The Eastern Stars Part 6

One of the reasons scouts have so many fields to look at in San Pedro is that there are so many buscones. Like cocolo, buscn is a word that may or may not be pejorative, depending on who says it and how. Astin Jacobo, Jr., proud of his late father's name, did not like to be called a buscn. He said the word carried the connotation of "hustler," which he insisted he was not. He took thirty percent of bonuses, which was by no means the highest percentage but was among the higher ones. On the other hand, he had one of the better-equipped programs.

"Thirty percent sounds like a lot to an American," Jacobo said in his New York English. "But I have to provide clothing, schooling, food, housing, a woman to cook them food four times a day, and a staff of eight. I have $7,000 a month overhead, plus b.a.l.l.s and bats. I lose four b.a.l.l.s a day: they get hit out to the street and kids grab them.

"It costs me between 350,000 and 450,000 pesos in two and a half years to get a player signed," he added. But those pesos would only be about $14,000 in the U.S., and while a drafted American player does not come with all the nutritional, medical, educational, and developmental issues of a Dominican player, because of the difference in economies, it still costs Major League Baseball considerably more to develop a player in the U.S.

For Jacobo, there was no better place in the world to develop baseball players than his father's hometown. "I've been all over Latin America. This is the best town I have ever seen for baseball, because we have every kind of player here. You could come by a field on a Sat.u.r.day morning and you might see a few major leaguers out playing with sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds."

The academies were the logical outgrowth of Rafael Avila's backyard operation in the 1970s. But by the twenty-first century they had become sprawling, sophisticated operations. Every major-league franchise operated an academy. Most of them were in the southeast, either in San Pedro; La Romana, a few miles to the east; Boca Chica, a few miles to the west; or a few miles farther west toward the capital. An academy was a place where a major-league organization could feed, train, and educate Dominican prospects, addressing all their special needs at Dominican costs, rather than those of housing, feeding, and preparing them in the United States. That higher cost of operating in the States was why clubs did not hesitate to give up on their investments and release players who were not living up to their expectations before sending them up to the States. The Dominican Summer League was established as a kind of pre- Rookie League-a last proving ground before paying to bring prospects to the United States.

An academy also gave an organization a scouting base in the Dominican Republic. In the 1970s and 1980s it became apparent that the teams that had operations in the country were getting most of the best Dominican talent.

But the other purpose of academies was to serve as holding tanks while Dominican players waited for their visas, a safe place where the teenagers' sleeping, eating, and other habits could be controlled.

To many Americans, especially New Yorkers, it seems that Dominicans can easily get visas to the U.S., because so many have. The Dominican Republic, with an estimated total population of ten million, has sent more immigrants to the United States than any other Latin American country except Mexico, with an estimated population of 103 million. But it is not easy to get a visa, especially for poor people. The U.S. Emba.s.sy requires a $100 fee just to have an appointment to discuss a tourist visa, and the majority of Dominicans do not have the $100.

Major League Baseball generally gets its players a special visa for people who have proven to be exceptional in their field. But newly signed prospects are brought in as temporary seasonal laborers, like farmworkers, whose visas expire at the end of the season. To get these visas, it has to be established that the worker is not taking a job away from an American worker. The U.S. government limits the number of such visas. After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, these visas became even harder to get. Until the player got his visa, he was kept at an academy, where his life and training could be carefully regulated and he could be further screened. Obviously, an organization is not likely to release a pitcher with a $4 million bonus or even one who received $500,000. But a few $20,000 or even $50,000 players got weeded out for visa problems.

These boys at the academies, whose future seemed so bright when they received their bonuses only weeks before, were under tremendous pressure. The usual practice when releasing players, whether in the Dominican Republic or in the minor-league system in the U.S., was to simply inform them that they were released without giving any explanation. Sometimes they were released for what was deemed "bad behavior." What would happen today to a Dominican Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, or Ted Williams, all famous in their day for bad behavior? If the Dominican player was released in the U.S., he would be given a return ticket to Santo Domingo. With the termination of the job, the temporary work visa expired.

Exactly what the ball clubs were looking for was always a little mysterious. The scouts, the academies, the organizations, were looking for someone who would make a great Major League Baseball player. When considering a sixteen-year-old, however, this usually required some guesswork.

Traditionally, what everyone in baseball wants are the "five-tool players." Baseball requires an unusually varied list of skills, and it is extremely rare to find someone who does everything well. Only a handful of major-league stars have been five-tool players. Playing ability has been reduced to five basic tools: a good throwing arm, speed at running, skill in fielding, the power to hit home runs, and the ability to hit consistently, which is measured by batting average.

Dario Paulino, who grew up in San Pedro and in 2007 became the coordinator of the Atlanta Braves' academy in San Pedro, said, "That's what we look for in every player: a five-tool player."

But there were a lot of less tangible things that scouts and trainers wanted to see. Dany Santana said, "The first thing I look for is . . ." and he pointed at his head. He quoted a favorite Eddy Toledo saying: "No puede pensar, no puede jugar"-If you can't think, you can't play. "If you are young and smart, you can improve quickly," Santana noted. Coming from a stable home with some education came to be considered an important a.s.set for Dominicans, even though many great Dominican players hadn't come from such homes. The organizations wanted boys who could learn how to speak English and get along in the United States.

Dominicans, especially Macorisanos, generally lived their lives confined to a small world. They didn't travel and, despite the enormous number of both local and national newspapers, knew little about what went on in the outside world. During World War II, it was said that the average Dominican knew almost nothing about the war. Most sixteen-year-old Macorisanos had seldom left San Pedro. They may have gone a few miles east to La Romana or north to Hato Mayor, both agricultural areas. If they were signed by an organization with an academy a few miles east in Boca Chica or a little farther in Santo Domingo, that alone was a huge adventure.

Rafael Vsquez said, "I look for a good arm, how he runs, how he talks to other people. Is he a good guy with a good family?"

Asked what he looked for, Eddy Toledo said, "Athleticism and a pa.s.sion for the game. It's hard to find now. In the past, people loved the game more than now. Kids used to play baseball because they loved the game. Now the top priority is to be rich and famous, and not because of a pa.s.sion in their hearts."

As bonuses went up, the teams grew more cautious. They used to simply pay what the scout recommended. Then they started sending someone to take a look and decide if the player merited the investment. There was a growing feeling that the amount of money paid was adversely affecting the players.

Toledo did not like big bonuses. As of 2009, the biggest bonus he ever got was $43,000. He said, "If you give a poor kid $300,000, this is the first rock in the way of his development. He's not hungry anymore. I am very worried about giving kids big money, because they don't try hard anymore."

But this was inevitable as the power of Major League Baseball to change a Dominican life became ever more dramatic. Bonny Castillo, known as Manny in the U.S. when he played Major League Baseball in the early 1980s, coached newly signed prospects for Tampa Bay in the Dominican Republic. He said, "When I was playing, $15,000 was my best-paid year. I make more money now as a coach than I ever made as a player. The minimum wage got to $35,000 and now it is $400,000. If you make $400,000, you come home a rich man if you only play four or five seasons. You get in the big league, you've got it made."

Toledo's example of what he liked was signing Jose Reyes for the Mets. Reyes, who exuded a love of baseball in the way he played, got a $13,000 signing bonus. "Jose Reyes was a special case," said Toledo. "I signed him in Santiago at a restaurant lunch with his family and friends. When he left and walked toward the parking lot, I said to someone, 'Look at that. There's a specialness you can see. It's like a halo.'"

But Toledo admitted that he did not often see halos. So he looked for how easily the player moved to see if he was a natural athlete, and he looked at the kind of body the boy had and imagined what it could look like with the addition of protein and conditioning. If it was a pitcher, he looked for long arms, big hands, and broad shoulders. He pointed at a tall, thin young pitcher throwing on the mound with long arms and legs. "He's got a perfect body," he observed. "A lot of room to fill out." And then he shouted with great enthusiasm, "That kid could tie his shoes standing up!"

He and a lot of others also looked for aggression-aggressive pitchers and aggressive batters. Eddy Toledo recalled spotting Mets superstar pitcher Dwight Gooden as a boy: "I said, 'He's Bob Gibson. He competes, the aggression is there. His body is just not finished.' "

Jose Serra, scout and Latin American supervisor for the Cubs, said, "The secret of scouting is that, more than anything, he has to be a kid who wants to be something special." The Cubs' academy was in a huge complex out in the fields on a dirt road off the highway between San Pedro and Boca Chica. The complex housed academies with dormitories, workout rooms, staffed dining rooms, and other facilities for four different major-league teams, and was expanding in the hopes of drawing one or two more. As the scouting became more intense, success depended less on secrecy and more on outbidding compet.i.tors, and to adjust to this new reality, the organizations were increasingly cl.u.s.tering together in these large mult.i.team complexes rather than hiding away in small individual camps in the fields. This particular complex was built by former ballplayers, including Junior n.o.boa, a Dominican from Azua in the desertlands of the southwest, the poorest part of the Dominican Republic. n.o.boa, in an unspectacular eight years on various major-league teams, hit only one home run and never commanded huge paychecks. But he understood that for very little money he could buy a plot of undeveloped tropical brushland, clear it, build a few simple concrete buildings, landscape some baseball diamonds, and rent it for handsome prices to major-league organizations.

Others followed. In San Pedro there was increasingly tough compet.i.tion among ex-players, including George Bell, who had bought plots and were looking for major-league organizations to rent them. Salomn 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 t.i.tled 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e-something all boys everywhere are told to avoid before a game.

The 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. Jose Martnez, a Cuban who played and coached for the major leagues, now worked as special a.s.sistant 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. Jose 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 cla.s.sic 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."

The 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, s.p.a.cious 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 Rodrguez, 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 Garca, 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. Jose 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 b.a.l.l.s, which can damage a young arm. Jose Martnez of the Braves said, "Most of the time, pitchers are asked to throw only fastb.a.l.l.s. 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 Garca, 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 fastb.a.l.l.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.a.l.l.s. They are hard on the arm, but it's a fine line, because you have to throw breaking b.a.l.l.s to develop them."

Along 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 j.a.panese camp in the Dominican Republic, the Hiros.h.i.+ma Carp Baseball Academy.

There were some clear disadvantages for a young Dominican in signing with a j.a.panese club. Asked what the j.a.panese signing bonuses were like, Yasus.h.i.+ Kake, a.s.sistant general manager, a husky, gray-haired j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese system, money not being one of them. A top j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 Hiros.h.i.+ma 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 j.a.panese. He went there to see him play but also noticed the Dominican shortstop.

This might have been a tantalizing story for other young Macorisanos thinking about the j.a.panese academy, except for the fact that, once the Yankees discovered him in j.a.pan, Soriano found that it was extremely difficult to get out of his j.a.panese contract. In the end he had to officially resign from professional baseball to get out and become available to the Yankees.

The j.a.panese do not want to be another stepping-stone to the American major leagues. Kake said, "They leave us for the major leagues for the money, but more than that for the prestige. It's a big problem."

Nevertheless, the j.a.panese in search of Dominican talent signed an average of five or six players a year.

Charlie Romero was asked why so many ballplayers were produced in San Pedro. He smiled and then sighed. "I ask that question to myself all the time. They have even done studies on it. No one can come up with a real answer. It's like Brazil, where you always see the kids kicking a ball. Here the kids are always throwing something. Or catching, or hitting."

But the answer may lie in Romero's own story. He was raised in a batey not far from the Angels' academy, a village of a few hundred sugar workers who all worked for a mill owned by the American giant Gulf+Western. His father was a cane worker from Antigua. "I was poor," said Romero, "but I really enjoyed my childhood. I had a responsible father who made sure there was food on the table every day. Growing up in a batey, most kids work at an early age. When they are ten, after school and during school breaks boys work in the fields to make some money. They do cutting and planting. You have to plant them one at a time; a row was about here to the wall. [He pointed about 350 feet to the end of the outfield.] In the early 1980s they were paying twenty-five cents a row. Working in a sugar field is one of the worst jobs you can do. You just make enough money to survive; there is no saving and going to Hawaii on vacation. That's not going to happen. But we didn't know anything else."

Two things led him to a better life. He had a father who insisted that his four children finish high school; he did well and skipped a year and finished at age sixteen. And he took up track and field. A fast sprinter, he ran the hundred-yard dash and the quarter mile.

When Romero was seventeen years old, Epy Guerrero saw him run and asked if he wanted to play baseball. By the following September he was signed with the Blue Jays. He was trained in the fundamentals, although he remained essentially a one-tool player: a great base runner. While still in the minors he tore a ligament in his knee and never made it to the majors.

Romero reflected, "Most of the Dominican kids who have made it to the majors have come from the bateys. These kids really work. You don't want to go back where you came from, so you give a little extra."

CHAPTER TEN.

Three Three-Brother Families

The Struggling Pitcher

Police in the Dominican Republic, like most other Dominicans, are poorly paid and are always hungry. They supplement their meager incomes by periodically stopping cars and in a soft, sweet voice asking for a tip or, sometimes, a fine, depending on which line they think the customer would be most moved by. Who could say no knowing the homicidal tendencies of the Dominican police force? And they were usually satisfied with a few pesos.

One afternoon in San Pedro, the police stopped a large, s.h.i.+ny black SUV-a Mitsubis.h.i.+ Montero. That was their mistake. They must have been out-of-town cops, because even though the windows were smoked gla.s.s and they could not see who was inside, everybody knew that in San Pedro a Montero was the car of choice of peloteros, especially former major leaguers. The driver lowered the window, and one of the policemen started his talk and a pa.s.senger said to him, "Don't you know who this is?"

The policeman stopped in confusion and the driver, a large, powerfully built man with a deep, soft voice, said, "I'm Jose Can."

The policemen were still confused, and so the pa.s.senger helped them: "The father of Robinson Can."

"Robinson Can!" The two policemen nearly saluted and the conversation quickly turned, as it often did here, to baseball.

To be someone in the Dominican Republic, you didn't really have to be someone, you just have to have somebody in your family who is someone. One of the important advantages of being someone was that the police would leave you alone.

Jose Can, with considerable talent and even more determination, had struggled mightily, and he had traveled a very long distance. But really it was his son, Robinson, who made him a someone. But that was something he had earned too.

Can was from Boca del Soco, the mouth of the Soco River. Of the numerous rivers in San Pedro, the Soco is one of the few that are not tributaries of the Higuamo. Its mouth is on the other side of San Pedro. The river is a beautiful, wide, curving tropical river with blackish-brown water and banks overgrown with thick greenery. Unlike the Higuamo, there is little built on those jungle-thick banks: looking around the bend from the mouth suggests a Conradian journey to the heart of darkness. In reality, though, the Soco wanders down from the heart of sugar, the cane fields, and the cattle farms in the center of the island.

To cross the Soco and get to the little fis.h.i.+ng village on the other side, Macorisanos had to cross a narrow two-lane metal bridge of the kind of minimal construction that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tossed off overnight.

Vendors lined up by the side of the road selling the small, black, whitefleshed fish caught in the brackish waters of the channels. What had become the big item along this roadside was crabs-very ugly land crabs with boxy black and gray bodies and protruding eyes. They sold them in strings of twelve.

Across the river was a series of sheds and ramshackle houses around a large square field, a cricket field. It was a cocolo neighborhood with a good number of Haitians as well. It had been a neighborhood of fis.h.i.+ng and crabbing even before the cocolos and the Haitians arrived.

Andre Paredes, twenty-six years old, had been doing this since the year 2000, although he was at least the third generation in his family to catch crabs in Boca del Soco. Every year more people wanted crabs, which at first he thought would be good for business. But the result was that more and more hungry people came to Soco to dig crabs and sell them by the side of the road. Now there was more demand but fewer crabs. This was true of the fish in Soco also: more people wanted to buy them, so the prices went up, so more people fished until there were fewer fish to catch.

The crabs burrowed straight into the ground for about a foot and then turned at a sharp right angle. A crabber looked for a crab hole and then dug a second hole with a machete. If this was done right, the crab would now find itself in a tunnel with two exits. Sometimes the crabber could just reach down the hole and grab the animal. Or he could stick a hook down to grab it. If the crab ran, it would come out the other hole and the crabber could still get it. In the dry season there was one crab to a hole, but in the wet season three or four would be found in the same hole. There were several theories on why. One popular and implausible theory-Dominicans usually prefer the implausible-was that they huddled together in the rainy season because they were afraid of thunderstorms.

A good crabber used to catch five or six dozen in a day around the village of Soco. But then too many crabbers came and the crabbers had to hike for miles over rugged terrain into the mountains to find crabs.

The locals in Soco eat crabs, often in coconut. Cooking with coconut was a cocolo idea that had become typical of San Pedro. This was the recipe of Raquel Esteban b.a.s.t.a.r.do, who was married to Jose Can's cousin. Squeezing the liquid out of coconuts is still common practice in San Pedro, although few Americans would have the patience.

Grate coconut and squeeze out the milk until it is completely liquid. Add garlic, big and small ajies (long chartreuse peppers that are not very hot), and ground oregano.

Mix the coconut milk with the seasoning and a little oil and vinegar. Wash the crab in clean water and take out the meat. Add it to the coconut milk mixture, add 3 spoonfuls of Maggi chili pepper sauce, and let boil 15 or 20 minutes, but be careful not to let the meat fall apart. (Nestle makes a series of Maggi sauces that are very popular in Latin America, including the chili pepper sauce for this recipe.) The Cans were fishermen, the only alternative to being crabbers in Soco. The fishermen lived in Boca del Soco, on the eastern side of the river. Jose's father would get him up at two every morning, and they would row their deep-welled, open-decked wooden boat out into the river. A man stood on either end of the boat, holding a net. They dragged a net while rowing, which demanded tremendous skill because the rowers had to maintain an even speed to keep the net extended behind the boat. At noon they would row in and sell whatever had turned up in the net. Some days the ten hours would not yield a single fish.

An exceptional day on such a boat might land one hundred pounds of fish, which today would earn them about $125, a fat paycheck in San Pedro. But that rarely happened. Half that much was more likely. There were fewer and fewer fish near sh.o.r.e. Most locals blamed this on too many fishermen. But in North America, studies of climate change show northern species moving toward the arctic, subtropical species moving toward temperate areas, and tropical species moving toward the subtropics. What will that leave in tropical waters? Today, to get a good catch, fishermen have to mount little fifteen-horsepower engines on their boats and go to sea to a fis.h.i.+ng ground seven hours away. They stay there in the calm Caribbean Sea for five days to catch enough fish to make it worth the cost of gasoline and ice.

In good weather Soco seemed empty, a quiet town of women and children, because the men were all off fis.h.i.+ng. It was a village of unpaved streets and small Caribbean wooden houses, some of which seemed to have been slapped together out of sc.r.a.ps. Other houses, such as one handsome little dwelling on a corner, freshly painted a bright blue, were constructed a little better. That was the house of Can's mother, and as everyone in town knew, the Cans had money. But it wasn't always like that.

Jose remembered his father, a catcher, as a good ballplayer. But he never made it into professional baseball. Life would have been different if he had, because he was trying to support his fourteen children on fis.h.i.+ng. Three of the fourteen tried to go into baseball. Charlie Can was a shortstop who signed with the Dodgers but never made it past the minor leagues. Another brother, David, was never signed at all. Then there was Jose.

He started playing on the dirt streets of Soco when he was five years old. His was a typical San Pedro story. He and his teammates had socks for b.a.l.l.s, sticks for bats, and no gloves at all, but socks are not very hard on the hands. There was no diamond. When a car came they had to stop the game, but in Soco that didn't happen often.

This was San Pedro and there were scouts everywhere, and one day a scout from Florida watched Jose playing shortstop and walked up to him and said, "How would you like to be a major-league ballplayer?" At that moment his life changed, although it did not all work out the way he had imagined.

He was signed to the Yankees at age eighteen, a little late, with a signing bonus of $2,000. Two years younger and he might have gotten twice as much. But the bonus was all right, because it was 1980 and ballplayers did not expect big bonuses; the important thing was that he had leaped the first hurdle to his major-league career. He had not yet gotten fed and trained in America: although he was tall, he weighed only 145 pounds. The scout had been impressed with his throwing arm and signed him as a pitcher, calculating that in the U.S. they could bulk him up to give him more power.

Soon Jose was in Bradenton, Florida, with $2,000 in his pocket, richer and farther from home than he had ever been. He went to a shopping mall and bought small presents for his parents and thirteen siblings, and his signing bonus was spent.

He could say three things in English: "Yes," "Thank you," and "I got it!" Jose remembered, "We would go to the restaurant and point at something on the menu, not knowing what it said and not liking it when we got it. We loved Big Macs and especially Whoppers with cheese. Man, we loved those Whoppers. But we would order Whoppers at McDonald's and Big Macs at Burger King. We could never get them straight. Then we learned how to call Domino's and order a pizza, but we only knew how to say one kind, 'pepperoni with double cheese.' So that is what we always got."