The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [79]
Soon José was in Bradenton, Florida, with $2,000 in his pocket, richer and farther from home than he had ever been. He went to a shopping mall and bought small presents for his parents and thirteen siblings, and his signing bonus was spent.
He could say three things in English: “Yes,” “Thank you,” and “I got it!” José remembered, “We would go to the restaurant and point at something on the menu, not knowing what it said and not liking it when we got it. We loved Big Macs and especially Whoppers with cheese. Man, we loved those Whoppers. But we would order Whoppers at McDonald’s and Big Macs at Burger King. We could never get them straight. Then we learned how to call Domino’s and order a pizza, but we only knew how to say one kind, ‘pepperoni with double cheese.’ So that is what we always got.”
He did not get along with the manager of his farm team, a short Cuban who, according to José, “treated Dominicans like shit. He would grab me by the collar when I did something wrong and shout, ‘Do you know what your’re doing?’ I complained to the scout who signed me.”
After one month José was released. That was the end of it. His career was over at age eighteen, only weeks after it had started. “They never gave me a chance,” he said. “I didn’t know you could get released so quickly. I was crying. All they said was ‘We are going to release you.’ No explanation. They just give you a ticket home.”
The day he was released, the team was playing an away game and the other players were on the bus. He had to get on the bus and say good-bye to his teammates. Some of them told him that this was not the end of his career, because he was young and had a good throwing arm. But José knew that organizations were wary of players who had been released.
Back in Soco his father said, “Don’t worry. We are going to work.” His father was a fisherman and knew what hard work was. The next morning he woke José at five, not particularly early by their fishing standards. They both got on his motor scooter and rode a few miles. Then José was told to get off and start running home. His father followed along on the bike. In this way, every day before breakfast José ran two miles or more in the dark, when it was still cool enough to run.
Being a catcher, José’s father could work with his son on his pitches, which they did three days a week. Four months later he was signed by the Atlanta Braves, and at the age of nineteen he was pitching for a Single A team in Anderson, South Carolina.
Now he was an American-fed ballplayer, no longer a thin 145 pounds but a large, powerful man who stood six feet, three inches tall and threw hard, with a good breaking ball and a good changeup. For the next two years he pitched in the farm system, all the time enduring pain in his right throwing arm. No one would ever know how painful it was. Canó just endured it in silence: he was not going to complain about it and risk getting released again. He couldn’t count on getting picked up a third time. Finally, when he could not endure the pain anymore, he told management and they sent him to a doctor. But the doctor could find nothing wrong and recommended three weeks’ rest. They released him and he was back in the Dominican Republic.
He would not let his story end there. He played in the 1985 Dominican League for the La Romana Azucareros and his arm felt good all winter. He started to wonder why his arm hurt in America but never troubled him when he pitched at home. He pitched well and the Houston Astros offered him a contract, but there was no