The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [89]
When the Estrellas scored, the sound system trumpeted jungle-stirring elephant noise. Someone in an Estrellas uniform with an elephant head was on the field dancing merengue at propitious moments. Vendors sold homemade confections of wrenching sweetness. Between innings there were cheerleaders in skintight white and green with suggestive hip movements and a lot of skin showing in many different shades.
The Estrellas would have to win this game or be eliminated. Then they had to win the next game to come to a tie and force yet another game, which they would also have to win to be in the playoff. There was no room for mistakes now. Any loss in the next three games and Las Estrellas would once again go down in defeat.
As the Águilas came onto the field, old friends among them came over to Griffin and they hugged. Given the situation, Griffin seemed remarkably calm. He explained, “There is so much pressure in playing a game seven of a World Series that, once you’ve done that, you never feel pressure anymore.” Griffin was on three World Series-winning teams.
Griffin started right-hander Kenny Ray, mainly a relief pitcher, who had played with Kansas City but in recent years was struggling with injuries to his arm. The Águilas started with Bartolo Colón, a hometown hero in their Cibao region who started for Griffin’s own Angels, for whom he had won pitching’s highest honor, the Cy Young Award, in 2005. Despite this seemingly unequal match, Ray pitched well, and with some good hitting the Estrellas had a 4-to-3 lead in the middle of the game. Elephant sounds were heard. Then the Águilas scored four runs. But to the trumpeting of plastic horns, the Estrellas came back with two more runs. The Estrellas had their last chance in the eighth inning, when they were down by only one run, 7 to 6. They loaded the bases with only one out. Then they did a typical Estrellas maneuver: they hit into an inning-ending double play. Another disappointing year for the Estrellas Orientales.
CHAPTER TWELVE
San Pedro’s Black Eye
When George Bell was a teenager playing in Santa Fe, he fell while avoiding a flying bat and hit his right eye on the corner of a bench. The discoloration under his right eye never went away, and so Bell always looked as though he had just been in a fight and gotten a black eye. When he was a player, the press constantly asked him about his black eye. This was in part the image of a Dominican player—a brawler—but it was also who George Bell was. Once when he was playing for the Blue Jays in Toronto’s Sky Dome, he delivered an unmistakable gesture with his middle finger to some 50,000 booing fans. Bell was booed a lot, and he always said that it was bigotry directed against him because he was a Dominican. But some of the fans said that it was because he was a bad outfielder. He often failed at critical plays and was booed for that. Eventually, over his angry protests, he was taken out of the field and made a designated hitter who only stepped in to bat for the pitcher. Batting was what made him valuable.
Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy once wrote, “Baseball fans hear the name ‘George Bell’ and they think of tantrums, bumps with umpires, confrontations with pitchers and public pouts.” He went on to say that Bell would “never get the recognition he deserves as long as he wears the badge of the Loco Latin.” The “Loco Latin” badge has kept many Dominicans from getting their due, but Bell was particularly insensitive to this problem. Bell played baseball as a contact sport. Not only was he known for running over catchers and even basemen—an accepted practice to make them drop the ball—but he was