The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [40]
Rico was one of twelve sons and four daughters. The fields that surrounded them were for growing cane. Baseball was played in the unpaved streets. Owing to his ability to hit deep into center field, Carty was known as an “up-the-middle” hitter, which he attributed to the fact that under Consuelo rules you had to keep the ball in the street: if it went into the houses it was an out. He attributed his ability to hit breaking balls to the fact that wadded socks or rags are not balanced, so the pitches had a lot of unpredictable movement.
Carty’s mother understood the value of education and hoped her son would study to become a doctor. But Rico did not like to study—he wanted to play baseball—so she banned him from the baseball fields, hoping that would force him to concentrate on schoolwork. Instead he would sneak off and play games in the street with teams from competing Consuelo barrios.
Since Rico was clearly not a student his parents got him a job cutting wood for the mill. He hated it, but working for the ingenio gave him the opportunity to play on their baseball team. At that time Dominicans could not break into Major League Baseball; the sport that could lift them out of poverty was boxing. Rico’s father, who loved the sport, gave him books on it and trained him. Rico was undefeated in seventeen fights, twelve by knockouts. Then he lost his eighteenth. He always claimed it was because he had eaten too many beans before the fight. He gave up boxing and in 1959 went back to baseball for Ingenio Consuelo, where he was much talked about as the boy who could hit the ball four hundred feet straight up the middle on any kind of pitch. But his father was disappointed: although he lived to be ninety, he never went to see his son play baseball. In 1959, Rico and some five hundred other young Dominicans tried out for the Pan American baseball team. The Dominicans had won the 1955 Pan American Games and were a team to watch in the 1959 games, which were in Chicago at Comiskey Park.
The major leagues sent scouts to look at the reigning Dominican team. The team did not do well but Carty did, hitting home runs over center field the way he had learned on the streets and making a spectacular throw to home plate off the right-field fence. Everyone wanted to sign this Dominican kid with the perfect swing, the powerful throwing arm, the tall, lean, and muscular body, and the strikingly sculpted face.
Many of the new Dominican players—unlike the Cubans, who played a season in Mexico, a season in Venezuela—were leaving the Dominican Republic for the first time. The Dominican Republic is not a very big place, and a few dozen miles to Santo Domingo or up to Santiago was as far as Carty had ever been until he played in Chicago at age nineteen. Being a cocolo, Carty always thought he spoke English. But now he discovered that he did not understand Americans and they could not understand him. Scouts went to talk to him, but he could not understand them. Every time someone offered him a contract, he signed. Before long he had signed with six major-league organizations, and by some accounts eight or nine. At the very least he had signed with the Cardinals, the Braves, the Yankees, the Giants, the Cubs, and the Dodgers. In his confusion he had also signed with Estrellas, Licey, Escogido, and Águilas.
George Trautman, who headed Minor League Baseball, interceded. He pointed out to the various angry clubs that there was no legal issue, since Carty had neglected to take any money. But he told Carty that he had to choose a team. Carty picked the Milwaukee Braves, because he liked the team. Only later did he understand that the $2,000 signing bonus they offered was small money and he could have gotten far more from the St. Louis Cardinals.
Back in the Dominican Republic, it was more complicated to sort out his contracts. Realizing what he had done, he said that he wanted to play for his hometown Estrellas Orientales. Trujillo was furious and Carty was taken to court—a Trujillo court. But in the end, a good ballplayer could