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  “It’s an embarrassment what we’re going through right now, losing so much, being in last place,” I told reporters. “We came here to win. We didn’t come here to be part of a country club just to pass the time, just to get paid. At least I didn’t come here for that. I didn’t come here to lose.

  “People have got to understand, if you think only of yourself and your numbers and not the team, you’re probably going to have a so-so year. But if you play for the team, to win, you’re going to have way better numbers. If we have people here who are worrying about getting paid or just happy to be here and not worrying about winning, they’re on the wrong team—or I am.

  “We have a saying in Puerto Rico: ‘I put my little piece in the puzzle.’ What I do on the field is my piece. But I can’t carry the team. Barry Bonds can’t carry the team. Ray Durham, nobody. This has to be done together.

  “Every guy has got to go out there between those lines and respect the game. Go all out for three and a half hours and respect your teammates. That’s the biggest thing here, respect your teammates and work your butt off for nine innings. If you get beat, you can keep your head up. But if you beat yourself or you don’t come out with the right energy or desire, if you’re coming out just to get paid, it’s hard on everybody.”

  Afterward, on my way home, I knew my teammates might be pissed when they saw the morning paper. Maybe even Boch would be pissed. I didn’t fall asleep until the sun was rising. In the afternoon, when I arrived in the clubhouse, only one player felt offended. Bonds.

  We snapped our losing streak that night. After the game Mike Murphy, our clubhouse manager, handed me a ball.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your one hundredth home run.”

  “Really?” I had no idea.

  Bonds had hit his 762nd home run that night, too, so none of the reporters asked about my little milestone. But this ball meant as much to me as any of Bonds’s records. One hundred homers in the Majors when I couldn’t even hit a ball to the hill at Maysonet Park.

  I had to call Pai, though I knew he might not come to the phone.

  By luck, he answered.

  “Pai, I hit my hundredth homer today.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Congratulations.”

  “Now I’m only six hundred and sixty-two behind Bonds. I think I can catch up.”

  Pai gave me a little laugh.

  The ice was breaking.

  With a few games left in the season, Bochy called me into his office.

  “Congratulations, Big Kahuna, you won the Willie Mac Award.”

  Named after the Giants’ beloved Hall of Famer Willie McCovey, it went to the team’s most inspirational player as voted on by the players, coaches, and training staff.

  My Gold Glove in 2003 had been voted on by the media. This was different. This was from the people closest to you, who knew you best. I couldn’t have been more honored.

  In the off-season, Yadier landed a big multiyear contract with the Cardinals. The next day, he took Pai to a Toyota dealer.

  “Why are you bringing me here? I don’t need a car. I already got a car.”

  “This is so you can be more comfortable driving to work.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “I’m buying it.”

  Pai parked the FJ Cruiser 4x4 SUV in the driveway. He left it there for a month, with the plastic still on the seats and visors.

  Mai called me to tell me they were throwing a surprise party for Yadier to celebrate his new contract. Would I come? I knew Kelssy and Kyshly couldn’t miss school, and I didn’t want to go without them. I’d be leaving them again soon enough for spring training. I told Mai I couldn’t get down there but I’d be thinking of them.

  A few days after the party, I was talking to a friend from Puerto Rico who had been there. “You should have heard what your father said.”

  Pai had made a toast.

  “I’m proud of my sons. I’m very happy with what they’ve become. We’re only missing one thing here. My oldest son, Bengie. We’re missing him here. I don’t know why he didn’t come. He should have been here. We’re here having fun. Pa’l carajo con el!”

  That destroyed me. Pa’l carajo con el means To hell with him. I would have been there had I known how important it was to Pai. I would have done whatever it took. Dropped everything.

  I immediately called Mai and my brothers to apologize.

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  Yadier said he didn’t remember what Pai said. Cheo said Pai had too many beers. Mai said don’t worry, it was fine.

  I knew it wasn’t fine. I knew Pai was thinking I was disloyal, that I didn’t put family first. For Pai, that was the worst sin. It was confusing. I was putting family first. I was choosing my daughters over a party. I didn’t know what was right or wrong with him. I didn’t know how to make him happy. It seemed I couldn’t win.

  JAMIE’S APARTMENT BUILDING in Los Angeles was converting to condos. She had to buy one or move. I told her it was the fates telling her it was time to be with me. In February 2008, right before spring training, Jamie moved her stuff into my house in Yuma. In San Francisco during the baseball season, we rented a house in the Marina District with views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. In July, with the girls out of school for the summer, Jamie flew from San Francisco to Yuma, met the girls at the airport, then flew back with them to San Francisco. Kyshly was thirteen and Kelssy nine, still too young in my mind to fly by themselves.

  The four of us had a great time together. We went ice-skating at Yerba Buena, flew kites on the Marina Green, rented little “Go-Cars” at the Wharf and drove them—Jamie and Kyshly in one car, Kelssy and me in the other—down to the base of the Golden Gate Bridge (where we saw a dolphin in the bay), through the Presidio to Baker Beach and Sea Cliff. We ate clam chowder from bread bowls at Fisherman’s Wharf. We went to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, bought souvenirs. Kelssy chose an “Alcatraz Psych Ward Outpatient” jacket. We laughed so much our faces hurt. We took our ten-month-old Samoyed, Chico, for walks on Crissy Field and played soccer. At night when I got home from the ballpark, we played Scrabble, Boggle, or Rummy. I watched the girls with Jamie and thought if Pai could see them for just one weekend, all that worry in his heart would go away. I’d get my father back. But he wouldn’t come visit, no matter how many times I asked Mai.

  With Barry Bonds gone in 2008, there was already a more relaxed feel in the clubhouse. But his departure left a huge hole in the lineup. Now someone else was going to have to bat cleanup. Bochy made an unlikely choice.

  Me.

  Boch, a former catcher himself, made sure I knew my number-one job was handling an incredibly young, incredibly talented pitching staff. Tim Lincecum. Matt Cain. Jonathan Sanchez. Brian Wilson. Almost overnight, we changed from a hitting team to a pitching team.

  In late May, seven weeks into the season, I went on a hitting tear. I’d had good streaks, but none like that. In one doubleheader in Miami, I went 6-for-7 with four doubles and five RBIs. (And I caught sixteen innings that day.) I hit .652 for the week. I was named National League Player of the Week, which came with a commemorative watch. Mai congratulated me after she read about it in the newspaper.

  “Pai knows, right?”

  “I’m sure he does. He reads the paper. But he’s not here right now.”

  I called later, and he answered.

  “Bendición.”

  “Dios te bendiga.”

  “Pai, did you see?”

  “What a series you had in Miami.”

  “Yeah, every swing I had was a good one.”

  “Did you notice something? You got most of those hits to right center.”

  I laughed. “What you always told me. See? I listened.”

  “Congratulations on your watch. Okay, here’s Mai.”

  The conversation was over.

  When school started in August, the girls visited San Francisco on weekends if the Giants played at home, flying with Jamie
or our friend Angie. Otherwise, they were in Yuma with their mother. One downside to baseball was being away from family. It was something you never got used to.

  As September began, my hands looked like they always did toward the end of the season—like they belonged to two different men. The fingers on my glove hand were about one and a half times thicker than the ones on my throwing hand, and they were a different color—more purple than brown. The knuckles looked like misshapen knots on a tree. Two were fractured, but they’d have to wait until the end of the season to heal—not that there was really much to be done anyway. They just had to be left alone.

  The toll of another season reminded me of how much time had passed. I had been with the Giants almost two years, and my father had yet to see me play.

  The following week Mai called to say she was traveling to St. Louis to see Yadier, then wanted to visit with me during the Giants’ end-of-the-season swing through San Diego and Arizona.

  And one more thing. Pai was coming.

  AN AIRLINE EMPLOYEE pushed Mai in a wheelchair into the baggage claim area of San Diego International Airport. She had bad knees, bad feet, and a bad heel, so she wore some sort of metal contraption on her foot. Vitin had taken to calling her the Hardware Store. Pai followed a few steps behind her. I hadn’t seen him in almost two years. Two years. At fifty-eight, he was still barrel-chested and regal.

  Jamie knew I was nervous. She squeezed my hand. “Your father is a good man and he loves you,” she said. “Those two truths will win out.”

  I waved, but Pai didn’t see. Mai did, and her face lit up: the slightly lopsided smile, the crinkled eyes, the pink cheeks. When she waved, Pai looked our way. He smiled and raised his chin in a nod.

  “Bengie!” Mai said when they reached us. She pushed herself up from the wheelchair and held out her chubby arms.

  “Bendición,” I said, hugging her. My throat was dry and my eyes were wet. I had missed them so much.

  “Bendición, Pai. Thank you for coming.”

  “Dios te bendiga.”

  He gave me a tight hug. I squeezed my eyes to stop more tears from falling. I stepped back and put my arm around Jamie’s shoulders. This is the person who has changed my life. This is the person who loves and dotes on your granddaughters. This is the person who completes my family. That was what I wanted to say.

  What I said instead: “This is Jamie, my fiancée.”

  Mai smiled and offered her hand, then Pai. No hugs.

  “Un placer,” Jamie said, smiling her thousand-watt smile. Pleasure to meet you. Jamie had taken a Spanish class in preparation for meeting my family.

  We stopped at Denny’s on the way to the hotel. Pai made a big show of stealing french fries from Mai’s plate and teasing her about eating too much. Mai smacked his hand and told him she’d spear him with a fork next time. Jamie laughed and shot me an amused glance; this was the Mai-and-Pai routine she’d been hearing about all these years. Except Pai wasn’t just relaxed and funny, he was almost giddy. I had never seen him so animated. He couldn’t stop smiling. I imagine Jamie wasn’t the ogre he had been hearing about the past two years. And I imagine he was as happy and relieved to see me as I was to see him.

  We had arranged for Kyshly and Kelssy to drive in from Yuma with our friends José and Angie with their daughter, Christina. They didn’t know guelo and guela would be waiting for them. Mai hid behind a big chair in the hotel room. Pai hid in the closet. When the girls arrived, they hugged me and Jamie. Then Mai and Pai popped out. Kyshly and Kelssy shrieked and fell into their grandparents’ arms. They had seen one another just five weeks earlier on a visit to Puerto Rico with their mother. Their love affair was a strong one, unaffected by the freeze-out between Pai and me.

  Soon Kyshly was sandwiched on the couch between Mai and Jamie, and Kelssy was sprawled across my father in an armchair. My eyes welled up again. Finally, the people I loved most, all in one place.

  At the game that night, Kelssy spent several innings on Jamie’s lap. Though she was only nine, she was almost as big as Jamie. “You’re going to kill her, Kelssy!” Pai had said. He saw how the girls hung all over Jamie and how she brushed their hair and protected them from foul balls and made sure they ate something other than hot dogs and churros. How she joked with them that they wouldn’t go anywhere without Jamie holding their hands.

  We spent three days together in San Diego. The girls snapped photos of Pai in a fluffy white robe with Kelssy’s big toy eyeglasses perched on his nose. He sang along to his favorite salsa music into a room-service ketchup bottle and danced around the room, the girls dancing and laughing with him. He got on all fours, and the girls rode him like a horse. He was so gentle and playful, a side I rarely saw growing up. It was as if we had finally become what we wanted in the other: I had become the kind of leader and warrior on the field he had always expected of me; and he had become softer and more loving, qualities I had always looked for in him as a child.

  Jamie earned points with Pai by fetching him six-packs of Coors Light.

  “Only one more,” Mai said. “You’re drinking too much.”

  “Who are you to tell me? I’ll take as many as I want.”

  Mai rolled her eyes. We stayed up talking, making up for lost time. Pai told a story about having to appear in court a few weeks earlier. “It doesn’t matter why,” he said before we could ask. Vitin was driving him, and on the way, Pai said there was a problem. He knew he was expected to show the judge his driver’s license.

  “I told Vitin I didn’t have a license. I’d never had one. Vitin couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘You’ve been driving all these years without a license?’ ”

  Pai laughed. “It was true. So I asked Vitin, ‘What am I going to do?’ He called someone he knew at the DMV. We went there, I passed the test and got my picture taken. When they handed me the license, I held it up and kissed it.”

  Pai mimicked kissing his license. “I said, ‘I haven’t seen you in fifty-eight years!’ ”

  Mai shook her head and scoffed. “Oh, you had a license.”

  “Who’s telling the story?”

  Over dinner one night, Pai slipped a major announcement into the conversation.

  “I’m retiring at the end of the year. You might be seeing me a lot.”

  “Finally!” I said “You and Mai could stay here for a month. Why not?” We could make up for lost time. We could get back to normal. I could ask all my questions.

  “We’ll see,” Pai said. “I still have the Pampers League,” referring to his team of nine- and ten-year-olds.

  “Let somebody else carry the load. You’ve put in your time, Pai. You should relax.”

  “What, and hang around the house?” Mai said.

  Before we left San Diego, my friend José pulled me aside.

  “Your dad just told me something.”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Now I’m okay. Now I’m fine. I can go back home in peace.’ ”

  “Really?”

  “He said, ‘I see how the girls are with Jamie. I know they’re fine.’ ”

  I let out a long breath. He saw.

  We had an off day between our series in San Diego and our series against the Diamondbacks in Arizona. So I drove to Yuma with Jamie, Mai and Pai, and the girls. I had never heard Pai talk so much as on that drive. We stopped at my house so Mai and Pai could see it, but they spent the night with the girls at my ex’s. The next day, Jamie and I picked up Mai and Pai, said good-bye to the girls, and drove to Phoenix.

  I struck out three times against Cy Young winner Brandon Webb.

  “I don’t know how you don’t hit that guy! I could hit him with my bare hand!” Pai said at the hotel afterward. “Why do you want to pull the ball? That’s why you strike out. You never trust your hands. Go to right field! That’s your strength!”

  Jamie walked in with a six-pack of Coors Light. The beer kept him talking. I happily listened.

  Later that night, Jamie told me about Pa
i and the son of one of my teammates. Mai, Pai, and Jamie were waiting in the guest relations lobby to pick up their game tickets. Also waiting were Jack Taschner’s wife and their three-year-old son, Gradin, who had a glove and a plastic Wiffle ball. Pai didn’t speak English, and Gradin didn’t speak Spanish. Pai squatted down like a catcher and held up his hands. Little Gradin launched into a windup, complete with a leg kick, and fired the ball. Pai shook his hand as if the ball burned. He stood and gently showed the little boy how to grip the ball. Gradin arranged his chubby fingers the way Pai showed him and reared back and threw one pitch after another. No words passed between them. Just throw and catch.

  “I never saw such a true smile on a man,” Jamie said. “He was completely happy playing catch with that little boy. There was no language. Just baseball.”

  Mai and Pai left the next day. We’d had ten days together. Jamie and I gave Mai a bracelet, a watch, and some pretty blouses, and we filled a suitcase with new clothes and shoes for Pai. At the airport, Jamie hugged them and they hugged her back.

  I told Pai I loved him and thanked him for coming. I said to take care of himself and Mai.

  He hugged me. “Dios te bendiga,” he said.

  His version of “I love you, too.”

  He and I had found our way back to each other. We were different from who we had been two years earlier. Now we connected as men. I no longer needed to ride on his shoulders. And he no longer needed to carry me.

  That night, our last game of the Diamondbacks series, I came up to bat in the eighth inning. We were down 2–1. Juan Cruz, one of the Diamondbacks’ best relievers, was on the mound. Pai’s words were still fresh in my mind: Right field, right field. I got the pitch I wanted.

  Home run over the right-field fence.

  It tied the game, though we ended up losing in the ninth.

  I called Pai the next day. He was at Junior Diaz’s, but Mai made sure he called back as soon as he walked in the door.