Molina Read online

  When the season was over, Greene had shoulder surgery. The Angels quickly signed veteran catcher Matt Walbeck. The message was clear: If Greene couldn’t play, Walbeck was their Plan B, not me or Hemphill.

  Mayaguez won the Caribbean World Series that winter, which meant a $5,000 bonus plus $2,000 in extra pay for playing in the postseason. It was the most money I’d ever had. The championship was in Hermosillo, Mexico, so afterward my wife and I rode seven hours by bus with Kyshly on our laps to my in-laws’ house. We still didn’t own a car, and in Mexico we looked at a used Mustang at a local car lot for $3,000. We could make a down payment then pay it off in monthly installments. My wife wanted it. She saw the cars the other players on the Mayaguez team drove. She saw me still hitching rides or chugging along in Pai’s Nova. She saw the clothes the other wives wore. This had become an ongoing argument. Why aren’t you in the Major Leagues yet? Why are those guys passing you by? Why are you still in the minors making nothing?

  “Let’s do something for ourselves for once,” she said at the car lot.

  I looked at Kyshly in the stroller. She’d need clothes, checkups, who knew what else? I couldn’t justify the $3,000. We left the lot, bought a TV for our bedroom, and put the rest of the money in the bank.

  As I packed for spring training in February 1998, I wished I could take Kyshly with me. I hated leaving her. She was a perfect little soul. I felt guilty that I couldn’t give her more. I couldn’t be there for her every day like Pai was for me. I told myself I’d earn enough money someday to make up for it. She would have everything. She would know how much I loved her.

  At the end of spring training, I saw Troy Percival handing out something to each of the clubbies and batboys.

  “Hey, Percy, is that a tip?”

  He explained about tips. You tipped the clubbies for washing your uniform and scrubbing your spikes, ordering bats and gloves, delivering mail, shipping luggage. He said when you played on the road, you tip the visitors’ clubhouse attendants at the end of each series.

  “First couple years, don’t worry about it. You’re making minimum. No one expects you to tip. When you make Major League money, you take care of the guys.”

  When. Not if. A matter of time.

  My wife was pregnant again. Due in October. Soon I’d be making Major League money. I could buy a nice house with lots of room for the children. I’d send them to the best schools. I was sure a second child and a bigger paycheck would bring my wife and me closer. The marriage had the feel of make-believe, like kids playing house. Or at least that’s what it had once felt like—superficial but pleasant. Now we were easily irritated. We picked at each other over stupid things.

  I began the 1998 season in Triple A in Vancouver, British Columbia. I had made the leap. The next step was the Major Leagues. I had paid my dues. If something happened to Matt Walbeck or Phil Nevin, I was next in line. One night in late May my Triple A manager summoned me to his office.

  “B-Mo, the Angels are making some moves.”

  Finally! I was hitting .293, the highest of any catcher in the Angels’ entire organization. I knew I was the best defensive catcher, too.

  “They need you in Double A.”

  “What?”

  “They have some pitchers down there they want you to—”

  “Are you kidding me? This is insane!”

  I was twenty-three years old. I was running out of time. A couple more years in the minor leagues and they’d be telling me I was too old for the Majors. Clearly, I couldn’t stay in this organization. I’d rot in Vancouver and Midland and Lake Elsinore forever. Maybe another team would give me a fair chance.

  “Call them right now and tell them I want my release. I’m not going back to Double A. That’s insane.”

  The manager stood and raised his hands to calm me. “Take it easy. You don’t want your release. You have an opportunity here.”

  I flung open the door, letting the knob bang against the wall. I stormed to my locker, where my teammates had gathered, wondering why I was so upset.

  “They’re crazy if they think I’m going to Double A,” I said, shoving clothes and equipment into my duffel bag. I slung it over my shoulder and huffed toward the door, spewing every vulgar, hateful word I knew.

  “B-Mo!”

  I kept walking. Screw everyone.

  Suddenly I was hurtling backward. Jovino Carvajal, a veteran minor leaguer from the Dominican Republic, had grabbed the back of my collar. He shoved me into a chair in the hallway.

  “You want to play baseball?” he yelled at me.

  “This isn’t fair!”

  “I said do you want to play baseball?”

  We were yelling in Spanish. The Latin players were bunched in the doorway, listening.

  “They’re screwing with my career!”

  “Everybody here knows you belong in the Major Leagues,” Jovino said. “You’re throwing it away.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “You want not fair? I’m twenty-nine years old. Nine years in the minors. Four years in Triple A. You want me to get you my numbers? You want me to show you? I’m the best outfielder here four years in a row. I still haven’t gotten the call. That’s the game, bro. This ain’t Little League.”

  “It’s screwed. I’m not going to Double A.”

  “You gotta grow up, B-Mo. You got a daughter.”

  And another on the way, I thought. But I didn’t answer. I was fuming. Carvajal returned to the clubhouse. I didn’t move. After a time, players walked by in twos and threes, heading home. “Good luck, B-Mo,” they said. Carvajal emerged and smacked me on the shoulder as he passed.

  “Go and show these guys who you are.”

  I called Pai from the clubbie’s office.

  “You got to go,” he said.

  He didn’t remind me that Cheo was still in Double A, the league I felt was now beneath me. He didn’t ask what made me more deserving than Cheo. He didn’t tell me I was a grown man with a wife and a child to provide for. He didn’t have to. It was all there: You got to go.

  You think baseball is all about numbers, rankings, concrete measures. Cut and dried. I put up the numbers they wanted. It didn’t make any difference. They had a way of measuring that I didn’t understand.

  I flew to Texas to join the Midland team.

  One night, I was watching ESPN and there in the highlights was a benches-clearing fight between the Angels and Kansas City. Five Angels players had been suspended for four games. One was Phil Nevin.

  The next day in the Midland clubhouse after BP, our manager, Mario Mendoza, called for everyone to gather up. He called me to the front.

  “I have something to say,” he said, pacing slowly with his hands clasped behind his back like a lawyer. “I feel so sorry for one of us. That’s Bengie Molina. This is a very tough thing for him, I want to make sure you give him a hug. He’s going back to Lake Elsinore.”

  My mind was racing. This couldn’t be happening.

  “I don’t think he’s going to take it very well,” Mendoza said. But now I could see he was smiling. Something was up.

  “Okay, everybody please stand up and give Bengie a hug. He’s going to the Major Leagues!”

  Everybody cheered and congratulated me. I knew I’d be up there for a short time, just until the suspensions were over. I didn’t care. I had made it to the Major Leagues.

  I found a phone to call Pai.

  “I’m going. They called me up. Just as a fill-in. I’m meeting them in Dallas.”

  Silence. Then, “Wow, mi hijo. I’m so happy for you! Congratulations!”

  I could hear my mother in the background: “What, Benja? What?”

  “Thank you, Pai. Where I am now is because of you,” I said.

  I wanted to make sure he knew that I didn’t think for one second I had done this on my own.

  “If you didn’t put me in my place when I needed it, if you didn’t pick up the phone and talk when I needed it, I’d have quit. You kept me goin
g. I won’t let you down.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Baseball’s baseball. Same in Dallas as Dorado. Ball’s no bigger or smaller. They still have to throw it over the plate for a strike.”

  “I wish you could be there. I know it’s too far.”

  “I’m always with you.”

  Then Mai was on the phone. “What the heck did you tell him? What’s going on?”

  I gave her the news. I said it was only for four days until the suspensions were over and Nevin returned to the lineup.

  “You show them you should stay! You’re better than any of them!”

  I laughed. I’d have paid money to see Mai in the stands, ragging Angels manager Terry Collins to put me in.

  I DROPPED MY bags at the hotel and headed straight for the park, a short walk away. The Rangers’ ballpark looked like a fortress, all red brick and stone with huge Lone Stars and steer heads looming high above arched entrances. The game wouldn’t start for another six hours. I circled the building, pulling on locked doors until a security guard walked me to the players’ gate, down the elevator, and into a wide concrete concourse that led to the visitors’ clubhouse. The guard’s name was Noel Saldivar, and from that moment we were friends. Over the years, we’d talk whenever the Angels played the Rangers, eventually exchanging phone numbers and playing fantasy football together.

  The clubhouse wasn’t like any I had ever seen. There were TVs everywhere and sofas in the middle of the room. The lockers and benches were dark wood polished to a gleam. The carpet looked as if it had been installed that morning. The room even smelled good, like fresh laundry. Clubhouses in the minors had one or two toilets and at most three showers. This one had seven showers and six toilets. The cafeteria was bigger than most minor-league clubhouses. Inside was an actual cook. In refrigerators and freezers, in bowls and baskets, were heaps of food—candy bars, ice cream, crackers, cookies, fruit, sandwiches, soft drinks. All of it free. It was like our own personal Circle K. In the minors, you made your own sandwich from the cold cuts or the peanut butter and jelly on a counter in the clubhouse.

  My eyes fell on a locker across the room with a nameplate.

  MOLINA.

  Inside hung two practice jerseys and two road jerseys with the Angels’ red, white, and blue logo on the front and MOLINA sewn across the back. There were also undershirts for the jerseys, T-shirts, socks, hats, pants, and a belt. I brought spikes and bats.

  “B-Mo!”

  It was Kenny Higdon, the Angels’ clubhouse manager. He had been one of the first people I met in rookie ball six years earlier. He showed me the trainers’ room, the weight room, and the batting tunnel. Everything was bigger and better and shinier than I had imagined. It made me even hungrier to make it.

  Players began arriving. I knew them, of course, from spring training, and they hugged me and greeted me like I was a big deal. Coaches stopped by, too, and gave me a warm welcome. Then manager Terry Collins.

  “Congratulations, boy,” he said.

  The rare times he had addressed me in spring training the last two years, he called me “boy.” I couldn’t help but hear the condescension.

  The first game was close; I knew I wouldn’t go in. So I relaxed and took in the beauty of the park. The stripes mowed into the grass. The flags of every Major League team flapping from the outfield roof. The old-timey tiered decks and out-of-town scoreboard. The enormous video screen in right-center flashing gargantuan photos of every batter. Everything was so monumental and majestic, even the neon ads for Coke and Budweiser. Pai was right about baseball being baseball no matter where you played. But the game looked and felt different in a place like this. It was like holding Mass in a cathedral instead of a school basement.

  When the second game turned into a blowout, reliever Troy Percival told me to be ready. The innings passed. Collins never put me in.

  The third game, another blowout. “You’ll get your shot,” Percy said. Again no call.

  The fourth game we were losing badly late in the game, the seventh or eighth inning. Percy was more certain than ever I would make my Major League debut. When the inning passed without a call, Percy picked up the bullpen phone.

  “Put Terry on the phone!”

  Then: “What are you waiting for? Put the rookie in!”

  But Collins didn’t.

  Nevin returned from suspension. My Major League stint was over. When I arrived back at Double A, everyone gave me a hard time about not getting a single minute of playing time.

  On September 1, when the minor-league season was over, Major League teams could add a certain number of minor leaguers to their rosters, a practice referred to as September call-ups. It gave minor leaguers a taste of the big leagues, and it gave managers and general managers an opportunity to see their minor leaguers in person against top competition. I was sure I’d get called up. But September 1 came and went. No call.

  So on September 3, I flew to Yuma and drove to Mexico to join my wife and daughter. The tendons in my knees had become increasingly painful. A local Mexican doctor injected both knees with cortisone. I wanted to get it done quickly so I’d be ready for winter ball. The shots were so painful I could barely walk out of his office. He said I’d be good as new in two weeks. In the meantime, I had to stay in bed; I wasn’t supposed to bend or put weight on my knees.

  Three days later, as I watched TV on the couch, the phone rang. Charlie O’Brien, one of the Angels’ catchers, had gotten hurt. The team had booked a flight for me that left the following day. I was in pain but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to say anything about the shots or my pain. In the back of my mind, I thought I probably wouldn’t even play. I didn’t care how painful it was. I was in the Major Leagues. The Mexican doctor had given me strong pain pills, and that was enough.

  There were ten days left in the season. I mostly caught bullpens, wincing behind the mask every time I crouched. I didn’t tell anyone about the shots.

  Technically I made my Major League debut: I got in twice as a defensive replacement. But both times Collins took me out before I could get an official at-bat.

  Soon it was the last game. We were in Oakland. The game was meaningless for us. We were too far behind in the standings to make the playoffs. The veteran players, tired and battered from a long season, were happy to sit on the bench and let the rookies play.

  “Hey, rook, get ready. You’re gonna catch,” Matt Walbeck said in the clubhouse before the game. I saw him go into Collins’s office. Then he spoke briefly to each of the other catchers—Nevin, Greene, Chad Kreuter. I knew they were conspiring to get me into the game.

  Kreuter started. Inning after inning, Collins kept him in. “Put B-Mo in!” several pitchers shouted from the bullpen, where I sat next to Troy Percival. “What the hell is he doing?” Percy fumed.

  I said nothing and showed nothing on my face. But I was seething. Every other call-up had gotten an at-bat. What was Collins’s problem with me? Six years in the minors working my butt off and he couldn’t give me one lousy at-bat?

  We were up 4–1 in the eighth inning when Kreuter stepped into the on-deck circle. Suddenly he turned around, walked into the dugout, and slid his bat into the rack. Percy elbowed me. “He’s trying to get you into the game.”

  We watched Collins go to Walbeck, who waved him off. Collins moved on to Nevin, who also waved him off, too. Even Todd Greene waved him off.

  The phone rang in the bullpen. I was going to hit.

  Buddy Groom was pitching. Good. I had faced him in winter ball. I worked him to a hitter’s count then crushed a sharp grounder to the left side. Third baseman Eric Chavez made a great play and threw me out.

  I caught the bottom of the eighth and ninth, and we shut down the A’s pretty easily. The season was over. I had made my Major League batting debut. I lingered in the dugout, breathing in the moment. Darin Erstad, our center fielder, stopped in front of me. I didn’t know him well. I stood out of respect. He put his hands on my shoulders.

 
“Hey, now you have an at-bat in the Majors. You’re a Major Leaguer,” he said. “Nobody can take that from you.”

  KELSSY WAS BORN in Yuma three weeks after the end of the season. When my wife’s water broke, we drove from her parents’ home across the border to an American hospital. We flew to Puerto Rico soon afterward so I could play winter ball. My family of four crammed into the guest bedroom at Mai and Pai’s. Kyshly slept in the bed with us and Kelssy in the crib. I loved my two babies, but more and more I was realizing the marriage was crumbling.

  All my wife and I seemed to talk about was money. I earned a little more in winter ball than the previous year—$1,300 a month—and received food from the government. I gave money to Mai and Pai for groceries, gas, and rent. I saved for our plane fares back to Arizona in January. There was nothing left at the end of each month. I was working as hard as I could. But every discussion seemed to spin off into a fight about money. Neither of us knew how to talk to the other. We were too immature and inexperienced. Our fights had none of the underlying affection that smoothed the edges of Mai and Pai’s arguments. Whatever affection we once felt was all but gone. I’m sure my absences didn’t help. But it was deeper than that. We didn’t seem to like each other. I wasn’t happy, and she sure didn’t seem to be happy. But I couldn’t leave my daughters. I would be there for them no matter what, the way a father should be, just as Pai was for my brothers and me.

  One day in Puerto Rico, the rain drummed the roof so hard we could barely hear the television. Then it knocked the reception out altogether. My game in Mayaguez had been canceled. My wife was in the bedroom taking a nap with Kyshly and Kelssy. Mai was in the kitchen. Cheo and Yadier were out. It was just Pai and me in the living room. I mentioned how many trophies used to be crammed onto every shelf when I was growing up. Now there were only a half dozen or so.

  “Mmm.” Pai folded back a page in the newspaper.

  “I remember the one with the wood base and big cup,” I said. “I looked for it all day after the flood.”

  Pai lifted his eyes and scanned the shelves, as if only now realizing the trophy had been missing all these years.