The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [26]
In 1906 a group of young Santo Domingo players met in a house in the old part of Santo Domingo, the Colonial Zone, once ruled by Columbus and today favored by tourists. Their subject was how to beat Indio Bravo. They built a baseball club designed to take on the Nuevo Club and they called it Club Licey, after another river, this one in the Cibao. At first uniformed in gray, they soon switched to white with blue stripes and ever after they were nicknamed the Azules. Licey fans still celebrate the November anniversary, but more than the founding of the Licey team it was the beginning of the modern Dominican Winter Baseball League that has become the centerpiece of Dominican baseball.
Originally it was a Santo Domingo competition in which the other baseball regions, the north and San Pedro, were not involved. But Licey began traveling outside the capital to find other competition. To play in the north, the entire team would have to travel long hours on dirt roads and even organize mule trains through mountain trails. On the other hand, San Pedro de Macorís had its long-standing commercial advantage: it was only a short ship’s crossing from Santo Domingo. In 1911, Macorisanos put together a team with local Americans, Cubans, Dominicans, and cocolos to face Licey. In the first encounter in 1911, pitching dominated with twenty-one strikeouts. But the baserunning kept it lively with twenty-two stolen bases. To the shock and disappointment of Macorisanos, Licey won.
But back in the capital, Licey was unable to match Nuevo Club, which won the first championship in 1912. Indio Bravo was impossible to get a hit off of, even after an unbalanced Licey fan tried to slow him down by stabbing him in his throwing arm.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic, like most military occupations, was deeply unpopular. In San Pedro an angry Dominican opened fire on U.S. Marine officers and killed one as the troops were arriving at the port. After the U.S. invasion the interest in baseball increased, not because of a love of things American, but from a strong desire to beat the Americans at their own game. And the Americans provided knowledgeable and equipped opponents. The Americans, who showed little respect for things Dominican, were impressed with the baseball players. One Dominican pitcher, Felito Guerra, was so respected, he was offered a contract to pitch in the U.S. He would have been the first Dominican major leaguer but instead became a national hero when he refused to go, to protest the occupation.
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama had all been occupied by the U.S., and because of that exposure all three became better baseball-playing countries. Now the Dominican Republic followed the same pattern. After the Dominican invasion, the U.S. occupied Nicaragua and their game greatly improved also. It seemed that baseball was the one thing a small Latin American nation could gain from a U.S. invasion.
Licey built up their team with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Americans. Their star pitcher was a Cuban called El Diamante Negro. But Nuevo Club was still holding its own because they had Indio Bravo, who was still accomplishing Homeric feats. After the U.S. occupation, Nuevo Club took on the U.S. Navy cruiser Washington and Indio Bravo struck out twenty-one Navy batters. But he got into a dispute with his ball club and went over to Licey, making them undefeatable. The demoralized Nuevo Club disintegrated.
The Licey Tigers had become the dominant club. By 1921 northern baseball had shifted from La Vega to the capital of the Cibao, Santiago de los Cabelleros. It took the Licey team five days to get there and two days to rest. They then won all eight games against Santiago.
But this same year a new Santo Domingo team, Escogido, was formed for the purpose of taking on Licey. They made their color red because Licey was blue. Because Licey had stripes on their uniform they called themselves Los Tigres, the Tigers, so Escogido became the Lions. In 1928,