Page 15 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

El Brujo del Beisbol

Wasn’t keen on giving up ice-fishing with my buddies back in
Minnesota, but I figured, what the hell, if I didn’t try they would razz
me the rest of my life for being a quitter.”
“The first day I showed up in San Trueno I met Roger. His name
was actually Rogelio or something like that, but he had been to the
States and preferred Roger. He was the friendliest guy on the
Relampagos. A real happy-go-lucky kid, not like the other players.
They were mainly from the barrio, dirt-poor and desperate to run,
hit, or throw their way off the island. But Roger was from a different
class, you could tell. His parents must have had some money and
position. It didn’t matter to him whether he advanced or not. He was
there to have a good time. At first I couldn’t stomach him and his
attitude, but he had a car and he spoke English and he knew where
the action was at night in that godforsaken place. So we kind of
became buddies.”
“Well, it was tough down there. The ball parks are like barren cow
pastures, full of rocks and potholes in the outfield. Running the bases
was a crapshoot: you could twist your ankle or have it bitten by a
scorpion. The pitcher’s mound? I don’t think they know the meaning
of ‘grounds crew’ down there. Let me just tell you that I did a lot of
landscaping with my cleats before I’d throw a pitch. And I threw a lot
of pitches. The manager was a crusty old Venezuelan who thought
his mission was to work me until I got it right. I had fairly decent
stuff—eighty-five mile-per-hour fastball, decent curve. I was
practicing a change-up and a forkball for my out-pitch, but between
the heat and the crappy conditions on the field I wasn’t making much
progress.”
“Then one night toward the end of the year Roger and I were out
on the town, bar-hopping and raising as much hell as the law would
allow. We were pretty drunk by midnight, and as we were driving
back to my apartment near the stadium, we got into some kind of
argument about his country and mine. I was probably just blowing
off steam about all my frustrations, but he was laughing at me, like I
was a spoiled gringo who couldn’t cut it outside the States. So I got
hot and told him what I thought about his banana republic and its
backwoods bars and clubs. Beyond bush league. If the bugs in the

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