The Eastern Stars Part 7

He did not get along with the manager of his farm team, a short Cuban who, according to Jose, "treated Dominicans like s.h.i.+t. He would grab me by the collar when I did something wrong and shout, 'Do you know what your're doing?' I complained to the scout who signed me."

After one month Jose was released. That was the end of it. His career was over at age eighteen, only weeks after it had started. "They never gave me a chance," he said. "I didn't know you could get released so quickly. I was crying. All they said was 'We are going to release you.' No explanation. They just give you a ticket home."

The day he was released, the team was playing an away game and the other players were on the bus. He had to get on the bus and say good-bye to his teammates. Some of them told him that this was not the end of his career, because he was young and had a good throwing arm. But Jose knew that organizations were wary of players who had been released.

Back in Soco his father said, "Don't worry. We are going to work." His father was a fisherman and knew what hard work was. The next morning he woke Jose at five, not particularly early by their fis.h.i.+ng standards. They both got on his motor scooter and rode a few miles. Then Jose was told to get off and start running home. His father followed along on the bike. In this way, every day before breakfast Jose ran two miles or more in the dark, when it was still cool enough to run.

Being a catcher, Jose's father could work with his son on his pitches, which they did three days a week. Four months later he was signed by the Atlanta Braves, and at the age of nineteen he was pitching for a Single A team in Anderson, South Carolina.

Now he was an American-fed ballplayer, no longer a thin 145 pounds but a large, powerful man who stood six feet, three inches tall and threw hard, with a good breaking ball and a good changeup. For the next two years he pitched in the farm system, all the time enduring pain in his right throwing arm. No one would ever know how painful it was. Can just endured it in silence: he was not going to complain about it and risk getting released again. He couldn't count on getting picked up a third time. Finally, when he could not endure the pain anymore, he told management and they sent him to a doctor. But the doctor could find nothing wrong and recommended three weeks' rest. They released him and he was back in the Dominican Republic.

He would not let his story end there. He played in the 1985 Dominican League for the La Romana Azucareros and his arm felt good all winter. He started to wonder why his arm hurt in America but never troubled him when he pitched at home. He pitched well and the Houston Astros offered him a contract, but there was no signing bonus: it was clear by then that he was a risky property. Can had no objections; he just wanted to play and get his shot at the majors. He was getting older and it was now beyond a question of pay. He had to be able to come home a member of the club, a major-league ballplayer.

He pitched well in the 1987 season but still didn't tell anyone how uncomfortable his arm felt. He was sent to the Florida state league, where he won twenty-five games and lost three, a phenomenal record. He was throwing a fastball at 97 miles per hour. There was talk of him going to the big leagues. In 1988 he made it to the Houston Astros, a big leaguer at last. But it was discovered that he needed shoulder surgery, and so he didn't pitch that season.

Finally, on August 28, 1989, at the age of twenty-seven, Jose Can pitched his first major-league game. This was his moment to show the world how good he was. Facing the Chicago Cubs, he pitched so well that they kept him in for the entire game, which he won. Complete games had become a rarity. Major-league teams have on their rosters batteries of middle relievers, setup men, and closers. A pitcher who gets to the seventh inning has done well. Nine innings is just too hard on a pitcher's arm, especially a power pitcher like Can. But he did it. If he had been twenty-one instead of twenty-seven, it might have been the beginning of a promising career.

The next game he started in, he lost. He was used a few times as a reliever. He played in six games in all with a win-loss record of 1 and 1. And then his career was over. The following year he injured his back; the season after that management watched him in spring training and decided to release him.

Can started playing for the Azucareros in the Winter League and with the Mexican League in the fall. He played for a few years in Taiwan. But he never got back to the U.S. He was careful with the money he earned in baseball. He bought a house and a building that he rented out for income.

Jose had four children, two sons and two daughters. The daughters he sent to college. But he had other plans for the boys. He named both sons after major leaguers: his first son after Jackie Robinson and his second after himself. From an early age he taught them baseball. Jose thought he was just being like every San Pedro father. "Every father looks at the big leagues and says, 'My son could be one of them,'" he said. "The kids play twenty-four hours a day. Kids here get up in the morning and they work, and if they have free time they play baseball; and if they watch television they don't watch cartoons, they watch baseball."

When Robinson was a small boy, Jose would take him to the park to play baseball and pa.s.sersby would say, "Look at that kid! He's going to be a big leaguer." But Macorisanos are always on the lookout for the next big leaguer.

Jose wanted his oldest son to be a pitcher, but having seen how his father had struggled-the constant pain, the arm and shoulder packed in ice-Robinson just didn't want to do it. By the time he was sixteen, his father realized that he was a natural left-handed hitter-too good a hitter to be a pitcher. In the American League, pitchers don't even bat, but even in the National League, they are only in every fourth or fifth game; relief pitchers play only a few innings.

Robinson finished high school and, like his father, signed with the Yankees when he was eighteen years old. Twenty-one years later it was not the same game. Instead of $2,000 to spend in a shopping mall, Robinson signed for $150,000, which by then, though better than average, was not even considered a huge bonus. Bidding was not compet.i.tive. There was not a lot of interest in him because he did not run well.

He called his father at eleven at night to tell him he was signing and the size of the bonus. Robinson told him, "You don't need to worry about money. I'm going to have a lot of money. I'm going to be a big leaguer."

The family already had a house, so Robinson bought himself a car and saved the rest of the money. Not as tall as his father, he, too, was a skinny boy until he went to America and got built up, which put power behind his smooth swing. He played his first game in Yankee Stadium in 2005 and was immediately a batting star, hitting over .300. He was not a slugger who constantly hit home runs; however, he did hit more than sixty in his first three years (his father in his only season hit two, but that was respectable for a pitcher). Robinson was a consistent hitter getting on base, driving in runs. In 2008 he drove in the last run to be scored in historic Yankee Stadium before it was torn down.

His prediction about money came true: in 2008 alone he earned $3 million-considerably less money than a few of his teammates made, but a phenomenal mountain of wealth in San Pedro. He was likely to ama.s.s a fortune by the time his major-league career ended. But in some ways he remained a small-town kid from San Pedro, living quietly in Fort Lee, New Jersey, shunning the life of a Manhattan celebrity enjoyed by some of his teammates.

Robinson was an emotional player, given to batting slumps and slow-starting seasons. He probably would have felt very isolated in an earlier generation. Charlie Romero remembered, "The mail doesn't work here. When I was playing baseball, my parents didn't know how the season went until I came home in the fall. Your first year or so you are homesick. When you have a bad day, a bad game, you want to hear your mother's voice telling you it's okay. Now they have cell phones."

It was not his mother's voice that Robinson Can heard after a bad game, and the voice was not always telling him it was okay. After one game Robinson called his father's cell phone.

"How'd you do?" Jose asked.

Robinson said, "One for four," or one hit in four at-bats.

"That's not good enough," Jose told his son. "If you can hit him once, you should be able to at least twice-maybe not four times, but at least twice. He's going to think that you won't expect the same thing, because you already hit it. So he will do it again to fool you." It is an advantage for a hitter to have a pitcher for a father.

Jose's other son, Joselito, was another skinny Dominican boy waiting to get American-fed. This time Jose was determined to produce a pitcher. Joselito showed early signs of a strong arm, mastering breaking b.a.l.l.s when he was quite young. And he was left-handed.

But, like his brother, Joselito had watched his father suffer and did not want to be a pitcher. He was not yet fifteen years old when this lanky boy showed a gift for smooth-handed fielding, a powerful throwing arm, and the kind of flowing swing that can't be taught. Plus, he could bat from either side of the plate: he was a natural switch-hitter.

Jose had a number of business interests around San Pedro, including a little club, Club Las Caobas, named for an unpaved street next to the field where the Porvenir softball team played. It was a round, fenced-off, open-air dance s.p.a.ce with a bar-a breezy place to go in the evening and play dominos and drink and dance. On the back wall, dominating the club, was a larger-than-life-size mural of Robinson Can at bat in Tampa spring training.

Jose was also a buscn. He ran the Jose Can Baseball Academy, which worked out every morning before school. From its founding in 1999 through 2008, the academy got twenty players signed. Can spent $1,500 a month keeping his academy running in an old ball field in Barrio Mexico near the Tetelo Vargas Stadium. Over the outfield wall, in the distance, the twin smokestacks of the Cristbal Coln mill could be seen. He periodically went to New York to visit his son and pick up used b.a.l.l.s and other discarded equipment from the Yankees.

Jose not only trained his players, he taught them. One of the things he told them was: "If you have five pesos to buy something, make sure it's food."

"Salami," suggested one of the young players.

"Salami is not food. Neither is cake," he said.

Among the most promising prospects at this academy was Joselito Can, because of his talent as well as his good family background. Major League Baseball had come to like the idea of Dominican baseball families. It had started early and well with the Alou brothers. The Cans had become a San Pedro family that had made it-at last.

Three Chances at Shortstop

Along one side of Ingenio Porvenir was a swayback one-story neighborhood on an unpaved street. It was referred to as a batey, which it had once been, but it was no longer surrounded by cane fields, only housing. Still, it was where sugar workers who labored long hours inside the mill were housed, in order to be next to their workplace. Most of the residents were cocolo and still spoke a West Indian English-Spanglish.

The neighborhood was within walking distance of the sea, although it was a serious hike. There the locals set nets, which they called fish bags. They left them for a few days, then salted down their catch to make salt fish, a West Indian staple. In the fall the local cocolos raised pigs in the urban neighborhood to eat at Christmastime. They made a strong but smooth distilled corn alcohol and aged it by burying it in the ground, and for Christmas they made strong guavaberry.

"Everybody gets drunk for Christmas," declared a man known in the neighborhood as ato. His favorite recipe was a dish he called English steamed fish. (When cocolos used the term English, they meant the English-speaking Caribbean.) This was his recipe, in his own words:You take a fish, any fish, cover with salt for two hours with garlic inside. Mash onions and potatoes and put it in a pan with this much water boiling [he puts about a quarter-inch of water in a pot], cover it, let it boil, put in the fish, twenty seconds on one side, twenty seconds on other side Ayi! Bueno bueno!

The best-known house in the batey was a turquoise-painted part-wood-and-part-concrete shack with a corrugated metal roof belonging to ato, whose real name was Felito James Guerrero. His mother was from San Pedro and his father from Antigua. ato's father had come to San Pedro to cut cane at the age of seventeen but managed to get a better job inside the mill as a mechanic; when he died in San Pedro, an elderly man, he had been back to visit his family in his native Antigua only once. It was a typical San Pedro cocolo story.

The dark three-room shack where ato lived smelled of liniment. A steady stream of teenage baseball players, one with a strained thigh, one hit by a ball on the elbow, lined up there. This was where coaches and managers sent players with physical problems. Sammy Sosa came to him when he was just starting. In 2008, while playing for the Estrellas Orientales, Robinson Can came by with a problem.

Most of the people in the neighborhood worked for Porvenir half of the year and sold fruit on the street or did whatever else they could to earn money during the dead season. ato had seen baseball as his way out and struggled as a second baseman and a catcher. But no one signed him. As a boy a boxer had taught him to work on injuries and give ma.s.sages, and he started doing that for boxers in the off-season. Then he started helping the cocolo cricket players of the neighborhood and even some basketball players. But it was inevitable that ato's business, being located in San Pedro, would mostly involve working with baseball players. In 2000 he stopped working for Porvenir to do his therapy full-time. He charged about ten dollars for a two-visit treatment.

Around the corner from ato's home, on a street whose pavement was so crumbly that it, too, would soon be unpaved-stood a small yellow concrete house with white wrought-iron gates. It was in the shadow of the tall smokestacks of Porvenir, and facing the sign thanking the president for the new zafra. The Corp.o.r.ns lived there. There was no need for Alcadio to thank the president because-after working most of his life for Porvenir and reaching the level of supervisor-he no longer had the strength for a new zafra or anything else. A sinewy but frail man who seldom spoke, he stumbled around the house's cramped rooms with his heart condition: a warm, friendly man but exhausted, worked nearly to death at the sugar mill.

The house was a small rectangle with a corrugated metal roof, pleasant from the outside in its lemon yellow. The floor was a concrete slab painted with considerable artistry to resemble green marble. The rectangle was divided with Sheetrock into rooms and, like so many San Pedro homes, the doorways had curtains for doors. A television with powdery images was on most of the time. Alcadio glanced at it with no real interest. There was a stove, a refrigerator, a stereo, and running water some of the time.

In a tiny kitchen Alcadio's wife, Isabel de los Santos, made food for an enormous extended family with eight children, their spouses, and their children. A favorite, as in most Macorisano homes, was pescado y domplin. This was Isabel's recipe for fish and dumplings:Grate the coconut and squeeze out the milk. Put in a pan and season with garlic, ajies, onions, and celery. Put the pan over fire and, once the liquid is boiling, add the fish. After fifteen minutes, remove from heat.

For the dumplings, gather the amount of flour you want to use. Add b.u.t.ter and salt. Little by little, add water until you get a compact dough. Put a pot of water to boil. Shape dough into little cylinders and put in boiling water. Leave for twenty minutes.

Three out of their four sons were shortstops with good arms, good hands, and considerable talent-three chances at salvation for the family. The first brother signed with the Oakland A's and progressed to their Single A team in Canada, which released him. The second signed with the Diamondbacks and was released from their Single A team also. Neither one ever came home again. As Jose Can observed, "They give you a plane ticket home and that's it. Some Dominicans go to the airport and change the ticket for New York. Every Dominican has someone in New York."

Isabel spoke of her sons in dry-eyed anguish: "I haven't seen one of my sons in six years. The other I haven't seen in five months. They can't work. They are illegal but they stay. They say here there are no opportunities."

"No opportunities," Alcadio confirmed emphatically.

It was a painful reality for Dominican ballplaying families. The major-league infielder Fernando Tatis grew up in Miramar without his father, who had the same name. The father had signed with Houston when the son was too young to remember. He was released from Triple A but never came home; the son first saw his father in 1997 when he signed with the Texas Rangers and went to the United States. His father came to a game and introduced himself.

The Corp.o.r.n family had one shortstop left to save them: Manuel. In 1989 the Baltimore Orioles signed him, along with Manny Alexander. They each got a $2,500 signing bonus, but while Alexander bought his bed, Manuel bought the expensive medicine his father needed, and used what was left over to buy food for the family. "I love my parents," he said. "They gave me the best they could."

For two years Manuel played shortstop for the Orioles in the Dominican Republic; then, without warning, he was released. "I don't know what happened," he said, his eyes almost tearing, fifteen years later. It was over. He never even made it off the island. "I had a dream," he said. "I would play baseball in the major leagues and earn money for my family. They are poor people. My father can't work. My mother has no work and I was going to buy them medicine and everything they needed."

Manny Alexander was sent up and had a major-league career. He never became a superstar, but he could return to San Pedro an ex-major leaguer and a man of affluence. Manuel, on the other hand, cleaned machines at Porvenir for twenty pesos an hour, which was less than a dollar. Seeing the hopelessness of that, he worked for five years in the free zone as a quality-control inspector of blue jeans. He had gotten married and had two children to support, so he worked extra hours, but he could earn only about 900 pesos, which, as the peso declined against the dollar, ended up being around $30 a month. "I wasted five years of my life in that place," he said.

He started working as a coach for Jose Can, training teenage prospects for a share of their signing bonuses. He worked with them every morning and seemed to enjoy the work. But the brother who didn't play baseball and worked as a mechanic seemed to be better off than the shortstops. One of their sisters managed to put her son through the local medical school. So there was hope.

"I'm still here," said Manuel, still lean because he never got American-fed, but tall and fit. "I'm still alive. I have a life. And I have two sons who are going to be big." His son Alexis, still small at thirteen-he hadn't had his teenage growth spurt yet-already had a good swing and was developing his hands in the family trade: playing shortstop.

"Are you going to be a pro?" he was asked.

"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. Manuel and the entire family were hoping, but they knew that this was a dream that could vanish without warning in an instant. Manuel had come to see life differently. "They say a man who has no money is nothing, but I don't believe that. If you are a good person and you work hard, you are not nothing."

The Education of a Center Fielder

The highway east from Porvenir that goes out to the cane fields of La Romana is intersected by dirt roads. This is suburban sprawl Dominican style: a maze of uncharted, unpaved roads on which new houses-small concrete blocks with sheets of corrugated metal for roofs-have been built, painted turquoise or sky blue, with shrubs and gardens around them. An American might look at such a neighborhood of small blocks with tin roofs off dirt streets that turn muddy when it rains and think this is a slum. But in the Dominican Republic, a land that lacks a middle cla.s.s, this is considered a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood.

In one such neighborhood, Barrio Buenos Aires, there was a typical house, a bit better maintained than some of the neighbors', with a motor scooter and a s.h.i.+ny SUV parked safely out front behind a steel gate on which the Cleveland Indians logo was carefully hand-painted. Both the SUV and the logo said that Major League Baseball had come to this home. This was the home of the Abreus.

Enrique was a construction worker. When he finished a project, he had to find another, and often there were weeks of unemployment in between. Senovia was the princ.i.p.al of a colegio, a private inst.i.tution that offered grade school through high school. Despite the late-model SUV and large stereo equipment, theirs was a modest home with small rooms and a corrugated metal roof.

In 2007 their oldest son, Abner, a shortstop, signed with the Cleveland Indians for $350,000-more than an average bonus. The size of the bonus was important not only for the money but as a reflection of the organization's commitment. A $350,000 signing bonus indicated that the Indians were excited about this young shortstop.

But the Abreu home, aside from the logo on the gate and the things they had bought, was not about baseball: it was about education. Their little windowless living room, cooled, when the electricity was working, by wall-mounted fans, proudly displayed pictures of their sons in caps and gowns for various graduations, rather than suited up for baseball. A place of pride went to a plaque awarded to Abner for his honors performance. In recognition of academic achievement, it said. Abner was studying at the Universidad Central del Este but dropped out to sign.

Major League Baseball was finding out that Dominican parents were upset that their sons were giving up their educations for baseball contracts. This was partly because the families had come to understand that even though their sons had signed, they were not likely to have major-league careers. Charlie Romero said, "Baseball is such a big thing here. A lot of kids don't care about school if they can get signed. But their parents come here and say, 'He doesn't want to go to school anymore. He just wants to play baseball.'"

The Tampa Bay Rays started putting a clause in their contract stating that if a Dominican player was released, they would pay for his education through college. They could not afford the signing bonuses of the Red Sox and the Yankees, so this was a relatively low-cost way of making signing with them more attractive.

Enrique's father was a chicken farmer who dispensed medical a.s.sistance in rural areas. Senovia's father worked in the cane fields. Enrique and Senovia had bettered their lives and hoped their three sons would do the same.

But the sons loved baseball.

Enrique claimed that he was a good player, although he never signed anywhere. He played every position. "In my day you played everywhere," he remarked.

The sons caught it from the father. They started playing at the age of six. Enrique said, "For them baseball is like food. They live baseball. We love baseball. We also know it can give a better life. But we also love it. It's our life."

But this was not their plan. "We thought our children would be doctors or engineers," Enrique explained. "But they always wanted baseball." He gave a smile of resignation, but Senovia looked worried. She was sorry that Abner had dropped out of school but shrugged: "It is his big dream." She said she hoped he could still study. Enrique quickly added that while Abner was in Summer League in Boca Chica, he went every afternoon to Santo Domingo to study English. But this course was a required part of the Indians' academy program.

Meanwhile they were watching the launching of their next son, Esdra, also a star student. He began playing at the age of five in the Escuela de Beisbol Menor de Santa Fe. No rolled socks or stick bats at the baseball school in Santa Fe. They started small boys off with real baseb.a.l.l.s and bats and gloves, even uniforms. The school ran through age eighteen. Despite what Enrique and Senovia said about education, they would not have started Esdra at this school if they had not wanted him to be a baseball player. The school was run by Herman Martnez, who grew up behind the center-field wall of Tetelo Vargas Stadium and played in the minors for the Baltimore organization. Asked what the goal of the school was, Martnez replied without hesitation, "To get kids signed to Double A teams."

He said of Esdra, "As soon as his parents told him to play, all he wanted to do was play baseball." Martnez, who was a scout at various times for the Mets, the Detroit Tigers, the Cleveland Indians, the Montreal Expos, and the Atlanta Braves, regarded Esdra as his best prospect. "He comes from a good family, well-educated people," he said. Only then did Martnez mention the strength of Esdra's throwing arm.

Lean but over six feet tall, with long arms for throwing and long legs for running, Esdra played center field with a strong right arm and was a good hitter-although, like many fifteen-year-olds, impatience often caused him to strike out.

Once Esdra was fifteen he was moved to a more advanced program, where he held his own against sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. The program was called RBI, for Riviviendo el Beisbol en el Interior de Ciudades, Revitalizing Baseball in Inner Cities, a program devised in South Central Los Angeles in 1989 but sponsored in San Pedro by CEMEX. Having, on average, gotten two players signed a year since 2005, it was considered one of the best programs. Their practice field was the Tetelo Vargas Stadium.

The head coach was the tough and fit Rogelio Candalario, whose pitching career ended in Double A with a broken arm. Their pitching coach had coached Pedro Martnez when he pitched for the Dodgers.

Increasingly in this and other programs, when teams rated players, they did it with money: rather than talking about the great arm, the fast and smart baserunning, the beautiful and natural swing of the bat, they talked of the signing bonus. To say a player received a $300,000 bonus was a way of saying he was a good player. Increasingly in San Pedro, a great ballplayer was one who signed for a lot of money. By extension, some would say of Esdra, "His brother signed for $350,000," as though to say, "He has a good bonus in his genes."

By the spring of 2008 a number of scouts were watching Esdra. He was going to qualify for July 2 bidding and it seemed certain that there would be a number of bidders. The date of July 2 only had to be mentioned and blood would rush to shy young Esdra's face. Dany Santana was interested, but he scouted for Tampa Bay, a club that was famous for spending its money carefully. That year they were to make it into the World Series with their low-budget team. He said of Esdra, "He is fast but not as good as his brother Abner. He doesn't practice enough. He only practices three days, because he is always going to school. It's this July 2 he will be signing, but maybe not with us, because I think he may cost more than he's worth."

Santana was right. The highly organized system was driving up prices. On July 2 the Texas Rangers signed Esdra for $550,000. The Abreus, having already taken in $900,000 in signing bonuses, were on their way. But they still had one more card to play: their youngest son, Gabriel. Gabriel was a little beefier than his brothers-beefier than most Dominicans. Before he was even a teenager he had learned English, to be ready for playing in America. The young Macorisanos knew a great deal about what was needed to make it to the majors. It was a different world than just a few decades earlier when Rogelio Candalario signed with the Astros in 1986 without learning a word of English. "When the manager said something, I would watch the first person who did something and try to guess what the manager had said." But they weren't getting half-million-dollar signing bonuses in those days, either.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The Curse of the Eastern Stars It was January 2008. Going down the homestretch of the season, the Estrellas had won seven of their last nine games and were firmly in first place. But the other teams were not worried. Nor were Estrellas fans excited. This was San Pedro's Estrellas Orientales, the Elephants, a team that had won only three champions.h.i.+ps in almost one hundred years-the last one in 1968, when they beat Santo Domingo's Escogido.

They needed only three more wins to clinch the playoff. But, to no one's surprise, they lost six games in a row. Now it was the final elimination match and it was on the home field, Tetelo Vargas Stadium. They had to win now or their season was over.

Jose Mercedes, a starting pitcher for Licey, said, "Don't feel sorry for them. They do this every year."

And in fact no one was giving them any sympathy. Tetelo Vargas Stadium was half empty. Many of those who were there were rooting for Santiago's guilas Cibaeas. Alfredo Griffin had been general manager of the Estrellas for the past three years. He was still a fit shortstop, a calm, soft-spoken man with few pretensions for a multimillionaire in a small town. His one indulgence was the very bright gold-and-diamond bracelet on his wrist. During his major-league career he had returned every winter to play for the Estrellas, and now as a major-league coach he came home to manage. "I wanted to manage because they are my team," he said. "I want them to win."

Not all Macorisanos have this home team loyalty. They know baseball and they like winning teams, so many root for either Licey or the guilas. Usually Licey or the guilas win. The rest of the time it is Escogido. The La Romana team, Azucareros del Este, the Eastern Sugar Makers, have won only once: in 1995, when it was managed by Art Howe, an ex-infielder who had managed three major-league teams.

Macorisanos believed in winning, and if the Estrellas were not winning it was their own fault. Julio Garca, the Cubs' academy pitching coach, complained, "Everybody here is a manager. They all consider themselves baseball experts." Not that it was any different in his native Cuba, where a spot is reserved in Havana's Parque Central for angrily tearing apart the mismanagement of yesterday's games. The spot is called the esquina caliente, the hot corner. There is no such spot officially reserved in San Pedro's Parque Central, but that doesn't stop Macorisanos from having a lot to say.

Dominicans are great fatalists, believing that the future is sealed supernaturally and beyond anyone's control. They talk a lot about the role of curses, what is called in the Dominican Republic a f.u.k. Americans are different, but American baseball fans understand. Everyone on the North Side of Chicago knows that the Cubs are cursed. That particular curse, the curse of the billy goat, stemming from the ejection of a smelly goat from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series, even sounds like a Dominican f.u.k. New Englanders knew well the curse of the Bambino that kept the Red Sox from winning a World Series for eighty-six years. And when it was revealed that a s.h.i.+rt of Red Sox slugger David Ortiz-it would have to be a Dominican player to make a good curse-was buried in the concrete of the new Yankee Stadium to curse them, the Yankees management took it seriously enough to pay thousands of dollars to weekend overtime workers to find it and dig it up.

Dominicans see curses at work everywhere. Trujillo used curses. Everyone dabbles in the supernatural. But not in baseball. The reverse of Americans, Dominicans see fatalistic, supernatural forces in life but only science in baseball. If the Estrellas kept losing, there was something wrong with management. Dominicans would not cling to their Indians, or Red Sox, or Cubs, and complain of Bambinos and goats. They just moved on to a team that knew how to win.

Bonny Castillo played twelve years for the Estrellas. "We find any way we can to lose," he said. "In 1985 we were in the finals, beating Escogido 3 to 1. We lost the next three games. In 1982 we led the league in runs and batting. The team batting average was .305. We beat the guilas and made the finals." Then they went home to San Pedro to celebrate. The team's two best starting pitchers were riding together, and on the bridge over the Higuama, entering San Pedro, they pulled out to pa.s.s a bus and hit an oncoming car. Both pitchers were through for the season.

Griffin, who had been having notable success with the Angels in California, was expected to turn things around in San Pedro. And he hadn't. Griffin knew he was a disappointment. "The fans think that because I'm involved, we are going to win for sure," he said.

The problem with the modern Dominican League was not that different from the problem in the great showdown of 1937. Then it was a question of who had the money to bring in the most Negro Leaguers and Cubans. In the modern Dominican League it was a question of who had enough money to bring in the most major leaguers. And the answer was clearly Licey, a team that tried to have fifteen or more major-league players on their roster.

Jose Mercedes, with his roots in San Pedro, explained why he liked pitching for Licey. "Licey pays more and they treat the players well," he said. "They treat you as family. I always heard this, but this was my first season and it's true. They clinched the playoffs and they sent me a bottle of champagne."

Major League Baseball is not a stranger to such inequality. There are tremendous differences in what organizations can afford. In 2008 the highest-paid player was Alex Rodriguez for the New York Yankees. His $28 million salary was more money than the entire roster, disabled list included, of his hometown team, the Florida Marlins. But the Marlins had won two World Series, as have other low-budget teams. The consistency with which the money teams, Licey and guilas, won the champions.h.i.+p was difficult to ignore.

At the start of the new century the Dominican League began addressing this inequality. A draft, similar to the major-league draft, was initiated in which the losing team had the first pick of available players. Griffin was among the many who thought that this would even out the results. But in the first six years of the draft, either guilas or Licey won every year.