It`s the top of the fourth inning and the home team`s midget mascot is doing a rumba atop the dugout. He is decked out in the full uniform of the Azucareros del Este, or Eastern Sugar Boys.
A live band, complete with portable conga drums, wailing trombones and crooners, sashays down the aisle to blare out merengue, the quick-stepping Latin polka that is as popular here as the game known as ”el beisbol.”
The so-called national pastime of the United States-a national obsession here-is played by the usual rules, though at an even more leisurely pace, interrupted with arguments that frequently turn to oratory. Strutting in patched uniforms, the hitters pause to wink at their favorite senoritas, while barefoot vendors scurry about, dispensing Dixie Cup shots of strong coffee.
Military officers, guns in their holsters, saunter from the on-deck circle out to the bullpens, sitting with the team when they like. All lines are blurred between grandstand and field, the players and their followers, known appropriately as fanaticos.
At this time of year, most baseball fans back in the States are in acute withdrawal or deep despair, wondering how they`ll survive that annual chilly void between the World Series and spring training.
A diehard fan need travel only as far as that ”other America” to get his fill of the all-American game. From early November through the first week in February, in the major cities of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and western Mexico, you can find professional teams playing nearly every day.
The rosters are stocked with North American minor league players and the top echelon of Latin-born major league stars, who return loyally during the U.S. off-season to play in their native countries and hometowns. A series of thrilling playoffs culminates in the Caribbean World Series, Feb. 3-10 in Mazatlan, Mexico.
Ironically, baseball also lives on in anti-Yanqui Cuba, promoted by Fidel Castro, that fanatico Numero Uno; in beleaguered Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas put down their guns only to pick up their mitts; and in pockets of Panama, Honduras and along the drug-running coast of Colombia.
The real hotbed of winter baseball talent and lore, and the finest locale for combining ballgames with beaches, is the Dominican Republic. Sharing the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, this is the nation where Christopher Columbus first landed.
Little did the conquistadores imagine the role that another set of conquerors-the U.S. Marines-would play. During their eight-year occupation, starting in 1916, the Marines established baseball as the sole sport and major pathway out of poverty for Dominicans. During the 1988 season, more than 50 of its citizens were on major league rosters.
Welcome to the country disguised as a tryout camp, where play-by-plays are broadcast on buses, where children play with cane stalks for bats, where shortstops outnumber scholars, and where I saw baseball caps on every Customs official who thumbed through my boxer shorts.
I arrived on the night of Epiphany, as a crush of believers bore three plywood Wise Men on high, complete with prop scepters and white cotton beards. In this Catholic country, the feast of the Wise Men bestowing gifts on the infant Jesus is celebrated with gift-giving. Retired Cincinnati Reds star Tony Perez had told me, ”In my country, on the day of the Three Kings, all the children ask for a ball, a glove and a bat.”
Just as the ballplaying talents of this island have begun to be tapped, so the tourist possibilities are only starting to be fully exploited. Within a home run`s distance of the Dominican`s five winter-league franchises, the visitor can find sweeps of sand along classic Caribbean pirate coves, and mountain villages brimming with local color and exceedingly gentle folk, along with numerous landmarks of the hemisphere`s oldest Spanish incursion-plus luxury hotels for $60 a night.
New World History and touring begin in Santo Domingo, oldest continuous settlement of the Americas. You can take a tour outside of the ballpark, but you can never completely take the ballpark out of your touring.
On the meager cobblestone plaza before Santa Maria la Menor, the first cathedral of the New World, young boys play a game of stickball. Inside is the crypt of Columbus himself, supposedly his very bones, although they`ve been carted back and forth so many times between here and Havana and Spain that nobody is certain.
The Alcazar, residence of Diego Columbus, brother of Christopher and first governor of the Dominican Republic, sits on a bluff by the river, a square Moorish stone cigar box between solitary, rubber-necked palms on a regal lawn. The austere stone universe of old Santo Domingo, unscathed by modern development and relatively unscarred by the few amber jewelry peddlers, is worth a journey in itself.
From the charming, inland hub of Santiago, whose Aguilas, or Eagles, have long been the island`s underdogs, one can explore the many mission churches and battlements that dot the rugged cibao-an Indian word for ”rocky place”- which Columbus mistook for Cipangu, then the European term for Japan.
Scenic roads that retrace the first explorers` search for gold lead to Puerto Plata`s Long Beach, the Playa Sosua and Atlantic bathing along the North Shore`s rapidly developing ”Amber Coast.”
Even exploring Santo Domingo`s many hotel casinos, baseball is never farther away than a pop fly. At one casino, I shared the blackjack table with Tony Phillips, the Oakland A`s utility infielder, wearing open-toed sandals, a necklace of trade beads and a T-shirt.
”This is where I spend whatever I make down here,” he said. ”I understand these people because I`ve had to struggle for everything, too.” He looked like a contented man as he lost all he had in front of him on a single hand.
Outside, Americanized teen-agers danced to merengue along the Malecon-a continuous curve of oceanfront boulevard where the best discos and restaurants are.
The nation has come a long way since the days of upheaval after the 30-year reign of the dictator, Generalissimo Trujillo, who reigned from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. Among his few public works that vengeful mobs left standing were the country`s four ballparks, which Trujillo ordered built and modeled after the Baltimore Orioles` spring training stadium in Miami. It is at one of these, the Estadio Quisqueya, a 10-minute ride from the Malecon, that I caught my first Dominican team, the Licey Tigers.
Here the fans participate in a second sport with bookies who take bets on the outcome of every pitch. A rum lady keeps the bettors happy, passing the bottle along with paper cups and ice to her regular customers. To stimulate a thirst, there are balls of mashed yucca, thrice-fried greasy chicken parts and even greasier green banana chips called tostones; packaged chicharrones (pork rinds) instead of Crackerjacks; croquettes of bacalao, or codfish, instead of hot dogs.
Dogs wander the aisles along with tarot-card readers, fortune-tellers and magicians who coax paper bouquets from the vests of their shredded tuxedos.
You won`t find any bleacher bums because there are no bleachers. In rural areas, the fields of sugar cane start up just beyond an outfield wall ringed with cigarette ads. The seats behind home plate are rarely sold out, even though they cost only about $1.50. In some parks these are covered with netting to keep precious baseballs from being lost in the stands and protect the players from rocks and bottles.
The 50-cent seats in the uncovered grandstands along the foul lines remain as packed as cattle pens-even though the contests, usually begun in the early evening, proceed for up to five hours. No one leaves until the last out, and why should they? This Yankee sport seems almost to have been invented for this slow-paced culture, for balmy evenings in the Caribbean.
An intrepid baseball explorer might want to stop by one or two of the many encampments constructed by the islands newest colonizers-American major- league teams. More than a dozen National or American League teams have invested in Dominican ”training complexes.” Some are hardly complex-just jungle clearings with foul lines added.
The more elaborate feature live-in dormitories and English lessons. And while some are off-limits or purposely secluded from the prying eyes of rival organizations, most of these plantations for ballplayers are accessible.
Just ask directions from one of the many tigritos, or little tigers, who wander the streets. In other Latin lands, these boys might know the way to every brothel or dictator`s haunt. Here they can escort you to the nearest big-league operation you name.
The ultimate destination for the baseball tourist lies along the south coast`s bumpy main highway, an hour`s drive east of Santo Domingo and a natural stop on the way to La Romana`s Casa de Campo, the most exclusive of the island`s golf-and-beach resorts. Around yet another palm-lined curve, past a thatched roadside stand offering ”Coco Frio,” a newly posted billboard announces, ”Welcome to San Pedro de Macoris. The City Which Has Given the Most Major Leaguers to the World.”
With dozens of its citizens in the major leagues or on the way up, this provincial backwater of 80,000 definitely has the Americas` highest number of men in spikes per capita. At least eight shortstops from the same Little League have gone on to the bigs-including Rafael Ramirez, Julio Franco, Alfredo Griffin, Tony Fernandez, Rafael Santana, Jose Uribe, Nelson Norman and Mariano Duncan.
Driving past the San Pedro harbor`s crumbling balustrades, the tin shanties in the banana groves, it is hard to believe this was once a cultural showplace of the Caribbean. Now grimy smokestacks pour out sorghum soot. Surrounding each sugar mill are grimy and disordered company towns plied by wobbly, overloaded oxcarts.
But look closely behind that sugar mill. There are two diamonds, and behind the university, three more. In the shadow of the main stadium, Estadio Tetelo Vargas, where tryouts go on and rookie leagues play year-round, barefoot kids sharpen their skills using sticks and rocks.
As Ralph Avila, long-time scout for the Dodgers, explained: ”Even those kids who don`t have equipment will go out into the fields, mark out a diamond, and play with a stick or broken stalk of sugar cane for a bat. They will make gloves out of newspaper and cardboard. They will use an orange, a melon, a papaya for a ball.”
The main lure of San Pedro is trying to sniff out a major leaguer or two. Million-dollar-a-year stars, who could live anywhere in the world, return home to spend what they`ve earned and slip into the comforting anonymity of their own neighborhoods.
On a dusty highway between San Pedro and the ocean, I got lost trying to find the mansions that Joaquin Andujar and Alfredo Griffin, former teammates on the Oakland A`s, had built side by side. All I had to do was ask anyone for ”la casa de Joaquin” (the house of Joaquin) and everyone knew where to point. Built smack against the busy road, surrounded by empty lots strewn with trash, the two houses sat-marbleized, windowless vaults for baseball loot. A boy in shorts guarded an iron gate topped with a giant letter ”A.”
For my own casa in San Pedro, I searched out the Cabanas Punta Garza, one of several clumps of bargain oceanfront condos that can be found by keeping your eyes out for road signs some 10 miles west of town. A silver Olds with a license plate that read ”St. Louis Cardinals-World Champions” was already in the lot.
Bargaining lightheartedly over the rates with a tough Mama who let out the rooms, I saw someone large and powerful-looking dozing off on a chair in the corner of the dank office. He was wearing the local garb of swimsuit, rubber sandals, open Hawaiian shirt and wraparound sunglasses.
The Houston Astros` Joaquin Andujar roused himself unwillingly, as if he preferred to be left alone with glory and his anonymity.
”In the Dominican,” he said, ”everyone they are treated the same. The reason we get so many ballplayers? Because in my home, there is only baseball. All the time you see them, kids playing in the street with no shoes on their feet.” And had this former Cardinal been one of those ”little tigers”?
”Yes, sir,” Andujar answered, staring straight. Andujar, a pitcher known more for his fiery disputes with umpires than his sentimentality, said in an interview: ”I can tell you that I love the Dominican Republic, and I love twice as much my hometown of San Pedro de Macoris. I was born and raised here, and I have all of my friends there who are very modest and I will never forget them. One of my wishes is to die in San Pedro de Macoris.”
In the meantime, there`s plenty of joyous living to be found on this isle of ”beisbol.”
