Alou

by Felipe Alou

  The only place we stayed overnight was in Gainesville, Florida. Typical of everything else in the South at that time, there was a motel for the white players to stay in and something barely livable for us in the black section of town for the COLOREDS—that word I kept seeing everywhere, usually in all capital letters. I never knew the quality of the motels where the white players stayed, but I was petrified of the boardinghouse where we stayed in Gainesville. It was in the boondocks, on the other side of the railroad tracks—dirty, filthy rooms filled with cockroaches and mosquitoes. And it felt as if it were held together with matchsticks. We stayed on the second floor, where we could see below through holes, afraid to walk because of the concern we would step on a rotting section of wood and crash to the first floor. We had to take every step gingerly, gently applying enough pressure until you felt comfortable taking another step.

  My salary was $275 a month, and I used it for my basic expenses and to purchase a so-called Hollywood course that would teach me to read, write, and speak English. I was determined to learn my new language. The rest of the money I sent home to my parents. I soon found out, though, that there were other sources of income. Those fans in Cocoa had a habit of passing a hat around if an Indians player did something extraordinary. One night early in the season, we were losing 2–0 to West Palm Beach when I came to the plate with two men on in the bottom of the ninth—and hit a game-winning three-run home run. Afterward, those great Cocoa fans gave me $89. I treated Navarro, Cruz, and our second baseman, a black player named Jim Miller, who was now sharing my little boarding room with me, to hamburgers and cake. It soon turned into a ritual for Navarro to entreat me at our home games to “hit a home run for us tonight. We’re short on money and we’re hungry.”

  While being able to hit right away helped me get accepted by most of my teammates, it also got me thrown at probably more than the average player—and definitely more than white players. It was obvious, and it was difficult to hold back from retaliating. Navarro was always in my ear, telling me not to strike back.

  “Patience, Felipe,” he would implore. “You must have patience.”

  I tried, but I wasn’t always successful. Here I had come from a Caribbean country that, to Americans, probably seemed behind the times, but every day I was faced with this centuries-old notion that the color of a man’s skin made him superior or inferior to another man. I wasn’t accustomed to it, nor did I ever want to get comfortable with it. If that meant being ignorant in certain situations, then so be it. Black players like Chuck Howard and my roommate Miller could immediately smell trouble brewing and intuitively knew to leave. I didn’t seem to have that instinct. Or maybe it was something I refused to learn.

  It was customary after road games for the team to stop at a restaurant on the way back to Cocoa. Blacks and Latinos would have to wait outside for our meal, often in a backyard area, fed through a back door, while the white players would go inside. I never once ate inside the same restaurant with any of my white teammates. One night as the white players filed into a restaurant in West Palm Beach named Le Vagabond, a waitress met Miller, Howard, and myself at the station wagon in the parking lot and told us she would serve us there. This was unusual. Normally, it was some of our white teammates who brought our meals to us. No sooner had we thanked her when a man who apparently was the proprietor emerged from the restaurant, yelling. “Don’t you know where their place is!?” he screamed at the waitress.

  That was all Miller and Howard needed to hear, and they took off running. The man’s rant continued, and although I didn’t understand all the words he was saying, I picked up enough to know what was going on. I sat there fuming, trying to hear Navarro’s mantra—“Patience, Felipe, you must have patience”—instead of this white man’s angry, racist words. Finally, he left. I sat there, no longer with an appetite, waiting for my teammates so we could get back on the road and back home. A couple of minutes later, a police car wheeled into the parking lot. Two policemen emerged and walked toward me. With my limited English I made out one of them telling me to get out, and if I didn’t get out he was going to pull me out of the car.

  In that moment I swear I was ready to die. I was tired of the humiliation. Tired of the abuse. Tired of capitulating. When one of the officers reached through the window and tried to grab my arm, I cursed him in Spanish with such ferocity that I think it startled him. At the very least it caused him to back away. By now some of my teammates had retrieved our manager, Buddy Kerr. I could see the humanity in his eyes, the raw sadness over what I had to endure.

  “I can’t do anything here, Felipe,” he said. “They want you to leave.”

  I shook my head, my arms folded across my chest, my jaw clenched. I believe at that moment Buddy Kerr learned what kind of man I was. He stopped asking me to leave, and instead he climbed into the station wagon, turned the ignition key, and drove the car across the street, where we waited for the other players to finish eating before heading to Cocoa. That night, covered in a blanket of such overwhelming despair, I couldn’t sleep.

  There were times when what kept me going was Buddy Kerr’s kindness. He played shortstop for nine big-league seasons, mostly with the New York Giants. He would pull me aside and tell me I had what it took to make it, to not give up, to not let the racial slurs and slights defeat me. “You have what it takes,” he would implore me. And those times when pitchers would throw at me, Kerr never hesitated to defend me, often doing so on the field, threatening the opposing team and pitcher. What a man. I appreciate more today his courage and decency.

  But there was only so much that he, or anyone, could do. Even pitchers on my own team would throw at me, aiming for my head during batting practice and acting as if the ball had gotten away from them. I knew better. I once overheard some of my teammates telling opposing pitchers what pitches I hit well and what gave me trouble. It was all I could do to stop myself from drawing them into a fight.

  Whatever fury I felt I channeled it into my game. I developed the confidence that even if a pitcher knew my weaknesses, he still wasn’t going to get me out. That confidence bred more confidence, and there was one particularly hot streak when I got 15 hits in 19 plate appearances. My average peaked at .433 before plummeting late in the season. Even though I knew I was playing well, there was no newspaper in Cocoa for me to check statistics and see just how well I was doing. One afternoon when I was at a restaurant in what was called the colored section of Daytona Beach, I got a newspaper and began deciphering names and numbers. I saw that a Daytona Beach Islanders player named Don Dillard had wrestled the batting title away from me on the strength of a 5-for-5 performance the night before in Cocoa. The realization of it all startled me at first, and then it motivated me. My batting average had been going backward, but that night I went 5 for 6, while Dillard went 1 for 4. I overtook him and held on to win the batting title—my .380 average edging Dillard’s .375 finish. I also led the league with 48 stolen bases, finished third with 21 home runs, and knocked in 99 runs. I did all that after missing about a month of the season while sitting in Lake Charles. But I did get that 1 RBI in Lake Charles, which combined with Cocoa gave me an even 100.

  It’s a good thing I had such a solid season with the Cocoa Indians, because when I returned home I learned that the Giants had not paid the $200 signing bonus. I wonder sometimes, had I hit .180 instead of .380, if that check would have ever come. It arrived soon enough when I informed the Giants that payment was due.

  My arrival in the Major Leagues would be coming soon, too.

  5

  Moving Up

  My first offseason from professional baseball was eventful. Evidently, news of my successes in the Florida State League rippled through my country, and I was bestowed with a banquet in my honor. I was given many gifts, but there was one I received from a close friend, Roque Martínez, that I thought ridiculous at the time—a Bible.

  I had no desire for a Bible and didn’t think I had any use for it. Owning a Bible at the time was
also forcefully frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which held sway over the country, second in power only to the dictator, Rafael Trujillo. The church particularly told parents not to allow their children to read the Bible, an edict I knew my Catholic mother took seriously. When I returned home I furtively hid the Bible in my suitcase and forgot about it.

  What was most on my mind that offseason was a girl named Maria Beltré. I first saw Maria when she was six and I was thirteen. My father built her family’s home in Haina. Because of the age difference we really didn’t move in the same circles. But now we were spending a lot of time together, mostly at her home, where we would sit and talk. In rare bold moments I would reach out and hold her hand. I was thrilled when, after we talked about marriage, my father talked with her father and both families gave their consent.

  Almost equally thrilling was news from the Giants that they assigned me to their Class Triple-A American Association farm team in Minneapolis—the last league before the Major Leagues. When I packed to leave for Minor League spring training in Sanford, Florida, I saw in my suitcase what I had completely forgotten about that offseason—the Bible. I knew I couldn’t leave it behind, for fear my mother would find it. So off to America it went with me.

  After spring training I arrived in Minneapolis in time for an exhibition game against the Milwaukee Braves. The perimeter of the ball field showcased mounds of freshly shoveled snow that had fallen the night before. I already didn’t like the cold weather. And then, when a ball reached a mound of snow in the outfield and I had to reach in to get it, I got that icy sensation from touching snow for the first time in my life. I especially didn’t like that. The only thing I did like about being in a northern state was rarely seeing signs indicating where COLOREDS could eat, drink from a water fountain, or use a bathroom.

  I had a good spring training, hitting .387, and the crazy thought occurred that perhaps no matter what league I played in, I would be a .380-or-better hitter. That bubble burst quickly in the American Association, which I learned was a significant talent jump from Class D ball. Battling the cold and better pitching, I struggled. After a month that saw my batting average settle at an anemic .211 with no home runs, I was shipped to Springfield, Massachusetts, in the Class A Eastern League.

  I was with the Minneapolis Millers long enough, though, for two lifelong relationships to take root. I became friends with a kid from Puerto Rico whom I had met a few years earlier, when he was sixteen and I was eighteen and our two countries played against each other in a juvenile all-star baseball series. I remembered him as a chubby kid, with bad knees from birth, but what a talent. He could hit and hit for power, had a slick glove, and even with bad knees could run. We also crossed paths for a few days a year earlier when I first arrived in America at Melbourne, Florida. He was one of the few Latino players on the Minneapolis team, and we bonded, becoming buddy buddies, inseparable. His name was Orlando Cepeda, and in that brief time we spent together I was like a big brother while he taught me pointers about hitting.

  The second relationship I developed was with the Bible my friend Roque Martínez left me. I found comfort in it initially because it was written in my native Spanish. But I couldn’t understand its message. Even so, what I did understand I found inspirational. I discarded any feelings of guilt the Catholic Church instilled in me for even possessing a Bible. I went from reading it furtively to reading it faithfully. Its message slowly took root, providing a stability that would ground me for the rest of my life.

  When I told Cepeda that the Giants were sending me down to the Class A team in the Eastern League, he went to his room and cried, and over the next week he cried some more. He asked the Giants to not send me down. He even had thoughts of asking them if he could go with me. Thankfully, the latter didn’t happen, because Cepeda hit .309 with 25 home runs that season. The next year with the San Francisco Giants, he was the National League Rookie of the Year, en route to a Hall of Fame career.

  I was sad to leave Cepeda behind but happy to find my old friend Julio Navarro in Springfield. I also found the weather there to be just as cold as Minneapolis. But I knew there would be no excuses. I redoubled my efforts and poured myself into baseball. And when I wasn’t playing, I was usually reading that Bible or writing letters home to Maria.

  As in Cocoa the year before I had a good first game that helped me settle in—lacing two hits and making a really good running catch in the outfield.

  One of the things that plagued me early in my career was an absent-minded habit of forgetting to bring my gear with me on road trips. It happened in Cocoa and now again with the Springfield Giants. It was decided on this one road trip, when I forgot my gear, that I would wear the uniform and shoes of one of my teammates—a pitcher named Chet Vincent. I really felt guilty, because it meant Vincent wouldn’t play during that road trip. I sought redemption on the baseball field, feeling an obligation to excel. And I did. In one doubleheader I banged 7 consecutive hits, knocked in 7 runs, and stole 4 bases.

  In addition to Navarro, I became fast friends with another Puerto Rican—a middle infielder named José Pagán, who would go on to have a fifteen-year Major League career.

  Aside from the team finishing twenty-nine and a half games out of first place, it was mostly a good season for me. I say mostly because I suffered an injury that hounded me the rest of my career. As it did in Cocoa my batting average soared and then plummeted. I was hitting .389, running like the wind, stealing bases, tracking down balls in the outfield. My strategy at the plate was basically to put the ball in play and run like hell. More than once I saw the surprised look on an infielder’s face when I would beat a throw to first base.

  One time my speed got the best of me when I managed to score from first base on a single. When I crossed home plate, running furiously, I felt something pull in my right leg and went sprawling flat on my face. After sitting out for three days, and with my leg still pulsating pain, I returned to the lineup. I wasn’t the same, and soon I was relegated to pinch-hitting duties and part-time play. My batting average nose-dived before settling at .306 for the season. Worse still, my leg never felt the same, and I never again had the same speed at my disposal that made me an elite base stealer and a standout in track. Eventually, in 1964, I had an operation on my leg that almost prematurely ended my career.

  When I returned home that winter I thought I had gone backward. But then I learned the Giants were promoting me to their top farm club—the Phoenix Giants in the Class Triple-A Pacific Coast League, again one step away from the Major Leagues. As it was, that would be the last offseason I would spend in the Dominican Republic as a Minor League player.

  The Promised Land waited.

  3

  1958–1963

  6

  The Rookie

  There are pivotal points in life that embed themselves like a bookmark, forever glued to a page of your personal history. There is everything in your life that happened before that and then everything that happens after. It is that dramatic. Critical. Indelible. Unforgettable. For a baseball player, it is the day you are told you are going to the Major Leagues.

  I was playing for the Phoenix Giants in the Class Triple-A Pacific Coast League, and we were in Seattle on one of those rainy days Seattle is famous for. We had been there for two days, but because of all the rain we had not played an inning. I was playing well overall—batting .319 with 13 home runs, 16 doubles, and 42 RBI through June 7, barely more than a third of the way through the season.

  A few days earlier, I messed up. Actually, first baseman Willie McCovey and I messed up together. We flew with the team from Phoenix to Los Angeles, where we had a four-and-a-half-hour layover before we were to fly to Portland to play the Beavers in a series. Because the layover was so long, McCovey wanted to see his sister, who lived in a black section of LA. She insisted we come, telling us she would feed us some collard greens and authentic southern cooking (the McCoveys were from Alabama). I’m glad we went because it was some really good foo
d, but we ended up staying too long. Heading back to the airport, already running late, we were caught in LA traffic when I saw a TWA airplane soar over us.

  “That is our flight,” I told McCovey, and sure enough it was.

  The club wasn’t pleased, and our penalty was that we had to pay for our own flight to Portland. To this day, if I have a flight, I’m always one of the first persons to the gate.

  After Portland we were in Seattle. Sitting in my hotel room with the rain pattering outside, I saw a pair of dusty shoes someone left under my bed. As I examined them the phone rang, and it was my manager, Red Davis.

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “They want you in the big leagues, and they want you to leave today.”

  I was shocked, not only because I had been in trouble a few days earlier, but also because I didn’t think I was ready, and even to this day I wish I spent the entire season in Phoenix. It wasn’t a lack of confidence. I had confidence. It was understanding. I was no fool. I had problems with the fastball, particularly fastballs inside. I also knew I was not that good against left-handed pitchers. The only left-hander I knew growing up was my brother Matty, whom my parents tried to force into becoming right-handed. Because left-handedness was considered a curse in my country, I hardly faced any left-handed pitchers until I turned pro, and I knew that was a weakness.

  It seems kind of funny now that I was looking at a pair of dusty old shoes when I learned of my call-up because it was only days earlier when a conversation about shoes injected me with a booster shot of assurance about my playing abilities. McCovey and I had rented rooms in a Phoenix home, and it was immediately obvious that his passport to the big leagues was already stamped. It wasn’t a matter of if McCovey would make it, but when. It also wasn’t a question of whether he would have a good career, but rather just how great of a career he would fashion for himself. Willie Mac, as we called him, could do it all. I realized that the first time I laid eyes on him, during spring training in 1957. There was a ton of talent in camp. I could see competition from every side, from everywhere I looked. But some players really stood out. Willie Mac was one of those guys. He could run—he was a skinny kid—play a slick first base, hit for average, hit it out of an airport, and hit it hard. You didn’t need a readout of exit-velocity speeds to know that baseballs rocketed off his bat. McCovey, all six feet four of him, stood at the plate like a coiled cobra, ready to strike. It was fearsome to witness, and I was thankful I wasn’t a pitcher having to face him.