The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [47]
San Pedro’s amateur leagues and their playoffs gave scouts many games in which to look for prospects. Young ballplayers initially tried out for love of the game, but they quickly became aware that they were being considered for the majors.
Cleveland Indians scout Reggie Otero, a Cuban, spotted fifteen-year-old Griffin playing second base. This was one Otero would not let Epy Guerrero grab for the Toronto Blue Jays, so Otero quickly developed Griffin as a shortstop, signed him in 1973, and sent him off to the Cleveland farm system by the age of sixteen.
Despite his cocolo background, Griffin spoke little English and lived a lonely existence in America, away from family and friends for the first time. For three years in the minors he got occasional starts with the Indians. In his first major-league at-bat, in 1976, he got a hit. The following winter he went back to San Pedro, to the Estrellas, where he developed skills as a switch-hitter. The ability to bat either left- or right-handed is a great advantage, because pitchers usually do better against batters who bat on the side from which they throw. A switch-hitter can bat on the opposite side no matter who is pitching, so Griffin returned from San Pedro a more valuable hitter.
After three years in which he played only occasionally, Griffin was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for Victor Cruz. According to legend, Epy Guerrero stole him. But the truth is that the Blue Jays simply made a great trade. Cruz had been an excellent relief pitcher for Toronto, and Toronto fans could not understand why the Blue Jays would give up a top pitcher for an unknown who was not greatly appreciated in Cleveland.
But Griffin was noticed immediately in his new home. When the press saw him working out in 1980, he became the talk of spring training. They used words like “smooth” and “ballet of the infield” to describe his defensive skills. His first year in Toronto—his first complete season playing, because Cleveland had kept sending him down to the minors—Griffin won Rookie of the Year, the coveted Jackie Robinson title.
When a young man from San Pedro got his hands on Major League Baseball money, he almost always did something for his family, and especially his mother. But in Griffin’s day a signing bonus wasn’t enough. Griffin did not see money until Toronto; once he had his first full season there, he built a large house for Mary Griffin on Carty Street in Consuelo. Later he put some earnings into a long gray stone house with a fountain in Rico Carty’s newly developed neighborhood in central San Pedro.
Over an eighteen-season major-league career, Griffin became known as a reliable hitter, a fast enough runner to score numerous triples, a nearly unstoppable base stealer, and a smooth-handed, award-winning infielder who played in several World Series for both Toronto and the Dodgers and then went on to be an infield coach for the California Angels. In between seasons he played for the Estrellas. He seemed to relish his winters back in San Pedro: his comfortable house, the music, and the discos—including the one he bought by the waterfront. He even enjoyed going back to Consuelo, where his mother still lived.
Griffin projected a different kind of image of a Dominican in the major leagues. He was known as a leader and a peacemaker, a player with the kind of temperament that holds ball clubs together. He always made a special effort to help rookie players adapt to the team. Griffin always insisted that this wasn’t new for Dominicans and that Rico Carty had helped him. Among his prized baseball souvenirs was an autographed photo of the Beeg Mon. But the American press seemed not to notice that Griffin contradicted the stereotype: for them he was simply another Dominican. In a 2001 interview, Sports Collectors Digest even used Juan Marichal’s old moniker, calling Griffin “a Dominican dandy.”
Baseball became a serious enterprise all over San Pedro wherever there was poverty, which was almost