Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [73]
That was the day we discovered he was really the man of 101 moves.
Perez and Lazlo were not the only pitchers to buzzsaw our lumber that day. Our swings against that pair looked so inept, the Pinar third base coach—a small man well past seventy— inserted himself into the game and tossed two innings. He couldn’t equal the speed of his mound predecessors, but he threw his great breaking ball and a heady assortment of junk with pinpoint accuracy. His changeup arrived at home plate light as a spinach leaf; you had to supply all the power to hit it for any distance. The coach moved the ball around on us, altering speeds with each succeeding pitch slower than the one before it. Just when we started timing him, he would rip a 70 mph fastball inside on us that looked like 90 for the contrast. The man was a pitcher.
Pinar won that afternoon, 9–2. The result mildly discouraged us. We should have declared a holiday. As things turned out, that loss would be our best performance on this brief tour. We dropped every game we played against organized teams by a combined score of 76–9. One club drubbed us 15–0.
Those one-sided defeats convinced me and my teammates that everyone in Cuba can hit a baseball. Kids born on that island must emerge from the womb toting fungo bats, a good reason why the attending doctors or midwives never smack them on the rump. The Cuban hitters bludgeoned everything I threw. Even grandmothers jumped out of the stands to rock a few doubles. Our lone victory came when we beat a squad composed entirely of employees from our hotel in a pickup game. Yes, we bullied them 11–3, but we did not want to leave the island winless. And they got their revenge. None of us saw a clean sheet for the rest of our stay.
Aside from the drubbing they inflicted on us, the Pinar players acted as gracious hosts. Paramedics remained on hand in their ballpark throughout the afternoon in case anyone suffered an injury—they forgot to bring bandages for our pride—and the team even assigned several nurses to massage us on our bench while the game progressed.
In our dugout, a Pinar coach hung a papier-mâché figure of the Santeria god Chango, his bulbous torso clad in a baseball uniform. Someone on our team stuck a miniature cigar in the grinning mouth of Chango’s large ebony head and slung yellow prayer beads around its neck. Our hitters kissed it for luck whenever they went up to the batter’s box. Obviously, this ritual didn’t help. Pinar’s players also chipped in to supply us with a top-shelf spread of food after the game as well as coolers filled with beer, sangria, and soft drinks. Their generosity humbled us; the average Cuban earned about $17 a month.
We reciprocated by treating our opponents to a banquet at a local resort. Our tables creaked under the weight of all the dishes: platters heaped with sausages and cheeses; deep-fried marinated pork dripping with a peppery red sauce so hot it made your nose run; grilled citrus chicken pungent with garlic; and huachinango à la veracruzana, pan-fried red snapper dressed in a salsa of minced onion, capers, tomatoes, olives, and pickled jalapeños and served on a bed of rice. A treat so delicious it makes me hungry just to read the name.
Despite the succulent entrees, the most popular item on our menu for the Cuban players was the cold beer that arrived at their tables in frosted mugs. Many deprived neighborhoods on the island lacked reliable refrigeration. One waiter told me that some friends of his operated the local black market for ice, but I think he was kidding. Would not surprise me, though.
The Cuban players we partied with displayed an uninhibited physicality among themselves. They greeted each other with powerful