Alou

by Felipe Alou

  “We believe this guy is just a Double-A player,” he said.

  When he said that, I really hesitated. It damaged my confidence. For him to condemn me like that . . . well, it took me a while to recuperate from that dictate from Al Campanis. So I had good reason not to like him. Instead, through the years I came to really like him, admire him, and respect him.

  I observed him a lot in the Dominican Republic—how he would mingle with people, eat with people. He would be in the boondocks, where nobody would ever know how he acted, and he was always one of the people. In my country, to a man, we knew Al Campanis was not a racist. So when he said those things on Nightline, it shocked me. It also broke my heart. Sure, the statement he made was wrong. Nobody would deny that. But being wrong did not make him a racist. Campanis also said I was nothing more than a Double-A player, and he was wrong about that, too.

  Alvin Dark, on the other hand, was a racist. I believe his racism was part of what led the Giants to trade me after the 1963 season, when I finally challenged him on being a bigot. It eventually caught up with Dark in 1964, when he was infamously quoted in New York’s Newsday as saying this about blacks and Latinos: “We have trouble because we have so many Negro and Spanish-speaking ballplayers on this team. They are just not able to perform up to the white ballplayers when it comes to mental alertness. You can’t make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you can get from white players.”

  It would be Dark’s last season managing the Giants. He was fired, not because of the bigoted quotes attached to him but because of his affair with Jackie. Still, it was the comments he made to Newsday that shadowed him all the way to his grave. That’s a shame, because during his lifetime Alvin Dark changed. He was a racist, but he did not die a racist. One by one, through the years, he apologized to me and others—even Cepeda—for the things he had said and done. He became a different man, better.

  In Phoenix in the spring of 1987, we had an old-timers’ event celebrating the 1962 World Series. Dark was there, and he individually pulled several of us black and Latino former players aside and apologized for how he had treated us. When he and I talked I could see the sincerity in his eyes and hear his heart speaking in his words. It was legitimate. There was no doubt about that. He was sorry. Alvin wasn’t an old man then, but he was sixty-five, with many more yesterdays than he had tomorrows. I’m sure he was reflecting on his life, and I believe he didn’t want to die with the things he had said and done as a young man still on his account.

  If we’re honest, we’re all probably prone to be prejudice. I know that even before I met him, I already had negative thoughts when Alvin Dark was announced as our manager. In my mind he was a racist until he proved otherwise—and unfortunately he didn’t, not in the time I played for him. But the way he changed and comported himself later in life allowed my mind to turn off those thoughts and my heart to open up. He became a good man, the Christian man he always aspired to be. Several months before he died at age ninety-two, I spent some meaningful time with him at his home, and he again touched me deeply with the words he said and the regrets he still carried.

  Today, my feelings for Alvin Dark are only tender.

  11

  Death of a Dictator

  I wish I could say that the most unsettling thing that happened in 1961 was Alvin Dark’s arrival. But it wasn’t. Instead, what shook me the most was the thunderclap news that arrived on May 30. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina—a.k.a. the dictator—was dead, assassinated outside Santo Domingo when his blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air was ambushed with a hail of gunfire.

  Inside, I rejoiced. Outwardly, I was stoic. I knew enough not to exult or comment publicly, aware that the arms of Trujillo were longer than the distance between Santo Domingo and San Francisco. Even from the grave, Trujillo could—and did—do damage.

  We lost a doubleheader to the Cincinnati Reds at home that day. I kept my thoughts and emotions together enough to get 2 hits over 8 at-bats. Matty got 1 hit in 5 at-bats—a solo home run. Juan Marichal uncharacteristically, though understandably, lasted only four innings, surrendering 7 hits and 5 earned runs along with 2 walks. Marichal struggled a lot that season, going 13-10, so I can’t 100 percent attribute his poor outing to being distracted by the news. But I feel comfortable in saying Trujillo’s assassination left the three of us Dominicans shaken.

  Not that our Cuban compadres throughout baseball were any less distracted. The botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, intended to assassinate Fidel Castro, arrived only forty-three days earlier—on April 17, 1961.

  It was a scary time. I knew Trujillo’s assassination would result in repercussions, with both the guilty and the innocent paying. But I never bargained that those repercussions would last years, evolving into a civil war and an unwelcome occupation of my country by the United States. Before it was over, the years of roiling turmoil would touch the life of even our youngest brother, Juan, perhaps altering a path that might have taken him to Major League Baseball as the fourth Alou brother.

  Meanwhile, the immediate repercussions reverberated violently throughout our island. The next day I watched the Universal Newsreel report, which was a popular mode of communication then, often played at movie theaters. The short film screamed the headline ASSASSINATION! TRUJILLO KILLED: ARMY IN POWER.

  The announcer reported the news this way: “A thirty-one-year reign of terror and bloodshed comes to an end in the Dominican Republic, as dictator Rafael Trujillo is shot down by seven assassins. His victims were numbered in the tens of thousands during his iron-fisted rule of the island nation, a rule that produced fabulous wealth for a few and the grimmest of poverty for the majority. He ruled by the gun and died by the gun. And now the scramble for power begins.”

  Although Trujillo is said to be responsible for tens of thousands of murders, it was the brutal killing of three beautiful women—the Mirabal sisters—that was the tipping point that led to his assassination. There were four sisters, who in lore came to be known as the Butterfly Sisters, and they openly opposed the dictator. In addition to their vocal opposition and distributing anti-Trujillo pamphlets, they also were involved in clandestine activities. On November 25, 1960, three of the sisters were returning from visiting their politically imprisoned husbands when Trujillo’s henchmen intercepted them along a lonely rural road. The sisters and their driver were brutally clubbed to death in an open field. It is believed that perhaps one or more of them were raped. Their bludgeoned bodies were then placed back in their jeep, which was run off a mountain road into a ravine, attempting to make it look like an accident. Everyone knew better, and even in Trujillo’s inner circle there was outrage. Six months later, Trujillo was gunned down.

  Immediately after their father’s assassination, two of Trujillo’s sons—Leónidas Rhadamés Trujillo Martínez and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Martínez—chartered an Air France jet and returned from where they were living in Paris. The more notorious of the two sons was Rafael, better known as Ramfis. Assuming power, Ramfis rounded up hundreds of people—essentially anyone who was even remotely assumed to be involved in the coup. Inhumane tortures and sadistic killings followed, indescribably hideous, some at the hands of Ramfis himself. Perhaps the most detailed account of that era is recorded by journalist Bernard Diederich in his book Trujillo: The Death of the Dictator.

  Diederich recounts how one of the political plotters, Miguel Ángel Báez Díaz, was viciously tortured and kept naked with other prisoners—a ploy implemented to prevent them from using their clothes to hang themselves. For no apparent reason Báez was one day given a hearty meal to eat. When he thanked his jailers afterward, he was told that what he had just eaten was his son’s flesh. Shocked, Báez hunched in the corner of his filthy cell. “You don’t believe it?” the jailer chided. He then brought Báez the head of his son on a tray. Báez died on the spot of a heart attack.

  In the hours and days after Trujillo’s assassination, my mind raced back through the years. From the day of my
birth he was the only ruler I knew in my country. I thought of my father, my godfather, and the other men in my town reading a newspaper under a handheld gas lamp, furtively discussing politics, their eyes darting, always worried about Trujillo’s spies—the caliéses or SIM, which stood for Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, or Service Intelligence Military. People disappeared. One of those people was a second cousin, Raúl Rojas, a leftist who opposed the dictator. Raúl was a taxi driver, and he and his girlfriend and his car disappeared in the middle of the night—never to be found. We later heard some people say they saw a SIM vehicle stop him and his taxi on a highway next to the ocean.

  I thought of my grandfather Mateo Alou, my mother’s father, who worked for Trujillo as his gardener. He first came to Cuba from Spain. It was part of the family’s lore that Mateo Alou fathered two children in Cuba, Magaly and Martin Alou, who became famous singers. When I was a boy we used to listen to them sing on the radio. My grandfather came to the Dominican Republic around 1900. After Hurricane San Zenon—the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record—ravaged the island in 1930, he became Trujillo’s gardener, the caretaker in charge of a lush compound about a mile long and a half mile wide. It had trees, gardens, animals . . . a real paradise. Many of the trees my grandfather planted still sway in the Caribbean breeze. I can still vividly see him riding to work on the back of a mule.

  My dad wanted to name me Mateo, after him. “No, name him Felipe, after your father,” my grandfather insisted.

  When the next son was born, my father told him, “Now I’m naming this one after you.”

  “No, no,” my grandfather protested but with a smile. “That is a bad-luck name.”

  “You’re not bad luck,” my father countered.

  I thought about that on November 3, 2011, when my brother Mateo “Matty” Rojas Alou died at seventy-two. Other than our sister who died as a baby, Matty is the first and only one of us six siblings to pass away.

  So many memories. So many things your mind races back to when your country’s only ruler, the man your grandfather once worked for, is assassinated.

  I saw Trujillo several times from a distance and met him twice. Once, as a schoolboy, I was in an Independence Day parade, known as the 27th of February. It was mostly a military spectacle, with soldiers, police, and students. We wore our school uniforms and marched like soldiers along George Washington Avenue. The training took months. As we passed Trujillo on the parade route, when we were about forty feet from him, we were to turn toward him and bow our head.

  I met him for the first time during the Winter League in 1956, right after my first professional season in Cocoa, Florida. I was playing well enough to eventually be named the Winter League Rookie of the Year. Trujillo would go to a ballgame once in a blue moon, and he was there one day at the stadium named after him—Estadio Trujillo. I was in my baseball uniform, about ten minutes before game time, when I heard my named called.

  “Felipe Rojas!”

  Soldiers came into the dugout with machine guns. I saw other plainclothes officers hovering nearby. I thought they were arresting me. “The generalissimo wants to see you.”

  As I walked up to the El Presidente Suite, my cleats scraping against the cement steps, fans saw me and started applauding. When I reached the suite Trujillo extended his hand. He was dressed impeccably in a white suit and black tie.

  “Lo Felicito” (I congratulate you).

  “Gracias” (Thank you).

  He wished me well on my career, and that was it, a brief encounter, but that’s all you need to look into a man’s eyes, to measure his countenance, his bearing, his soul. I saw a man in charge of himself. Arrogant. He was put together. His face demonstrated power—good-looking, intelligent-looking, but with evil eyes. I felt my blood accelerating. I felt as if I were in the presence of a monster. I never have to wonder if I’ve seen the face of the devil. I believe I’ve already seen it.

  That scene played out much the same way at a Winter League game two years later, with Trujillo once again wearing a white suit and black tie. He threw out the first pitch that day to Joe Pignatano, a catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The only difference was that in 1958 I knew there were rumblings to kill him. He had spies—his caliéses—all over the city, killing people. You had to be careful.

  Nothing about seeing Trujillo face-to-face surprised me. His mug was everywhere, after all. His picture hung in most every home—more out of fear rather than reverence—accompanied by the words En esta casa Trujillo es el jefe (In this house Trujillo is the boss). My dad never hung that picture in our home.

  I saw and met his son Ramfis several times, too. I believe he was just as evil.

  In the offseason we used to play exhibition games at the air force base in San Isidro. It was all in fun, the games pitting us in a tournament against teams from the navy, air force, army, and the police. One day, with a real tough sun hanging overhead, we were playing in front of Ramfis, the general, and the chief of staff. A ball was hit to center field, deep to the warning track. The poor outfielder couldn’t pick up the ball from the sun. It hit him on the head and bounced over the fence. The impact dazed him, and our trainer, who was there from America, ran to aid him. Just when it appeared he would be fine, two soldiers materialized, each one grabbing him by the arm and ushering him off the field. The error evidently embarrassed Ramfis, and I heard later the center fielder was imprisoned. That’s what life was like under the Trujillo regime—imprisoned for misjudging a fly ball.

  Earlier in 1958 we were playing the Dodgers in a game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. There was a dark-haired man with a mustache in the box seats pregame. He was sitting with a beautiful woman, and I heard some American players mentioning her name—Kim Novak. She was an actress who was currently starring alongside James Stewart in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo. But I didn’t know her and I didn’t know the man, either. At least not initially. Besides, everyone was shooting glances at Kim Novak—not him.

  A security guard approached me. “A man in the stands wants to talk with you,” he said.

  I ignored it, figuring the man was what ballplayers call a greenfly—someone who likes to buzz around players and bother you.

  A little while later, I was told again this man wanted to talk to me. I looked at him, looked again at the dark hair and mustache, and I could tell he was Latino. Then it struck me. It was Trujillo’s son Ramfis, who had been living life large—a jet-setting playboy dating starlets and residing mostly in Spain, France, and Italy.

  When I went over and talked to him Ramfis told me he was having a party that night on his ship—the La Fragata Presidente Trujillo—and he wanted me to attend. “I’ll send someone to pick you up,” he said.

  I told him the game was finishing late and that I had a curfew with the Giants.

  “Do your best to come,” he implored. “I’ve been telling people you’ll be there.”

  I never made it.

  News reports that said the party aboard the ship cost $10,000 in 1958 money reached the Dominican Republic. Given that most people were living in dismal poverty, it wasn’t received well. Ramfis’s dalliances with Hollywood starlets were also chronicled in a May 19, 1958, Time magazine article, which reported, “‘A wonderful gentleman,’ said Kim Novak, her hazel eyes wide and dreamy. ‘A real good-will ambassador for his country. He likes hamburgers and so do I.’ Zsa Zsa Gabor swooningly agreed: ‘One of the finest men I’ve ever met.’” The article went on to say, “Such character references are not easy to earn, but Hollywood thought it knew how Lieut. General Rafael (‘Ramfis’) Trujillo Jr., 28, eldest son of the Dominican dictator, got them. At a Los Angeles foreign-car agency, where he bought a $12,000 Mercedes-Benz to replace his old Cadillac, Ramfis shipped off another $5,500 Mercedes to Zsa and an $8,500 model to Kim Novak.”

  I’m sure that didn’t go over too well in my country, either.

  The following year, at a Winter League game, Ramfis arrived and sat in the El Presidente Suite—again with K
im Novak. This time she was wearing a dress so short you could see her underwear. He didn’t call for me, nor did I go to him.

  Ramfis’s attempts to secure control of the Dominican Republic eventually failed. Late in 1961 he went into exile in France, traveling there with his father’s casket aboard the famed yacht Angelita. It is said the casket was lined with $4 million in cash, along with jewels and important documents. He settled in Spain, under the protection of another dictator—Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

  Eight years after his father’s assassination, while driving his Ferrari 330GT outside Madrid, Ramfis was critically injured in a car accident, dying of pneumonia eleven days later. It is said that his brother Rhadamés was executed by a Colombian drug cartel in a South American jungle sometime around 1994.

  Violent ends for violent people. But it was the violence that occurred on May 30, 1961, when the dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated, that shook me the most.

  12

  The Road to the World Series

  In spite of all the problems we had during Alvin Dark’s inaugural season in 1961, I knew 1962 was going to be a good year for us. I knew we had a team strong enough to go to the World Series. It wasn’t just that we had five future Hall of Famer players in Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, and a young pitcher up from the Minor Leagues named Gaylord Perry. We had other good players, too, and I would like to think Matty Alou and I were two of them. The 1961 season finally established me as an everyday player. I recorded a respectable .289 batting average, with 18 home runs and 52 RBI. Now I was ready for more.