The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [76]
This might have been a tantalizing story for other young Macorisanos thinking about the Japanese academy, except for the fact that, once the Yankees discovered him in Japan, Soriano found that it was extremely difficult to get out of his Japanese contract. In the end he had to officially resign from professional baseball to get out and become available to the Yankees.
The Japanese do not want to be another stepping-stone to the American major leagues. Kake said, “They leave us for the major leagues for the money, but more than that for the prestige. It’s a big problem.”
Nevertheless, the Japanese in search of Dominican talent signed an average of five or six players a year.
Charlie Romero was asked why so many ballplayers were produced in San Pedro. He smiled and then sighed. “I ask that question to myself all the time. They have even done studies on it. No one can come up with a real answer. It’s like Brazil, where you always see the kids kicking a ball. Here the kids are always throwing something. Or catching, or hitting.”
But the answer may lie in Romero’s own story. He was raised in a batey not far from the Angels’ academy, a village of a few hundred sugar workers who all worked for a mill owned by the American giant Gulf+Western. His father was a cane worker from Antigua. “I was poor,” said Romero, “but I really enjoyed my childhood. I had a responsible father who made sure there was food on the table every day. Growing up in a batey, most kids work at an early age. When they are ten, after school and during school breaks boys work in the fields to make some money. They do cutting and planting. You have to plant them one at a time; a row was about here to the wall. [He pointed about 350 feet to the end of the outfield.] In the early 1980s they were paying twenty-five cents a row. Working in a sugar field is one of the worst jobs you can do. You just make enough money to survive; there is no saving and going to Hawaii on vacation. That’s not going to happen. But we didn’t know anything else.”
Two things led him to a better life. He had a father who insisted that his four children finish high school; he did well and skipped a year and finished at age sixteen. And he took up track and field. A fast sprinter, he ran the hundred-yard dash and the quarter mile.
When Romero was seventeen years old, Epy Guerrero saw him run and asked if he wanted to play baseball. By the following September he was signed with the Blue Jays. He was trained in the fundamentals, although he remained essentially a one-tool player: a great base runner. While still in the minors he tore a ligament in his knee and never made it to the majors.
Romero reflected, “Most of the Dominican kids who have made it to the majors have come from the bateys. These kids really work. You don’t want to go back where you came from, so you give a little extra.”
CHAPTER TEN
Three Three-Brother Families
The Struggling Pitcher
Police in the Dominican Republic, like most other Dominicans, are poorly paid and are always hungry. They supplement their meager incomes by periodically stopping cars and in a soft, sweet voice asking for a tip or, sometimes, a fine, depending on which line they think the customer would be most moved by. Who could say no knowing the homicidal tendencies of the Dominican police force? And they were usually satisfied with a few pesos.
One afternoon in San Pedro, the police stopped a large, shiny black SUV—a Mitsubishi Montero.