The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [28]
But even before taking over sugar, when he first came to power and sugar did not look profitable, Trujillo took over baseball. It was at this time that some of the best players came to the Dominican Republic. Top players of the Negro League came to the Dominican capital—in fact, some of the best players in the world, including Josh Gibson, who came with a Venezuelan team in 1933. Gibson, one of the best catchers and hitters of all time, was called the black Babe Ruth, and some said he was a better hitter than Ruth. He had the best lifetime batting average in the history of the Negro League, possibly as high as .384. Batting averages show how difficult it is to get a hit in professional baseball. A batter who got a hit every time he went to bat would have a 1.000 batting average. In reality, any professional who can get a hit once out of every three times at bat—an average of .333—is considered an excellent hitter. Anyone who hits over .300 is considered formidable. Gibson had a .467 batting average for 1933, a hit almost every other time at bat.
The Santo Domingo teams, bankrolled by the dictator, started bringing in foreign talent such as Cuban pitcher Luis Tiant, Sr., the left-handed father of the right-handed pitcher of the same name. Fewer and fewer positions were left for Dominicans unless they were remarkable players such as Tetelo Vargas. Dominican teams recruited whoever they could get to win.
Until then, the San Pedro team had not won a championship. Unlike the Santo Domingo teams, who usually won, San Pedro did not draw foreign stars. They were not even drawing a great deal on the tremendous talent at their sugar mills, because they played during the zafra. The home team was mostly made up of upper-class gentlemen players, some of them doctors—something else San Pedro was known for—and they generally lost. San Pedro wanted to compete too. Instead of playing on the local team, a group of prominent Macorisanos, centered around a judge originally from Santo Domingo, Federico Nina Santana, decided to organize, with the judge financing it. He spent money buying top players and was willing to lose money to see San Pedro win. This is when the team was given its name, Estrellas del Oriente, and later Estrellas Orientales, Eastern Stars. Before, it had been El Macorís. The Eastern Stars were mostly from Cuba. They took on the Cubans and Puerto Ricans of Licey and Escogido and beat them both, winning the 1936 championship.
By 1936, Licey and Escogido were used to bringing the championship to the capital, with an occasional strong showing from Santiago. Losing to San Pedro came as a shock. And the Estrellas in San Pedro kept buying even more talent, giving them every hope of winning the championship again in 1937. Although Trujillo did not care about baseball, he did not like seeing the city that now bore his name lose. The general had no feelings for Licey or Escogido, both of whom lost their stadiums in Hurricane San Zenón. But Trujillo felt that Trujillo City should have a baseball team, and that team had better win.
Trujillo’s brother José was a baseball fanatic—an emotionally unstable one who once lost his temper in a game and hit an American player. José and his sister had been the money behind Licey. Dr. José E. Aybar, a dentist, who had run Licey since 1929, had an endless source of money from the Trujillos to conduct a bidding war with Escogido over Cuba’s greatest talent. Now the dictator decided that there would be only one team in his city, that they would buy the greatest players on the market, and that they would beat San Pedro de Macorís for the championship. Dr. Aybar was put in charge of the Dragones de Ciudad Trujillo.
Aybar then went to New Orleans, reportedly with suitcases full of money, and bought the best talent of the Negro League, including Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, the high-kicking right-handed pitcher who threw breaking balls that were so unique, he gave them his own names, such as the bat dodger, the jump ball, and the two-hump blooper. Some baseball writers claim he