The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [87]
Dominicans see curses at work everywhere. Trujillo used curses. Everyone dabbles in the supernatural. But not in baseball. The reverse of Americans, Dominicans see fatalistic, supernatural forces in life but only science in baseball. If the Estrellas kept losing, there was something wrong with management. Dominicans would not cling to their Indians, or Red Sox, or Cubs, and complain of Bambinos and goats. They just moved on to a team that knew how to win.
Bonny Castillo played twelve years for the Estrellas. “We find any way we can to lose,” he said. “In 1985 we were in the finals, beating Escogido 3 to 1. We lost the next three games. In 1982 we led the league in runs and batting. The team batting average was .305. We beat the Águilas and made the finals.” Then they went home to San Pedro to celebrate. The team’s two best starting pitchers were riding together, and on the bridge over the Higuama, entering San Pedro, they pulled out to pass a bus and hit an oncoming car. Both pitchers were through for the season.
Griffin, who had been having notable success with the Angels in California, was expected to turn things around in San Pedro. And he hadn’t. Griffin knew he was a disappointment. “The fans think that because I’m involved, we are going to win for sure,” he said.
The problem with the modern Dominican League was not that different from the problem in the great showdown of 1937. Then it was a question of who had the money to bring in the most Negro Leaguers and Cubans. In the modern Dominican League it was a question of who had enough money to bring in the most major leaguers. And the answer was clearly Licey, a team that tried to have fifteen or more major-league players on their roster.
José Mercedes, with his roots in San Pedro, explained why he liked pitching for Licey. “Licey pays more and they treat the players well,” he said. “They treat you as family. I always heard this, but this was my first season and it’s true. They clinched the playoffs and they sent me a bottle of champagne.”
Major League Baseball is not a stranger to such inequality. There are tremendous differences in what organizations can afford. In 2008 the highest-paid player was Alex Rodriguez for the New York Yankees. His $28 million salary was more money than the entire roster, disabled list included, of his hometown team, the Florida Marlins. But the Marlins had won two World Series, as have other low-budget teams. The consistency with which the money teams, Licey and Águilas, won the championship was difficult to ignore.
At the start of the new century the Dominican League began addressing this inequality. A draft, similar to the major-league draft, was initiated in which the losing team had the first pick of available players. Griffin was among the many who thought that this would even out the results. But in the first six years of the draft, either Águilas or Licey won every year.
It was growing harder to get major-league players. The major-league clubs did not like their multimillion-dollar properties risking injury in the Dominican Republic in the off-season. It had happened too many times. Everyone remembered