The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [37]
As recently as 2008, Marichal found controversy. He and Dominican pitcher Pedro Martínez were filmed in the Dominican Republic attending a cockfight. And there was the old accusation once again: barbarous and primitive Dominicans are cruel to animals. Martínez tried to argue that cockfighting was simply “part of the Dominican culture.”
In the 1960s, young ballplayers in the bateys and barrios of San Pedro de Macorís followed Marichal’s career and gleaned two contradictory lessons: First, it was very difficult for a Dominican to get along in the United States; second, those who braved it had a chance at a great deal of fame, money, and glory. But it was never going to be easy.
In the southern towns that many young baseball players are sent to, the strange American breed of racism persisted for years, long after baseball and even the South were integrated. Rogelio Candalario, a player from San Pedro, signed with the Houston Astros. He was a promising left-handed pitcher until he broke his arm in 1986. The Astros sent him to their Double A team in Columbus, South Carolina. “People would just stare at me,” Candalario recalled. “I’d say, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Nothing,’ they would say.”
CHAPTER SIX
San Pedro Rising
In 1962, something happened that had an enormous impact on baseball, sugar, and tourism. On February 7, in response to the expropriation of American assets in Cuba by the new revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, the U.S. declared a trade embargo. First of all, this meant that the U.S. would now buy its sugar elsewhere, while the Cubans responded by opening trade with the Soviet Union. Until then, a Caribbean vacation had largely meant Cuba; there was little tourism in the rest of the region. Now Americans were suddenly looking for other places for Caribbean winter holidays. But also it meant that Cuban baseball players could no longer play in the United States. To be eligible for work in the United States, a Cuban had to defect permanently, leaving behind friends and family, which few Cuban baseball players wanted to do. Major League Baseball would have to look elsewhere for Latino talent.
The first ballplayers from San Pedro de Macorís entered the major leagues in 1962, the year of the Cuban embargo. Not surprisingly, these players came from the sugar mills. Amado Samuel, a shortstop from Santa Fe, was the first Macorisano in the majors. He signed with the Milwaukee Braves in 1958 and played his first major-league game at the beginning of the 1962 season. He lasted only three seasons in the majors, his last one for the Mets. The second Macorisano to make the majors, Manny Jiménez, was also from Santa Fe. He missed being the first Macorisano by one day, beginning the 1962 season with the Kansas City Athletics. He had a seven-year career as a left fielder and, unlike Samuel, was a respectable batter with a kick to his swing that back in the sugar fields of Santa Fe had earned him the nickname “El Mulo.” In his best years he batted over .300.
Pedro González, from the Angelina sugar mill, was the third player from San Pedro to play major-league ball. His father was Puerto Rican and his mother was a French cocolo from Saint Martin. As a small child he lived in downtown San Pedro, in a neighborhood on the shore of the Caribbean Sea that is called Miramar. When his parents separated, González’s mother took him back to the sugar mill at Angelina, where he became a cocolo and a baseball player. He laughs now about the equipment he and his friends played with. Occasionally they had real baseballs, because in the Dominican League whoever catches the last out