The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [80]
He pitched well in the 1987 season but still didn’t tell anyone how uncomfortable his arm felt. He was sent to the Florida state league, where he won twenty-five games and lost three, a phenomenal record. He was throwing a fastball at 97 miles per hour. There was talk of him going to the big leagues. In 1988 he made it to the Houston Astros, a big leaguer at last. But it was discovered that he needed shoulder surgery, and so he didn’t pitch that season.
Finally, on August 28, 1989, at the age of twenty-seven, José Canó pitched his first major-league game. This was his moment to show the world how good he was. Facing the Chicago Cubs, he pitched so well that they kept him in for the entire game, which he won. Complete games had become a rarity. Major-league teams have on their rosters batteries of middle relievers, setup men, and closers. A pitcher who gets to the seventh inning has done well. Nine innings is just too hard on a pitcher’s arm, especially a power pitcher like Canó. But he did it. If he had been twenty-one instead of twenty-seven, it might have been the beginning of a promising career.
The next game he started in, he lost. He was used a few times as a reliever. He played in six games in all with a win-loss record of 1 and 1. And then his career was over. The following year he injured his back; the season after that management watched him in spring training and decided to release him.
Canó started playing for the Azucareros in the Winter League and with the Mexican League in the fall. He played for a few years in Taiwan. But he never got back to the U.S. He was careful with the money he earned in baseball. He bought a house and a building that he rented out for income.
José had four children, two sons and two daughters. The daughters he sent to college. But he had other plans for the boys. He named both sons after major leaguers: his first son after Jackie Robinson and his second after himself. From an early age he taught them baseball. José thought he was just being like every San Pedro father. “Every father looks at the big leagues and says, ‘My son could be one of them,’” he said. “The kids play twenty-four hours a day. Kids here get up in the morning and they work, and if they have free time they play baseball; and if they watch television they don’t watch cartoons, they watch baseball.”
When Robinson was a small boy, José would take him to the park to play baseball and passersby would say, “Look at that kid! He’s going to be a big leaguer.” But Macorisanos are always on the lookout for the next big leaguer.
José wanted his oldest son to be a pitcher, but having seen how his father had struggled—the constant pain, the arm and shoulder packed in ice—Robinson just didn’t want to do it. By the time he was sixteen, his father realized that he was a natural left-handed hitter—too good a hitter to be a pitcher. In the American League, pitchers don’t even bat, but even in the National League, they are only in every fourth or fifth game; relief pitchers play only a few innings.
Robinson finished high school and, like his father, signed with the Yankees when he was eighteen years old. Twenty-one years later it was not the same game. Instead of $2,000 to spend in a shopping mall, Robinson signed for $150,000, which by then, though better than average, was not even considered a huge bonus. Bidding was not competitive. There was not a lot of interest in him because he did not run well.
He called his father at eleven at night to tell him he was signing and the size of the bonus. Robinson told him, “You don’t need to worry about money. I’m going to have a lot of money. I’m going to be a big leaguer.”
The family already had a house, so Robinson bought himself a car and saved the rest of the money. Not as tall as his father, he,