| Contents: |
1. Carolina Giants 2. Santurce Crabbers 3. Caguas Criollos |
4. Bayamón Cowboys 5. Ponce Lions 6. Mayagüez Indians |
7. Current Events 8. Game Notes 9. Travel Anecdotes |
The other parks are fun, as they were in past years. But Bayamón's innovations in attracting fans are canceled out by traffic and parking hassles and an intrusive sound truck.
In 2001, El Nuevo Día began requiring a confirmed e-mail address in
order to let you read more than the first paragraph of an article. This is
"to bring you a better service," but as spamming is one of the national
sports, I can only imagine the consequences. (One such became clear during
this year's visit: In a news item in El Nuevo Día, a public relations
agency bragged about launching a record survey of the island's computer user
community, predicting questionnaires--some would call it spam--to 100,000
persons.) My
home page now lists two Spanish Internet
alternatives for baseball news.
On one of my visits, hotel parking was going to be a problem, so I hurried out of the stadium and the lot. There was a remarkable single file of cars, until the inevitable queue-jumpers passed us in the lane for oncoming traffic. Last of all, the police, seemingly unprepared for the game to end, raced to their posts by motorcycle. Ironically, once they were there, they waved for us to use all possible pavement regardless of traffic law. There is a ramp to enter Route 3 rightward, back toward San Juan, but traffic waiting to make a left turn on Route 3 keeps the majority from flowing onto this ramp. Route 3 can handle the burst of traffic easily if they'd solve the problem in the park.
The beer choices this year are Budweiser and Bud Light. The first draft of the Carolina page complained that the PA announcer has lower volume and lower fidelity than everything else they play. But on my way back to the US, the newspaper said the sound system had been improved over the last week.
A vendor in the stands sold chilled chocolate bars. He was a gregarious black man with an act suggesting derangement; "Cry, baby!" he yelled whenever a child called for a sale, but once added after the sale, "If it's not really cold, ask for your money back." They say this is the former bat boy for the San Juan Senators, notorious for arguing with umpires and getting ejected. So maybe it's not an act.
An insider says that, with imported professionals operating the stadium during
the MLB game here, "it was a different stadium entirely."
Bolted onto the dugout roofs are corrugated plastic with the SunCom Cellular logo, of which nervous fans have removed a couple of the letters. Like last year, there are still no flags anywhere in the stadium or in the cinder-block barrio beyond the outfield by which to measure the wind. And like last year, if you look at the key players for a reaction to the final play of the game, before looking up to the scoreboard to get the final totals, all digits will be 8; the man with custody of the console must want to beat the traffic.
3B/Owner Carlos Baerga is trying many promotions from US baseball, though the
previous owner was using many of them. There are planned attractions for
children at each game, and always a chance for them to run the bases, there is
a Club de Vaqueritos for young fans, which involves at least T-shirts
and a 50% discount on admission for Mom and Dad. When someone gets Player
of the Week, a vaquerito helps award it. Your ticket is
used for a variety of raffles, and there are door prizes for all, such as
posters.
One excellent innovation is to hang throughout the concourse banners showing former Vaqueros who went on to become big-league stars or to championship on the island, each with the tag line, "You Remember...." This helps inform kids of the heritage and history, though I wonder whether putting the banners inside the stadium isn't preaching to the choir. Some say it has led to grousing about good players who weren't selected for this informal honor.
So far, these innovations are not working; Loubriel is nearly deserted, and the club is not reporting attendance figures. El Nuevo Día did a feature story on the 26-Nov off day on this theme, with a photo of premium palcos showing exactly 1 occupant. The next day, it published a clarification; the fan in the photo wished it to be known that he was there to back the visiting Giants.
On 24-Nov, El Nuevo Día said some MLB executives were indeed going to visit to review the surface at Montaner, and some AA ballparks where Bayamón intends to play regular-season games. These may include Arecibo, where the team used to be based, and Cidra and Manatí, homes of various players. The following week, there was a report on the visit: An official from MLB agreed that repairs are urgently needed but stopped far short of threatening play there.
Having already gone to Mayagüez, a return to Ponce this year was not groundbreaking, though it did provide data for the comparison table on the home page. They put on a good show and there were some nice people to talk to including a truck driver who works in New Jersey. The trip didn't change my impression of the place, though this year it has a regular scoreboard and a lion mascot. The team also runs ads in El Nuevo Día to draw from San Juan. It seems like the best-run of the franchises.
There were rumors in the papers and from fans at other parks that even the team's hallmark obsessive, abusive, pebble-throwing fans were staying home. But attendance for a Sunday afternoon game was ample and the fans were still obsessive and abusive. Late in the game, a clear majority of fans reacted in anger to a borderline strike call--remarkable.
A sign on the stadium announces a new decree prohibiting unaffiliated ambulantes from vending in the courtyard. The team does have, inside the gates, a carnival of food and drink including everything the ambulantes used to sell, but the new policy questions whether they understand the attraction of the stadium as a gathering place for the neighborhood. Will management, once again trying to exercise total control over a resource, succeed in extinguishing it?
A vacant lot was open to the left on Duscombe and before reaching the stadium, but I drove ahead to the lot where I had parked in 1999. Most of this is reserved for players and fans, like the very small lot in front of the stadium at the intersection. But a man without a badge was pleased to offer me for $2 a space in a roadway where the curb was yellow; he offered the additional service of guiding me so that I was almost touching the car ahead. He did not give a receipt. When I showed hesitancy, he suggested that, if I wanted the car to be in the shade, I could park it across the street in someone's yard (posted as also $2). The Spanish words by which to impugn his legitimacy failed me, so I paid him and walked away and nothing bad happened to the car.
Inside the courtyard, a sinister-looking man was offering tickets for $4. These were free tickets given to a sponsor. He let me examine the merchandise and even walked away. But I had taken enough risks for the day; I paid $5 at the taquilla. Not for its souvenir value; alone in this league, García still insists on keeping the large part after tearing it on the perforation. The same man was collecting soda cans during the game, and back outside afterward, selling foul balls for $2.
There were three games near San Juan; I headed for Bithorn because it had the latest start time. But they had changed this 8:05 start into a doubleheader that a fan said started at 3:55. They let me in for free and (arriving 90 minutes before the original starting time) I saw game 2 minus one batter. I sat with Carolina season-ticket holders right behind the visiting dugout, complimenting them on their devotion to a new franchise, but in fact they were lifelong San Juan Senators fans before the team moved from Bithorn, a move which in fact brought the team closer to their house.
A Carolina sub thought their kids were cute and tossed one a game ball, the
kid's second of the night. Looking to his father for permission, I traded him
for it. He was amazed by the two gel pens, and they exactly fit inside his
scale-model semi-trailer bought at the souvenir stand. The Carolina fans
provided player names, and as we were making fun of a Santurce player whose
name meant "touch," he touched it, golfing the baseball over the wall in
straightaway centerfield for a two-run homer that decided the 4-1 game and let
Santurce salvage a split of the doubleheader. Stevenson Agosto gave up three
walks and the only Carolina run in the 1st inning, but settled down and had
retired five straight when he was removed after 4.
After checking into the hotel, I arrived at the sports bar in Caguas in the 6th inning, listening on the drive up to a two-run double by which Caguas tied Ponce 4-4. Ordered sorullitos and mozzarella sticks and ignored much of the game. Ponce broke the tie in the top of the 9th but Alex Cora hit a walk-off two-run homer for Caguas.
Last night the Carolina fans told me they sit behind the dugout at Clemente too, but I sat further down, just behind the Carolina reserves who sit on stairs down to the field rather than inside the dugout. Héctor Villanueva, the Caguas firstbaseman, was the object of most intense fan interest, not just because he is fat but because he can perform. But some used his nickname of Porky, and a 7-year-old sitting next to me went further and kept calling him manteca (lard). Caguas got the lead for good in the first on two singles bracketing a Villanueva walk; a wild pitch before the walk didn't matter. The same thing happened in the 7th, but Rosario's wild pitch followed the walk, giving Roberto Vázquez an extra RBI on his single. In the bottom of the 7th, Caguas scored two on back-to-back doubles by Michael Rivera and Gil Martínez to return to within one run. Martínez advanced to third on a fly out. Scott Sheldon bunted to pitcher Juan Padilla; Martínez was able to get back. But Padilla threw wild to first. Martínez now tried for home but was thrown out, as the final 9 Carolina batters would be sent down in order for Caguas' fifth straight victory.
El Nuevo Día reported that of the varied, repeated, and unbelievable excuses that owners have to deal with for players coming and going at will, holidays are the biggest. Caguas has lost its biggest bat, Aaron Rowand, for Thanksgiving, to join his wife who recently gave birth. The paper wondered whether Rowand will return and whether he will be in game shape after eating turkey for three days.
The reason the phones were dead is that the phone company has begun insisting that all a person's phones be on the same bill (so it can cut all service when a payment is late) and the team directed a secretary to contract for service to the press box, a secretary who was late paying her home phone bill. It's surprising that there was anyone to call at 8:30 at night to get it restored.
Bronson Arroyo for Santurce and Cliff Politte for Mayagüez pitched a tight game, with only one unearned Mayagüez run after 5 innings. Both tired shortly after; Santurce got 6 hits in the 6th to take a 3-2 lead. Mayagüez tied it in the 7th. Dante Powell caused a stoppage as he left CF in the 10th. After brief speculation on his destination (Miami?), a member of the media assured us that Powell had gone to relieve himself, and indeed he returned forthwith. This reporter said Powell's nickname is Anaconda and he could get the job done without leaving his position.
Roberto Maysonet entered the game for the Indians in the 11th and took the loss on a double, intentional walk, four-pitch unintentional walk, and game-ending bloop hit. Alex hoped his web visitors would not complain about the lack of game updates from the Bithorn. They are pampered. Other visitors to the press box included a sponsor with Thanksgiving cigars for everyone (a fellow Red Sox fan, perenially broken-hearted), and the only person alive to have attended the first Caribbean Series (also all the rest, except when he was in the service).
6 P.M. on Friday night is an early start time; at least for the absent P.A. announcer, and the game started with no fanfare. University of the East set up a portable trade-show booth where you would expect a souvenir stand, and gave away imprinted inflated bats. Everyone contrived to get two because, when struck together, they make a muffled slapping sound, especially cool when the entire stadium is doing it. There was a brass band up high behind home plate. Their performance sometimes continued into an at-bat. It was a relatively large and lively crowd, even before the four cheerleaders in hot pants showed up. But they did only one dance number, on the Carolina dugout roof. The announcer finally arrived.
Jack Krawczyk's wife, in Puerto Rico for the first time, arrived late at the stadium to see her husband pitch ineffectively for Carolina. She asked me questions about the apportionment of runs to pitchers and so I asked her who the current pitcher was and how you spell his name. Hearing Latins pronounce some names doesn't help you spell them, but she happens to be good at both these questions. Would it have been more embarrassing if he had known she was there and watching?
Between games, a disc jockey set up in the stands
behind home plate; the brass band went away. University of the East
participated in a first-pitch ceremony with members of the owner's family.
In the top of the 4th, trailing 2-1 and with a runner on 2nd, Carolina starter
Brandon Agamennone (the Latins merely described this importado as
"Brandon something" and in one El Nuevo Día box score, he is listed as
"B. A") hit Raúl Castro hard in the back. Castro bounced
his bat off the turf but proceeded to first. Before he got there, both
benches spilled out onto the infield. Some Carolina players raced to the
mound to protect their pitcher but for most others it was time to socialize
while the managers argued with the umpires for 5 minutes. The game resumed
and a Santurce coach was ejected.
Dave, an FBI/DEA agent and memorabilia collector who gives himself access to
the turf at all the parks, invited me down to the turf at my second one, and
found Francisco Lebrón (#24) for me. Lebrón and I met last summer at
home and we had a long talk up there about playing for the only Atlantic
League team without a home stadium. Héctor Kuilán warned me not
to yell his first name as I do in Nashua or the fans would kill me. I
suggested he count them and he conceded the point. Lebrón had only 10
at-bats at Bayamón but told me that made it even more important to take
extra practice to stay in shape. He got an at-bat tonight, but by the time I
set up the camera, switched on the zoom, and rested elbows on the dugout, he
was trotting home from third base, his two runners having already scored. The
first pitch to him was rolling to a stop somewhere near Route 2.
Bayamón had lost their one-run lead for good on four unearned runs in the top of the 2nd. Luis Arroyo gave up two earned ones in the 3rd and was relieved. Bayamón chipped away at the Mayagüez lead while Reymundo Delgado and Ken Marrero retired 11 straight Indians. But in the top of the 7th, Marrero gave up a 3-run triple to Julius Matos. Lebrón's homer got those three back. The teams traded a run in the ninth and starter Julio Valero, who pitched six innings, got the win.
A kid with a plastic horn was sitting near me in the front row of nearly deserted Loubriel. These horns existed when I was his age but they were never as irritating. It being a baseball game, I left his section. So did he, continuing to play it somewhere behind me. I returned down front and he sat down three seats to my left. So I opted for a criollo solution, wrenched the horn out of his hand, and told him I'd return it later. A professional man appeared ten minutes later, asked for the horn, and scolded me in English that next time I should try talking to the boy. Yeah, right. But the boy got at least as much of a scolding; he vacated the low seats for good and blew the horn only occasionally.
Ponce starter Mike Johnson gave up four straight singles in the 3rd. Two runs scored, then a third on a wild throw from the outfield. Meanwhile, Carolina's Jason Childers, who joined the team and pitched two mop-up innings 4 days ago, set down his first nine batters. But in the bottom of the 4th, he gave up three straight singles, the third of which fractured his jaw. Both lineups and the lion mascot took the field in his honor and didn't return to their posts until he was able to walk away. Inglin was caught off first, but in the rundown, Luis López tried to score, so they put him out instead. It fell to Jack Krawczyk to blow the Carolina lead, allowing two more runners then a homer by Juan Lebrón. Carolina got back within two when Ponce hit two batters and walked in a run in the top of the 9th.
Mike Warner figured in tonight's story only by arguing his called third strike on his third at-bat and getting ejected.
One man's conversations centered on scams he had achieved, mostly involving entry to ballparks for little or nothing. He also mentioned el diecinueve, the 19th, "We pulled out a win, I don't know how." This would be the Alex Cora walk-off homer mentioned at the start of this section.
Caguas admission is $4 general, $6 for palcos. The palco tickets were printed to read $5 and management convinces the public it is not a scam to make them pay $6 by posting at the taquillas a copy of the paperwork filed with the government accounting for the tax included in the ticket. This form has a typed comment at the bottom that the tickets were printed in error, etc., which is marked with highlighter pen. The old man had a small string of "promotional tickets" imprinted at $2.50. The promotion is unspecified but the tickets look authentic. He wanted $1 and the other old man and I bought one apiece.
During batting practice, I entered the stadium through the service entrance, open for suppliers. My "promotional" ticket was different enough to be a neat souvenir, so an hour later, I bought a real one for $4. The girl saw me walk out of the stadium, saw me walk back in, saw my ticket, and therefore didn't tear either one in half.
It was a sequence of endless demonstrations of ineffective pitching, including a 6-run Caguas 5th in which all three Bayamón pitchers participated. Its seven innings took three hours. Both teams scored once in the 1st on a no-outs doubleplay. They couldn't hit Héctor Villanueva's huge strike zone; he drew a bases-loaded walk in the 1st to break a 1-1 tie, and again in the 5th to tie the game 4-4. Three other Caguas batters also drew bases-loaded walks. Caguas won despite being out-hit 10 to 5. Aaron Rowand hit the two Caguas home runs; Carlos Baerga had the only one for Bayamón.
The second game started at 9:31 with a Scott Podsednik single. Caguas failed to get the call on a pickoff at first, but then caught Podsednik off base and tagged him out near second. Bayamón now complained, for about ten minutes, ending with 50 bats thrown out of the dugout.
Héctor Kuilán caught for Bayamón in the second game and
I was able to yell "Hector" when he batted, though not for Villanueva, who
usually hears it (and other epithets). Villanueva had his own pursuer: An
old man who looked like one of the pair from before the game, and was
equally incoherent, began some impassioned yelling at Villanueva in the
on-deck circle. Villanueva yelled back. As Villanueva got up to bat, the old
man yelled something else and pointed to left field. Villanueva doubled
there.
Bayamón jumped out to a 3-0 lead, mostly on extra-base hits, and never looked back. But at 12:10 in the morning and two outs left, I feared for hotel parking and left the game, hoping to finish it by radio and complete the scorecard beside some road well beyond stadium traffic. This was complicated when the 1998 Atlantic City clubhouse manager saw my Nashua Pride hat and welcomed me to Caguas and asked about my itinerary. Reached the car, left the lot, and decided to go the wrong way down a one-way side street for one block. But the saw-horses that commandeered on-street parking kept this going longer; in fact, I reached Route 1 still on the left of the median. There are two problems: First, you are sticking out like a sore, illegal thumb while waiting for the light; second, since you are not in the correct lane, there is no car to trip the sensor, so it is an especially long wait. Arriving at the hotel at 1 in the morning, it turned out to be another wrong guess; 4 parking spaces remained.
The Caguas stadium was relatively deserted; I parked in the lower lot and they were not using saw horses to sell space on the street. A fan said even Caguas fans would be absent because the parade that starts the Christmas season was tonight, starting at the same time as the game.
Knowing some names on both teams, I hadn't decided where to sit or whom to
root for, but it was taken out of my hands. Started out behind the Carolina
dugout and was surrounded by the son, daughter, nephew, and later the wife and
parents or in-laws of Tony Rodríguez, a Nashua hero. I entertained
them by loaning them binoculars, radio, and clippings of newspaper photos of
Tony from the 23rd, and Rafael Montalvo yesterday, in respective disagreements
on the field. Tony said he did not expect to play because of two injuries, but
pinch-hit in the 4th and went 1-for-2 with a walk. On the walk, he stole
second but next, on a single to right, he slowed to a walk approaching home as
he saw the catcher standing there with the ball. He was favoring one leg in
the field in the next inning. But on his next at-bat, he had a steal of third
that caught the entire defense by surprise and scored the final run in
Carolina's 4-2 victory on a fly out to center.
Montalvo relieved and allowed the Caguas runs. The first came with two outs in the 7th, as Alex Cora hit a ball to right field that ricocheted into center field. They ran after it but Alex ran faster, all the way home. Montalvo got in more trouble in the 8th and we heard, as he must have heard over his shoulder in the sparse crowd, the pop of the fastballs in the bullpen of the players getting ready to replace him. The nearby kids led in some Carolina clapping, but left for a while when a Caguas Police helicopter circled the stadium three times and landed nearby. They insisted I give Héctor my yell, but he went 3 for 4 before yielding to a pinch runner who scored the second run. Each team used 4 pitchers and Carolina out-hit Caguas, 14 to 10. Carolina's starter, Jon McDonald, got the win and they brought in Serrano para cerrar (to close) and he got the save.
Santurce was beating Ponce down in the city and so Caguas blew a chance to tie for first place. It was the seventh Carolina game I had seen and the first one they had won.
But three hours before the game, steady rain arrived in San Juan. The game in
Bayamón could not be played on Loubriel's grass. I proceeded to the
Bithorn, where groundskeepers said the artificial turf would drain dry five
minutes after the rain stops, but pools would remain and, instead of a vacuum
machine they would use in the US, here all they can do is push it around with
tools and a tractor. The bases and mound required bags of drying agent. At
one point, the mound work was supervised by both bullpen coaches. The press
box thought this was a first. The 4:05 game started at 5:30, had a half-hour
rain delay in the top of the 3rd, went to 10 innings, and ended around 10:10.
Santurce survived issuing 12 walks in the first 6-1/3 innings, including 3 before registering the first out of the game, and 4 in a row in the top of the 7th. They out-hit Carolina 14 to 7. Santurce was down 4-0 in the 2nd but came back to within a run; they were down 8-3 but came back to 8-6. They nibbled away further but they were still down 9-7 in the bottom of the 9th. Carolina used Serrano again and it looked hopeless, but he let Santurce tie the game on two walks and two 2-out singles. Meanwhile, Juan Carlos Romero was pitching three perfect innings, including a really perfect 8th and 9th with nothing but strikeouts. In the bottom of the tenth, Rosado got two men to pop out but then Edwin Díaz hit a walk-off homer to left field.
Caguas traveled to and beat Ponce, so those teams now share first place at 16-12.
I brought diskettes: Photos for T-Rod from last night's "fan club," and software to partially automate Alex the webmaster's bilingual work, my third visit up to the press box. Alex had to leave early and I returned to the grandstand, where a few Carolina fans were making themselves heard and the Santurce fans weren't. The businessman climbed the visitors' dugout roof, as he does at the Clemente, and put his hex on the hosts.
The airports now are armed camps, driven by armchair security experts whose motto is, "We've got to do something!" and who won't believe it's the case until the something is sufficiently intrusive. The Me Generation is mobilizing the greatest crackdown on innocent civilians since World War 2. It is a truly awful time to travel. I delayed my trip, but things will only get worse: The federal government has just taken control of "security," though it can't explain what it knows that we don't, or how this change would have prevented the September attack (except that we couldn't fire any screener, couldn't sue, and the union would have more dues). And even before these new powers, they were diverting planes and closing entire airports based on one disobedient or deranged traveler.
So Mario's Hotel is now only charging $50 in the low season and the high season did not start on time. Traffic is relatively sparse; nobody double-parks in the travel lane in front of the 7-11 store (except delivery trucks). The adjoining lot is still vacant, the fast-food place next door is still growing weeds, and the chromy diner on the first floor is still closed; that is probably a blessing in cockroach terms. The hotel made it trivial to stay in touch with US news, with CNN and CNBC on cable and even a way to exchange e-mail, and now takes reservations by credit card; it's a pity that it's suddenly a bigger headache to get here.
American Airlines could have found a backup aircraft, but you know AA would have closed the doors, retracted the jetway, and let us stew until we all became Revenue Passenger Miles and arrived at our respective misconnections. Been there.
That plane eventually reached Florida at 7 PM. They did not hold the 2:20 departure to San Juan. And my dry run showed that they had banned not just carry-ons, but even pocket cameras. So I avoided becoming San Juan's newest crime victim, as my camera would have arrived in a plastic bin mixed in with all the other toys checked at the gate, with no more proof of ownership than a claim check on which the gate agent had written: "Camra."