Molina Page 3

  Pai didn’t yell at us. He wasn’t that kind of coach. He spoke to us with respect. As if we were men.

  Our field in Kuilan was barely more than dirt, grass, a flimsy backstop, and one stand of wooden bleachers. Pai had to bring home plate. But like all the best baseball parks, it had character. Lumpy pods from the tamarindo tree dangled over the left-field fence. When we were bored, we’d toss our gloves at the branches and eat the sweet-and-sour brown fruit from the pods. Beyond center field was a jobo tree with pale yellow fruit, juicy as a mango. If a ball hit the jobo branches and dropped back onto the field, it was still a home run.

  The outfield was an obstacle course. There was a sanja, a narrow cement gutter, that ran from the hill above right field all the way through center and left field, carrying rainwater to the street and down into a drain. There was a light pole smack in the middle of left field and another in right field. You had to be ready to jump over a stream of water and scoot around a light pole to catch a fly ball.

  Sliding into home was also an adventure. The backstop was unusually close to the plate, and the spiky ends at the bottom of the chain link curled up like old paper. If you didn’t stop your slide as soon as you touched home, you risked impaling your legs. Once, when the field was locked, I tried to get in by wriggling beneath the curled-up fence and sliced the front of my right ankle. I still have the scar.

  But our strange little field had what every baseball field in the world has: Three bases and home plate. Chalk lines. A pitcher’s mound. A batter’s box. Two on-deck circles. Two dugouts.

  The night before our first game, the new Los Pobres players sat cross-legged on the floor of our living room. Luis. Miguel. Jochy. Steven. Rolando. A dozen of us. Pai stood by the front window next to the table where we ate, now loaded with a pillar of caps and a stack of uniforms that Mai had carefully folded and wrapped in plastic that morning.

  A few weeks earlier, Cheo and I had gone with Pai to buy the uniforms at Marco Sportswear, an enormous warehouse and factory with shelf after shelf of gloves, bats, socks, pants, helmets, spikes—whatever you could think of in every size and style. I picked up a perfect, snow-white baseball from an open box. I had never held a brand-new ball. I noticed for the first time how the white covering of the ball was actually made of two hourglass-shaped pieces that fit together like puzzle pieces. It’s funny how you can look at something familiar and suddenly feel like you’re seeing it for the first time. It was the red stitching that fooled you. It held the pieces together so tightly that they didn’t seem like separate parts at all but rather a single thing.

  Jesus Rivera “Mambe” Kuilan was our team’s apoderado—a sort of business manager who handled the team’s fees and found sponsors to pay for the uniforms and equipment. Pai and Mambe flipped through a catalog to choose every part of the jersey: collar, buttons, trim, length. They already had decided on colors: yellow and black, like Roberto Clemente and the Pittsburgh Pirates. A lot of teams wore yellow and black for that reason. Many stars have emerged from the ball fields of Puerto Rico since baseball arrived on the island in the late 1800s. There were Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, and Clemente. Superstars like Pudge Rodriguez, Javy Lopez, Juan Gonzales, Juan Pizarro, Ruben Gomez, Bernie Williams, José Valentin. More than two hundred players from Puerto Rico have played in the Major Leagues since Hiram Bithorn paved the way in 1942. Puerto Rico was so proud of its baseball stars that schools closed on the day in 1954 when Ruben Gomez—El Divino Loco—pitched for the New York Giants in Game 3 of the World Series. He was the first Puerto Rican ever to pitch in a World Series. The Giants won the championship, and when Gomez landed at the San Juan Airport, thousands turned out to greet him. The governor declared the day a national holiday.

  But Puerto Rico never had a hero like Clemente. In many houses when I was growing up, including ours, the portraits of two famous men hung in honored spots among the family photos: Jesus, and Roberto Clemente. Most of us knew more about Clemente: signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954 when he was twenty; won the World Series in 1960; voted National League MVP in 1966; won a second World Series in 1971; hit his 3,000th and final hit of his career on September 30, 1972.

  But that’s not why he was revered. He grew up in the coastal town of Carolina, east of San Juan. He was eight years old when Bithorn became the first Puerto Rican in the Major Leagues. But Bithorn was white, like the other Latin players who were breaking into the Majors. Clemente was black. No one in the big leagues looked like him. So he turned to the Negro League for role models. As a boy, Clemente rode the bus to San Juan to watch the Negro League stars who played ball every winter in Puerto Rico. He saw Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and his favorite, Monte Irvin, an outfielder with the Newark Eagles. Irvin could throw the ball a mile. He could catch anything. He flew around the bases. But he wasn’t welcome in the Major Leagues.

  The racism in the United States confounded Puerto Ricans. In Puerto Rico, people were all different colors, yet nothing kept them from eating at the same lunch counter, or sleeping in the same hotel, or marrying one another. Clemente’s mother came from Loiza, a town founded by slaves who had escaped from the Spanish army. Clemente’s father, a foreman in the sugarcane fields, was born just ten years after slavery was abolished on the island in 1873. But there was no societal division between the descendants of slaves and the descendants of the governing Spaniards.

  Clemente made his debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955, just six years after Monte Irvin finally reached the Major Leagues as the first African-American player for the New York Giants. Clemente found that the color barrier might have been broken but it had hardly been destroyed. During spring training in Florida, Clemente had to stay with a black family in another part of town while his white teammates stayed in a hotel. He had to wait in the bus as his teammates ate in roadside diners. He was often quoted by American sportswriters in cartoonish, broken English, feeding into an image of Latinos—especially dark-skinned Latinos—as uneducated and dumb.

  But Clemente was so spectacular on the field and so noble off it that he transcended stereotypes. With quiet righteousness, he spoke out on issues of equality and social justice, elevating his stature beyond the sports world. After the Pirates won their second World Series, Clemente pointedly began his postgame press conference in Spanish, speaking directly to the fans watching in Puerto Rico and throughout Latin America.

  On New Year’s Eve in 1972, Clemente took off in a propeller DC-7 airplane from Puerto Rico to deliver relief supplies to Nicaragua, which had been devastated by an earthquake. The plane crashed into the ocean soon after takeoff, killing everyone on board. When the news spread, people from every corner of Puerto Rico flocked to the beach at Isla Verde, their eyes searching the dark ocean as if expecting Clemente to walk ashore. Only the body of the pilot was recovered. Divers found the briefcase Clemente had been carrying. Three months later the Baseball Writers’ Association of America held a special election to vote Clemente into the Hall of Fame, bypassing the required five-year waiting period.

  Clemente was all the evidence Pai needed to support his belief that baseball beat out religion six ways to Sunday in turning out strong, decent men.

  Inside our living room in Vega Alta, Pai stood at the table while Mai watched from the kitchen, smiling like she always did when she had a house full of people.

  “Miguel Lopez!” Pai said as if introducing the starting lineup at the World Series. “Number seven!”

  Miguel leapt from the floor. Pai handed him a baseball cap and a uniform. He summoned the boys one at a time to the table with the yellow-and-black uniforms. Finally one uniform remained.

  “Bengie Molina!” Pai said. “Number eleven.”

  I walked up to Pai and he placed the uniform and cap onto my upturned palms. I carried the package with both hands as if it were a fragile plate, stepping over my teammates’ legs and hands until I got back to the spot on the floor next to Miguel. He already was wearing his hat, and I put mine on, too
. We listened as Pai explained that the uniforms meant we were a family now and we had to think about each other more than about ourselves. We accepted this concept without question, as I would for the rest of my baseball life. My teammates—no matter what team I happened to be on—were my family. I’d do anything for them. And that came from Pai, beginning with Los Pobres.

  When the other boys and their parents left, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I slid the jersey out of the plastic and pulled it over my head. There was a big cursive P on the front. I stood on the toilet to examine myself in the mirror. I bent the bill of the cap so it curved just right. To my six-year-old eyes, in my black-and-yellow Los Pobres uniform, I looked just like Pai.

  AT THE ENTRANCE of the dugout, Pai clapped and nodded at me in the batter’s box.

  “C’mon, Bengie,” he said. “Eye on the ball.”

  Mai cheered and hollered from the stands behind me. There was no mistaking her voice. She was a yeller, so different from Pai. She was short and stout with the beefy arms of someone who might, at any moment, deck you with a single blow. She often maintained a running commentary through a game. She yelled at players to slide, questioned the umpires’ eyesight, pointed out mistakes, and second-guessed strategy. She’d call me or Cheo and later Yadier to the fence to correct a hitch in our swing or point out a weakness in the opposing pitcher. At home afterward, to Pai and anyone else who happened to be around, she was likely to deliver an in-depth analysis of the game. I told people later that if I were a manager, Mai would be my first hire.

  I was ten years old, almost eleven. I looked eight or nine. At the plate, I pawed at the dirt with my back foot, digging into the box. My knees were slightly bent, elbows up, shoulders squared. I watched the first pitch and froze, the bat immobile and useless in my hands.

  Strike one.

  I could almost feel Pai’s hands over mine, adjusting my grip, guiding my arms back, then forward, level across the plate, as if the bat were slicing an apple in midair.

  Second pitch. I lunged and missed. Not even close.

  Strike two.

  A familiar panic began to rise.

  Pai had already dropped me down to ninth in the batting order, the spot reserved for the worst hitter.

  Third pitch. I could see it was going to sail way over my head. A ridiculous pitch. But the bat was already in motion. I waved at the ball as if swatting flies.

  Strike three.

  The pitcher slapped his glove, applauding himself.

  Hot tears welled in my eyes. I lowered my head so Pai couldn’t see me cry. I crumpled into a wet heap at the end of the bench. I hated myself for crying. I hated myself for failing again, no matter what Pai said about letting it go and moving on. My failure felt like a failure for Pai, too. A reflection on him. The embarrassment was almost unbearable.

  I looked over at Pai. He was watching the next boy at bat.

  “Eye on the ball!” he called. “Be ready!”

  I wanted him to look over, to notice I was upset.

  I wiped my face and made my way toward him. I stood at his side, leaning lightly into his hip. He looked down at me, startled to find me there. I wanted him to sling his arm around me and tell me, the way fathers do, that everything was all right.

  But his eyes were hard. He told me to stop crying.

  “There’s no room for that here,” he said evenly. “Get out there and do your job or go sit with your mother.”

  My face burned.

  Pai turned his attention back to the game.

  I knew I was too sensitive. I took things too personally. None of this came easily to me. I wasn’t strong like Pai. I knew crying wasn’t going to get me very far. But I wasn’t at all sure I had it in me to be tough like him.

  My darkest fear was that he already knew.

  THE BAT WAS too big and heavy for me. Anybody could see that. I was twelve years old but still smaller than my teammates. The bat was new and beautiful, and yellow and black like our uniforms. Everyone else was using it and crushing the ball. I wanted to crush the ball, too. I was the only one on the team who still hadn’t hit a ball to the left-field hill at the park in Maysonet where we played some of our games.

  I carried the big bat into the on-deck circle.

  Behind me, I heard Pai. “Use the lighter one.”

  “I want to try it,” I said, turning toward him.

  “Get the lighter one.”

  “I want to use this one.”

  “Don’t disrespect me.”

  The worst sin. Pai once kicked the great Pudge Rodriguez off an all-star team for throwing his helmet. Pudge, who went on to become one of the all-time great catchers in the Major Leagues, was about fifteen at the time and by far the best player on the team.

  “Take your uniform off,” Pai told him.

  Pudge started talking back. The other players froze, wondering what would happen. Pai repeated to Pudge that he needed to turn in his uniform and leave the field. “You’re off the team.”

  Pudge stripped off his jersey, tossed it at Pai, and stormed off.

  The following week, Pudge arrived at the field with his father. “Benjamín, I’m sorry for what I did,” he said. “I want to keep playing with the team. I won’t do it again.” Pai never had another problem with him.

  I knew all that when I ignored Pai’s order to use the lighter bat. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be the only player too weak to use the new bat. Pai gave me one of his looks. I threw down the heavy bat and retrieved the light one from the dugout. I stepped into the batter’s box, fuming. I watched three good pitches go by without the slightest pretense of swinging. I tossed the bat to the ground and brushed past Pai into the dugout.

  No sooner had I taken a seat at the end of the bench than, from the corner of my eye, I saw a hand swooping down from behind the fence. Mai grabbed my hair and pulled me the length of the dugout, banging me into my teammates, who scrambled to get out of the way. She pulled me off the field, right in front of everybody. She yelled and whacked my head as she marched me to our car across the street. She shoved me into the backseat and slammed the door. I was furious, but knew better than to talk back to Mai. Through the car window, I watched her return to the bleachers, where she stayed for the rest of the game.

  My fury soon died with nothing in the backseat to fuel it. Fear took its place. What would Pai do when the game ended? When the bleachers cleared and my teammates dispersed, I watched Pai walk toward the car. His face told me nothing. When he opened the back door, I braced for the hit, though he wasn’t a hitter. Mai was the hitter. Pai had struck me only once in my life. But it had happened recently and was fresh in my mind.

  Cheo and I had been fighting all afternoon. Mai kept warning us she was going to tell Pai. We kept fighting. I was supposed to be the man of the house when he wasn’t home. I was supposed to look after my brothers and make sure they listened to Mai. When Pai arrived home from work, Mai launched into the story. I shot her an annoyed look, sighing loudly at her complaints, then stomped off to the bathroom. I was sitting on the toilet when my father burst through the door. I reflexively stood up out of respect.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  I started to explain what had happened when I heard Mai yelling from the other room, challenging my version of events.

  “Mai, be quiet!” I shouted.

  Pai hit me hard across the face.

  Stunned, I dropped to the floor and covered my head. I thought he would keep hitting me. I had never seen him so angry. But when I looked up, he was gone. I went straight from the bathroom to bed. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Pai hit me. I felt sick and embarrassed for letting him down. When I woke the next morning, Pai had already left for work. I felt queasy all day. I wondered what he would say when he got home. Would he still be angry? Had he lost respect for me?

  That afternoon, he walked into the house without a word. He sat in his chair in the living room and turned on the TV, waiting for El Chavo
to begin. “Bengie, get me a glass of water,” he said.

  I leapt up and fetched the water. We went to the field as usual and played baseball. At bedtime, he stopped me in the hallway. “You have to respect your mother,” he said. “She is the one who takes care of you. She washes your clothes. She cooks for you. You have to respect her.”

  “I know, Pai,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I became the rules enforcer and the peacemaker, trying to win back Pai’s respect. I found that I liked taking charge of my brothers. They fought about everything. Cheo was more than seven years older than Yadier, and it drove him crazy that Yadier was better at almost everything. When Yadier crushed him in NBA Live on our cousin’s PlayStation, Cheo insisted Yadier won because he was the home team and the video game favored the home team. They switched teams, and when Yadier still won—lording the victory over his big brother—they soon were tangling on the floor like feral cats. If I pulled Cheo off first, he’d complain, “Why’d you grab me? Why don’t you grab him?” If I grabbed Yadier first, Cheo would still complain: ‘Why’d you grab him first? You like him more!”

  But the competitiveness stopped at the baselines. We were never jealous of each other or combative on the baseball field. That was unthinkable. Pai and Mai drilled into us that we had to always support each other. That’s what families did. I saw how Pai and his brothers and sisters took care of each other. Especially his sisters. They’d hear his car bumping down the dirt driveway of the property where they all grew up, and soon they’d be emerging from their doors. His mother, his sisters Panchita, Graciella, and Pillita, and his brother, whom everybody called Tití, still lived there in various small houses, as did Titi Clara Virgen, Tío Chiquito, Tío Blanco, and Titi Nanita.

  “Chino!” they’d cry. Pai visited almost every day, but each time his mother and sisters looked at him as if he were a gift on Christmas morning. They’d beg him to come into their houses for a bite to eat. Pai always said, “No, no, nothing.” My aunts fluttered around him, offering to fetch him a beer or a coffee, shoving plates of arroz con pollo at him. No one else received that treatment. He was the prince of the family, the one everyone loved most.