 1989 Mazatlan Zulia/Venezuela
XXXII 1990 Miami Escogido/Dominican Republic
XXXIII 1991 Miami Licey/Dominican Republic
XXXIV 1992 Mexico Mayaguez/Puerto Rico
XXXV 1993 Mexico Mayaguez/ Puerto Rico
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dominican League Statistics
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Year Champion BA Leader HR Leader Most Games Won
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1951 Licey Luis Villodas Pedro Formental Guayuabin Olivo
.346 13 10
1952 Aguilas Luis Olmo .344 Alonzo Perry 11 Terry McDuffie 14
1953 Licey Tetelo Vargas Alonzo Perry 11 Emilio Cueche 13
.355
1954 Estrellas Alonzo Perry .326 Bob Thurman 11 Carrao Bracho
Orientales G. Olivo 8
1955-56 Escogido[*] Bob Wilson .333 Willie Kirkland 9 Fred Waters 11
1956-57 Escogido Osvaldo Virgil Danny Kravitz 4 Pete Burnside 11
.312
1957-58 Escogido Alonzo Perry .332 Dick Stuart 14 Fred Kipp 11
1958-59 Licey Felipe Alou .351 Jim McDaniels 12 Bennie Daniels
12
1959-60 Escogido Felipe Alou .359 Frank Howard 9 Stan Williams 12
1960-61 Escogido Manuel Mota .344 Manuel Jimenez Danilo Riva 13
J.V. Nicolas
Victor Ramirez
Felipe Alou
N. Savinon
Tied with 4
1961-62 Incomplete Season
1962-63 Not Held
1963-64 Licey Manuel Mota .379 O. McFarlane 10 G. Olivo
Steve Blass 9
1964-65 Aguilas Manuel Mota .364 O. McFarlane 8 Dick LeMay 8
1965-66 Season not organized by league
1966-67 Aguilas Mateo Alou .363 Winston Llenas Dock Ellis 9
Bob Robertson 10
1967-68 Estrellas Ricardo Carty Bob Robertson 9 Silvano Quezada
Orientales .350 11
1968-69 Escogido Mateo Alou .390 Nate Colbert 8 Jay Ritchie 9
1969-70 Licey Ralph Garr .387 Winston Llenas G. Rounsaville 8
Byron Browne 9
1970-71 Licey Ralph Garr .457 Cesar Cedeno 8 Rollie Fingers 9
1971-72 Aguilas Ralph Garr .388 Charlie Sands 10 Gene Garber 9
1972-73 Licey Von Joshua .358 Adrian Garrett 9 Pedro Borbon 9
1973-74 Licey Dave Parker .345 Ricardo Carty 9 Rick Waits 8
1974-75 Aguilas Bruce Bochte .352 Rafael Batista James Richards 8
Bobby Darwin 8
1975-76 Aguilas Wilbur Howard Wilbur Howard Nino Espinosa
.341 John Hale Tom Dettore 8
Gary Alexander
Larry Parrish
G. Thomasson
Bill Nahorodny
Andre Thornton
Tied with 4
1976-77 Licey Mario Guerrero Pedro Guerrero Angel Torres 10
.365 Ike Hampton 6
1977-78 Aguilas Omar Moreno .345 Dick Davis 8 Odell Jones
Al Holland
Mickey Mahler 7
1978-79 Aguilas Ted Cox .319 Bob Beall Bo McLaughlin
Dick Davis 7 Mike Proly 9
1979-80 Licey Tony Pena .317 A. De Freitas Jerry Hannahs 9
Alberto Lois
Leon Durham
Samuel Mejia
Pedro Guerrero
Tied with 3
1980-81 Escogido Ken Landreaux Tony Pena 7 Mario Soto
.394 M. Mahler 7
1981-82 Escogido Pedro Hernandez Dave Hostetler 9 Pasqual Perez 10
.408
1982-83 Licey Cesar Geronimo Howard Johnson 8 Pasqual Perez 9
.341
1983-84 Licey Miguel Dilone Reggie Whittemore Orel Hershiser
.343 12 Frank Wills 8
1984-85 Licey Junior Noboa .327 Ralph Bryant 9 Tom Filer 8
1985-86 Aguilas Tony Fernandez Tony Pena 9 Mickey Mahler 8
.364
1986-87 Aguilas Stanley Javier Ralph Bryant 13 Gibson Alba
.374 Jose Nunez
Eric Plunk
Tied with 5
1987-88 Escogido Stanley Javier Mark Parent 10 Jose Bautista 8
.363
1988-89 Licey Julio Peguero Domingo Michel 9 Melido Perez 8-3
.327
1989-90 Escogido Angel Gonzalez Denny Gonzalez 5 Mel Rojas
.403 Jeff Shaw
Kevin Wicklander
Darren Holmes
Tied with 6
1990-91 Licey Hensley Meulens Francisco Francesco De la
.338 Cabrera 8 Rosa 7
1991-92 Escogido Luis Mercedes Francisco Jose Nunez 6
.333 Cabrera, Sammy
Sosa, Geronimo
Berroa, Kevin
Koslofski, and
Julian Yan tied
with 4
1992-93 Aguilas Tom Marsh .318 Domingo Martinez 6 Efrain Valdez,
Jose Martinez,
Howard Farmer,
and Rafael
Valdez 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* First year held in winter
Cuban League Statistics
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Year Champion BA Leader HR Leader Most Games Won
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1878-79 Habana
Undefeated
1879-80 Habana
1880-81 Not held
1882 Disputed:
Fe and Habana
1882-83 Habana
1885 Habana Pablo Ronquilla
.350
1885-86 Habana Wenceslao Galvez Adolfo Lujan 5-0
Undefeated .345
1887 Habana R. Martinez .439 Adolfo Lujan 5-0
1888 Fe Antonio Garcia Francisco
.448 Hernandez 10-2
1889 Habana Francisco Adolfo Lujan 10-3
Salabarria .305
1889-90 Habana Antonio Garcia Miguel Prats 11-2
.364
1890-91 Fe Alfredo Crespo Miguel Prats 9-4
.375
1892 Habana Antonio Garcia E. Hernandez 4-1
.362
1892-93 Matanzas Antonio Garcia Francisco
.385 Hernandez 4-1
1893-94 Almendares Miguel Pratts Jose Pastoriza
.394 16-7
1894-95 Suspended Alfredo Arcano Enrique Garcia
due to .430 12-4
War of
Independence
1897-98 Not finished
1898 Habanista Valentin Gonzalez Jose Romero 5-2
.394
1900 San Esteban Pratts Luis Padron 13-4
Francisco .333
1901 Habana Julian Castillo Carlos Royer 12-3
.454
1902 Habana Luis Padron .463 Carlos Royer 17-0
Undefeated
1903 Habana Julian Castillo Candido Fontanals
.330 14-6
1904 Habana Regino Garcia Carlos Royer 13-3
.397
1905 Almendares Regino Garcia Angel D'Meza 10-4
.305
1905-6 Fe Regino Garcia Jose Munoz 8-1
.304
1907 Almendares Regino Garcia George Mack 4-2
.324
1908 Almendares Emilio Palomino Jose Mendez 9-0
.350
1908-9 Habana Julian Castillo Jose Mendez
.315 L. Haggerman 15-6
1910 Almendares Emilio Palomino Jose Mendez 7-0
.408
1910-11 Almendares Preston Hill .365 Jose Mendez 11-2
1912 Habana Emilio Palomino Jose Junco 6-1
.440
1913 Fe Armando Marsans Red Redding 7-2
.400
1913-14 Almendares Manuel Villa .351 Jose Mendez 10-0
1914-15 Habana Cristobal Jose Acosta 5-1
Torriente .387
1915-16 Almendares Eustaquio Jose Acosta 8-3
Pedrosos .413
1917 Orientales Adolfo Luque .355 Jose Acosta 2-1
1918-19 Habana Manuel Cueto .344 Jose Acosta 16-10
1919-20 Almendares Cristobal Emilio Palmero 5-
Torriente .360 1
1920-21 Habana Pelayo Chacon Cristobal Jose "Cheo"
.344 Torriente, Hernandez 4-1
M. Gonzalez,
B. Jimenez,
M. Guerra,
Tied with 1
1921 [*] Habana Bienvenido Manuel Cueto 1 Julio Leblanc 2-0
Jimenez .619
1922-23 Marianao Bernardo Baro Cristobal Lucas Boada 10-4
.401 Torriente 4
1923-24 Santa Oliver Marcells Bienvenido Bill Holland 10-2
Clara .393 Jimenez 4
1924-25 Almendares Manuel Cueto .364 Esteban Mantalvo Jose Acosta 4-1
5
1925-26 Almendares Johnny Wilson J. H. Lloyd Cesar Alvarez 10-
.430 Jud Wilson 3 2
1926-27 Habana Manuel Cueto .404 J. Hernandez 4 Juan Olmo 3-0
1927-28 Habana Johnny Wilson Oscar Charleston Oscar Levis 7-2
.424 5
1928-29 Habana Alejandro Oms Cool Papa Bell 5 Adolfo Luque 9-2
.432
1929-30 Cienfuegos Alejandro Oms Mule Suttles 7 Heliodoro "Yoyo"
.380 Diaz 13-3
1930-31 Not O. Charleston Ernest Smith Martin Dihigo 2-0
[*] finished 373 Jose Fernandez 1
1931-32 Almendares Ramon Cueto .400 Alejandro Oms Juan Eckelson 5-1
Ismael Morales 3
1932-33 Tie: M. Gonzalez .432 R. Estalella 3 Jesus Lorenzo 3-0
Habana
Almendares
1933-34 No
championship
held
1934-35 Almendares Lazaro Salazar Eleven tied with Lazaro Salazar
.407 1 6-1
1935-36 Santa Martin Dihigo Willie Wells Martin Dihigo
Clara .358 Jacinto Roque 5 11-2
1936-37 Marianao Harry Williams H. Andrews R. Raymond Brown
.349 Estalella 5 21-4
1937-38 Santa Sam Bankhead .366 Willie Wells Raymond Brown
Clara R. Estalella 12-5
Raymond Brown 4
1938-39 Santa Tony Castanos Josh Gibson 11 Martin Dihigo
Clara .371 14-2
1939-40 Almendares Tony Castanos Mule Suttles 4 Rodolfo Fernandez
.340 7-4
1940-41 Habana Lazaro Salazar A. Crespo 3 Gilberto Torres
.316 10-3
1941-42 Almendares Silvio Garcia Macon Mayor
.351 Agapito Mayor 6-2
1942-43 Almendares A. Crespo .337 Roberto Ortiz Cocaina Garcia
Saguita Hernandez 10-3
2
1943-44 Habana Roberto Ortiz Saguita Hernandez Martin Dihigo 8-1
.337 3
1944-45 Almendares Claro Duany .340 Claro Duany 3 Oliverio Ortiz
10-4
1945-46 Cienfuegos L. Davenport .333 Dick Sisler 9 Adrian Zabala 9-3
1946-47 Almendares Lou Klein .330 Roberto Ortiz 11 Cocaina Garcia
10-3
1947-48 Habana Harry Kimbro .346 Jesus Chanquilon C. Marrero 12-2
Diaz 7
1948-49 Almendares A. Crespo .326 Monte Irvin 10 Octavio Rubert 8-
1
1949-50 Almendares P. Formental .336 Roberto Ortiz Octavio Rubert 5-
Don Lenhardt 15 1
1950-51 Habana Silvio Garcia P. Formental, Vincente Lopez
.347 Bert Hass 7-3
Ed Mierkowitz
Charles Grant
Tied with 8
1951-52 Habana Bert Hass .323 P. Formental Joe Black 15-6
James Basso 9
1952-53 Habana Edmundo Amoros Louis Klein 16 R. Alexander 10-3
.373
1953-54 Almendares Rocky Nelson .352 Earl Rapp Cliff Fanning
Rafael Noble 10 13-4
1954-55 Almendares Angel Scull .370 Rocky Nelson 13 Joe Hatten 13-5
1955-56 Cienfuegos Forrest Jacobs Ultus Alvarez 10 Pedro Ramos 13-5
.321
1956-57 Marianao Orestes Minoso Archie Wilson 11 Camilo Pascual
.312 15-5
1957-58 Marianao Milton Smith .320 Daniel Morejon Billy O'Dell 7-2
Norman Laker
B. Robinson
Frank Herrera 9
1958-59 Almendares Tony Taylor .303 Jim Baxes 9 Orlando Pena 13-5
1959-60 Cienfuegos Octavio Rojas
.322
1960-61 Cienfuegos
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Short season
