Home
Away
Far Away

 

Americas' Game as It Used To Be (1995)

If you think of professional baseball as only an April-to-October game, you don't know about the winter leagues that play all over the Caribbean. The season runs from the end of October through the end of January. The four principal leagues are in Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Whenever I'm in San Juan at that time of the year, I try to attend the almost daily games at the Hiram Bithorn stadium, which, unlike most baseball stadia, is home to two teams--both the San Juan Senadores (or Senators) and the Santurce Cangrejeros (Crabbers). That accounts for why the first-base dugout is emblazoned with "San Juan" in large letters, while that on third base reads "Santurce."

Seating nearly 20,000 on a single level, the Bithorn stadium has all the familiar comforts, such as vendors who sell cotton candy, plantain chips, beer (called "cervesa," which is pronounced survey-zeh), and piña colada with or without rum. The main season runs approximately from late October to the end of the first week in January, with games played mostly at night. In the second week of January, the top four teams begin a two-week round-robin playoff, whose two winners face the best teams from the winter leagues in the other three countries at the end of the month.

Liga de Beisbol Professional de Puerto Rico, as it is officially called, offers the real thing: baseball as it used to be, without background music, video replays, or commercial ads between innings. The game is also quicker, because the pauses between innings need not wait for a full two minutes of television commercials. You must pay constant attention to the game, because if you miss seeing a crucial play nothing will show it to you again. The six teams play nearly every day except for "Dia de Accion de Gracias" (or Thanksgiving) and "Navidad" (Christmas), with each team moving the following day to a different place on this island the size of New Jersey; there are no such things as extended "home stands," "road trips," or a series of games against a single team (until the post-season playoffs).

In the Bithorn stadium, there is plenty of leg room between the rows, and the largest ads are the mute and static billboards on the outfield wall. At a game I attended recently, between Santurce and Mayaguez, there was also no national anthem, oddly, and no seventh-inning stretch. The San Juan aficionados sat behind home plate and out toward first base, while the fans from Mayaguez (three hours away) sat on the third-base side, with each side screaming at the other. It resembled more a mainland college football game than any baseball game I've seen up north, mostly because back home the other teams' fans live too far away. Play continues through a brief mild drizzle, though it is halted for serious rain (which rarely lasts long in this climate).

The players are a mix of high minor leaguers with locals, some of whom are currently playing in the majors or will soon play there; others of whom have played. As each team is allowed eight non-Puerto Ricans, these tend to be mainlanders who still need to prove themselves. The Mets' Ryan Thompson, for instance, recently played for San Juan, while his New York teammate Jeremy Burnitz played for the Arecibo Lobos (Wolves). In the past few years I can remember seeing Ran Lankford and Albert Belle, among other African-Americans, before they starred in the big leagues. Veteran spectators can recall when Don Mattingly won the batting crown or when Johnny Bench played.

A few years ago, the native Puerto Rican Carlos Baerga, now of the Cleveland Indians, was a star for San Juan; Bernie Williams, a Puerto Rican now on the Yankees, played for Arecibo. The Brooklyn-born (Nuyorican) Edgar Martinez, now in Seattle, hit .424 during the 1987-88 season (incidentally destroying a popular hot stove theory that no one can hit above 400 anymore). As recently as 1990-91, I was surprised to see the Crabbers use Ivan de Jesus as a starting shortstop and Jaime Benitez as a pinch-hitter, because neither had played in the states for years. Each received an extra round of applause when he appeared, acknowledging their continuing loyalty to their initial team. "Twenty years!" one fan told me.

When a mainland team isn't doing well, it makes a trade or recalls a player from the minors. Here teams can call upon prominent alumni. Santurce, which is my Other Team (after the New York Yankees), whose cap I wear along with a light-blue, t-shirt emblazoned Cangrejeros, hadn't been doing too well in November 1993, even though it won the all-Caribbean tournament the previous year. So you can imagine the relief on November 30th, when two world-class all-stars returned to play to the end of the season--Ruben Sierra (now of Oakland) and the Texas Rangers' slugger Juan Gonzalez. (The latter is curiously known as "Igor" G. in Puerto Rico. Their contributions were insufficient, as San Juan was the island champ that year.) Since no player gets paid much in Puerto Rico, it must have been something other then money that brought them back.

It is unfortunate that the Puerto Rican teams don't sell programs, because you cannot identify players until the scoreboard announcer introduces them. Instead of names, they all wear product logos (much like European soccer teams, curiously); so that if you didn't know better, you'd think all the San Juan players were named "Bud Light." The announcer is pretty clear, except with two-syllable Anglo-Saxon surnames that have fairly equal stresses. "Ray Lankford" and "Scott Coolbaugh" were unintelligible until their names flashed on the modest-sized digital scoreboard, which is bilingual, sometimes reading "BD" for designated hitter and other times "DH." You can hear umpires screaming "ball" and "strike."

I remain surprised that these games don't appear live on mainland television during the baseball-starved winter months; the drama and quality of play is certainly better than that displayed in the short-lived wintertime Senior League a few years ago. (Though they are sometimes televised in Puerto Rico, East Coast friends with satellite dishes tell me they "can't find them." One exciting game to have seen in 1993--it was televised there and packed the Bithorn stadium for the first time in a while--pitted the Senadores against the Cuban National Team on past December first, at the end of Caribbean games [at which many Cuban athletes defected]. Javier Lopez, a catcher who also plays for the Atlanta Braves, hit a game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth.)

When you're at the game, don't forget that Puerto Ricans, like most tropical peoples, tend to be friendlier than mainlanders. Don't hesitate to ask questions of the fans around you (remembering that nearly all Puerto Ricans understand English, even if they don't like to speak it). Don't be surprised if the spectator next to you tells you about the players' recent performances; this is serious stuff, to be sure. He or she might even recall the appearance of familiar names, as nearly everyone important in mainland baseball, including managers, have spent at least one winter in Puerto Rico (except, of course, Mexican, Dominicans, and Venezuelans). I never fail to consume at least two empanadas (at 75 cents apiece) and two crushed-ice-chilled piña coladas ($2.00 without rum; twice that with rum). This is, after all, a baseball game.

The Hiram Bithorn stadium is a short ride from either the Condado or Isle Verde, San Juan's principal beach resorts, to the Hato Rey complex that also houses the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, which is an indoor arena (for basketball games and rock concerts). Be sure to pronounce it correctly: EE-ram BEE-torn, after a Chicago Cubs pitcher who was in the early 1940s the first Puerto Rican to play in the major leagues. If your pronunciation isn't understood, say "baseball near Plaza Las Americas," which everyone knows, because it is the largest shopping center in the Caribbean. You can ask the cab driver to return at the end of the game, which he can hear over local radio, or telephone a radio taxi when the game is over.

For $5.00 you can get a box seat; general admission is $4.50 for adults, and $2.50 for niños. As a sell-out there is no more likely than one at Yankee Stadium or Shea, you can expect to get a ticket when you show up for the game; you need not purchase one in advance. The teams' schedule is published along with box scores for the previous night's games in the sports pages of both the Spanish and English dailies. Should you need to call the stadium itself (perhaps because the Spanish paper announces a game in the afternoon, while the San Juan Star has it starting at 8:00 p.m.), try 765-5000. You can wager your dollars against anyone else's pennies that the weather will be warm.

I would be remiss if I didn't say something about the literature of Puerto Rican baseball. There isn't much, surely in English, even in Spanish I'm told. You won't find anything specific about it in the fabled The Baseball Encyclopedia. The second edition of Total Baseball (1991) has only an eight-page afterthought on all Caribbean baseball that neglects Puerto Rican activity, for instance providing historic statistics for only the Cuban and Dominican leagues. The West Coast journalist John Krich published El Beisbol! (1989), which devotes many pages to Puerto Rico, even though internal evidence reveals that he never saw a game there. Michael and Mary Oleksak's Beisbol (1991) deals more with Latin Americans who graduated to the majors than with the experience of play down there.

Though serious baseball, this is scarcely forbidding. You can see players talking with fans seated in the front rows. Some even sign autographs for the kids who collect atop the dugouts until shooed away. You can spot the mainland players' wives or lovers sitting alone or with one another; they tend to look like real blondes. My best friend in Puerto Rico, a music professor at the university, customarily meets other professors at the Bithorn stadium, as well as lawyers and other professionals. (The last league president, Peter Ortiz, is a former judge of the Commonwealth Supreme Court.)

Fans bring noisemakers. I remember hearing one with a trumpet that he played whenever he wished, only to the enjoyment of some. When you purchase beer at Yankee Stadium, it comes in a paper cup; New York fans apparently aren't trusted with cans or any other objects that might be thrown. At Hiram Bithorn, the beerseller opens the can before you, pouring it into a cup. If the can isn't empty, he gives it to you along with the cup. Going through the Bithorn crowd is a man with a cart with all the fixings for mixed drinks; in contrast, only a select few people can purchase hard liquor at Yankee games. Needless to say, no one checks your handbags for throwables when you enter Hiram Bithorn. As I said, this is baseball the way it used to be. Enjoy it when you can; I do.