Alou

by Felipe Alou

  It adds up to a feeling I am an outsider. Most Latin players feel they are outsiders. We play ball in this country, we spend the greater part of the year in this country, we have many friends in this country, our names are in the American papers, and we become well known to many Americans, but though we are in this country, we are not part of this country. We are strangers. I need a passport to come here. That makes me an outsider.

  But it is not only the American public that does not understand the life of a Latin ballplayer in America. The Latin ballplayer who wants to come to America does not know what is in store for him. If I could give advice to a Dominican boy who wants to enter professional baseball in the United States, I would list five rules.

  1. I would tell the boy, “Do not expect a bonus.” You read about large bonuses paid to youngsters breaking into organized baseball. If you are a Latin, forget it. Once in a while, there is a big bonus paid to a Latin, but not often. Juan Pizarro got a big bonus. The Dodgers paid Roberto Clemente $10,000. But I got $200. Juan Marichal got $500. Those are typical.

  2. In the minor leagues he must outhustle everybody else. Latins are smaller than the average American player, in general. It is unusual to find an Orlando Cepeda, or a Felipe Alou. The shortest San Francisco Giants are two Latins, Matty Alou and Jose Pagan. The roster says they are 5-9, but they are smaller. If you are small, you must make up for it by extra hustle. If you do not hustle more than everybody else, it will be said, “You do not care. You do not have a winning attitude.”

  3. The Latin player must learn English. When I was in the minor leagues, one of my teammates was Julio Navarro, now pitching with the Los Angeles Angels. He could speak English. I followed him like a puppy dog. He was my interpreter, my teacher. When he wasn’t around, I would read the American papers, I would watch television, I would listen to conversations around me.

  4. If the Latin is a Negro, he should understand the racial situation in America, and not expect perfection.

  5. Do not expect to become rich. Latin players—I think—get less than other players of the same ability. Latins often have and come from large families, and they will be sending money back home, and saving money, out of not-so-big salaries. Matty and I both sent money back when we were in Class D. You will pay large taxes—larger than American players who make the same money. People will tell you: You are lucky. You are lucky to live such a good life. You are lucky to be in the United States. But the truth is: Most Latins leave the game before they make big money, and when they leave they have nothing except a large family, and they are old.

  People who read this will say I have resentment. It is not true. I love baseball, as a game. I took up baseball because it was fun. I have learned much, not only about baseball but about life, since I have come to this country. It has been an adventure, an education. I have many wonderful friends in this country. I have met lots of prejudice, but I have also met lots of nice people, great people. It is a beautiful, wonderful country.

  But I am not very happy living the life of a professional ballplayer. It is not the kind of life I enjoy. I am not a city boy. I grew up in the country. I love the game, but it is not a natural life. I do not like night games. I like to get up early, and go to bed early. I do not like night life. I do not smoke or drink or enjoy going to nightclubs. I do not even like to watch television at night. I do not like to be on the road, away from my family. I do not like to live in a foreign country, away from my real home.

  It may come as a surprise to some people—and as a shock to the San Francisco Giants—but I do not expect to stay in baseball much longer. Perhaps I will change my mind, but right now I plan to retire before I am 32. Maybe when I am 30. On May 12, 1963, I became 28 years old. I want to own a farm and have some cows. That is the life I want, not playing baseball at night, away from my home and family, in a country where I must resign myself to being an outsider.

  I can only imagine, more than a half century later, how those words rocked baseball and the Giants. In his book Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game, published in 2012, author Rob Ruck said, “Nobody had ever spoken so eloquently or forcefully about Latin ballplayers, much less prescribed how baseball could and should address their unique concerns.” Even now, when I read those words that I wrote for Sport magazine, I am surprised at how bold I was—surprised and proud.

  It was those last several paragraphs the Giants latched on to. I had an active volunteer ministry going. I fell in with a gentleman named Don Rood of the Pocket Testament League. In addition to speaking at churches, I was bringing the Bible’s message to jails. We went into some jails in Venezuela that I don’t know how God got us out of. In an attempt to explain why they traded me, the Giants told people I was preparing to leave baseball for a Christian ministry. It wasn’t true.

  Nevertheless, on December 3, only a few weeks after the Sport magazine article hit the newsstands, I rose early in the morning at my Dominican home, got into my rowboat, and spent the day fishing, returning home at 5 p.m.

  Maria was waiting for me. Before I even entered the house, she called to me, her eyes telegraphing bad news. “They traded you,” she said.

  The words—just the mere words—rocked me on my heels. It took several seconds before I replied. “To what team?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  It rocked me even further. I disliked the city of Milwaukee more than any other in the league, but I tried to put a positive spin on the situation. “That’s not too bad,” I said to her, thinking about the prospect of being teammates with great ballplayers like Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Joe Torre, and Warren Spahn.

  Then the realization hit me that the Giants had broken up my family—my fleshly family with my brothers Matty and Jesús and my baseball family with my teammates. A fury welled up in me. Then resentment. Finally, as if it were an exclamation point on my range of emotions, one last feeling settled deep within me.

  A broken heart.

  4

  1964–1970s

  15

  Brave New World

  Imagine my reaction when, as the 1964 season approached, I saw that the Milwaukee Braves were scheduled to open their season against the San Francisco Giants—in San Francisco! I went from a broken heart to a heart filled with dread. Any team but San Francisco. Sure, I knew I would eventually have to play against the Giants, but not right away, not on Opening Day.

  I was still adjusting to the trade, to putting on a different uniform, to a whole new set of teammates. People might not realize or remember, but trades were rarer then than they are today. Plus, there was no free agency. Players tended to stay with a team for most of their careers.

  We arrived in San Francisco the day before the game, and Juan Marichal, who years later went on record as saying that trading me “was one of the biggest mistakes the Giants ever made,” contacted me. He wanted me to come for breakfast at his place the following morning.

  “Juan, aren’t you the Opening Day starter?” I asked, more as a matter of statement rather than a query.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel.”

  It was nice for Juan to extend that hand of friendship, but it did little to calm me. I didn’t sleep that night. For the first and only time in my life, I was dreading Opening Day.

  The following morning, while walking, I somehow ripped the seam in my dress pants. Not a good sign. I changed, and when I got to Juan’s home it felt as if I had never been traded. After all, it was only several months earlier when Juan and I roomed together during the World Series, with our families home in the Dominican Republic. His wife, Alma, cooked us a great breakfast of eggs and ham, and then Juan drove me to Candlestick Park, just like old times. From there everything changed. Juan went back to his home to take a pregame nap, and I headed toward the visitors’ clubhouse. Because of baseball’s silly fraternization policy at the time, I couldn’t even hug my brothers or any of my old teammates, much less say hello or even shake their hands.
To this day Willie Mays bristles when the topic of the Giants trading me comes up, telling me and anyone within earshot what a bad trade it was.

  I thought the Giants made a good trade at the time, but in retrospect I went on to have some great years with the Braves and played ten more years in the big leagues. Meanwhile, in return for me, catcher Ed Bailey, and pitcher Billy Hoeft, the Giants got thirty-four-year-old catcher Del Crandall, who was wrapping up a solid career, along with pitchers Bob Hendley and Bob Shaw. Hendley was 10-11 for the Giants before they traded him to the Chicago Cubs about six weeks into the 1965 season. Shaw went 24-19 before the Giants sold him to the New York Mets less than midway through the 1966 season. I went on to have a seventeen-year MLB career, amassing 2,101 hits, 206 home runs, and a career .286 batting average, making the All-Star Game in 1962, 1966, and 1968, while also finishing in the top ten in MVP voting in 1966 and 1968. I guess Willie Mays might be right.

  Of course, looking back with twenty-twenty vision provides perspective, but for the moment I was wearing a Braves uniform and stepping into the batter’s box as the Opening Day’s lead-off hitter against my good friend Juan Marichal.

  The first pitch was a nasty curveball low—a ball. At least that’s what I thought, and that’s what the umpire called. The next thing I knew Marichal was standing next to me, arguing with the umpire about the called ball. I recognized the look in his eyes. He had his game face on. This wasn’t a friendly breakfast of eggs and ham at his kitchen table. This was competition, and this was typical Marichal. He would be so deeply focused on the days he pitched that he rarely even smiled. Not that it would’ve been much better had I still been wearing a Giants uniform, since our pitcher that day for the Braves was Warren Spahn. I ended the at-bat by popping up to the second baseman, Jim Davenport.

  We did nick Marichal for a first-inning run. With two outs Hank Aaron singled to Willie Mays in center field and then stole second. With first base open Marichal pitched around Eddie Mathews, who walked. Joe Torre followed with a single to right, knocking in Aaron. In retrospect, what a group of players occupied that Opening Day game—Marichal, Spahn, Aaron, Mays, Mathews, and Torre, as well as Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. Incredible.

  I had no time to think about all that. I was busy battling Juan Marichal, going 1 for 4 with a run scored, while also reaching base on an error by my friend José Pagán at shortstop. Everything seemed so backward, so strange, so surreal. Several times after a third out ended an inning, I found myself running from my center-field position toward the Giants’ dugout along the first base line, before realizing my mistake and changing course, hoping no one noticed.

  We lost 8–4, thanks to five Giants home runs—two coming off the bat of Willie Mays. We lost 10–8 the next day, when I was 0 for 5, before we headed to Houston for a three-game series. I was never so happy to get out of town. Being there was too emotional. I guess Tony Bennett wasn’t the only guy who left his heart in San Francisco.

  By the time we got to our home opener in Milwaukee, my worst concerns were confirmed—cold weather. It was so cold that patches of snow dotted the warning track. Worse than that was who we were facing in our home opener—the Giants. And I was facing one of the players the Giants traded for me—Bob Hendley.

  People asked me if I wanted to stick it to the Giants. Not in the least. Maybe I wanted to show something to Alvin Dark and the front office. But on the field, what was I going to do? It’s not as if I wanted to slide hard into José Pagán to break up a double play. Or wish to see my brothers Matty and Jesús play badly. I think that was the hardest part—playing against my own brothers. When I was traded it demoralized my family. My parents didn’t understand. They didn’t understand why three brothers couldn’t play on the same team, in the same outfield. They didn’t understand the mechanics of baseball. And they didn’t understand about Willie Mays.

  Mainly because of the family dynamics, it took me a couple of years to get used to playing against the Giants. I don’t think there has ever been a trade in Major League Baseball history where someone has had to come back and compete against two of his brothers.

  History has shown something else, too. My trade turned out not to be an anomaly. From a young man’s perspective—from my perspective—when a team gets you out of college and takes you away from your family, you think you’re going to spend the rest of your life with them. But that’s not the case. It turns out that all of the great, along with some of the very good, Giants players of that era did not finish their careers in San Francisco. To wit:

  Orlando Cepeda was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1966.

  Willie McCovey was traded to the San Diego Padres in 1973.

  Juan Marichal finished the last few years of his career with the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers.

  Gaylord Perry was traded to the Cleveland Indians in 1971.

  Matty Alou was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1965.

  Jesús Alou went to the Montreal Expos in the 1968 expansion draft and then was traded three months later to the Houston Astros.

  Even Willie Mays didn’t finish his career with the Giants. San Francisco traded him to the New York Mets in 1972.

  So Felipe Alou was not unique.

  What made that first year in Milwaukee even more difficult is that I suffered my first serious injury. Not serious in that it was career threatening, but serious in that on June 26, 1964, in Milwaukee, I underwent knee surgery for a torn meniscus. As I enter my ninth decade of life, I live with almost constant knee pain. The injury happened when I hit a ball into the right-center field gap. Jim Beauchamp, who was learning how to play first base, got in my way as I was rounding first, and I collided with him. It resulted in poor Beauchamp also needing knee surgery.

  As it was, I was struggling the first few months of the season. Mostly, I wasn’t hitting well. Our manager, Bobby Bragan, tried everything—moving me around the batting order, benching me, playing me again, shifting me from center field to first base. But nothing seemed to work. When I injured my knee, I was batting only .253 with 6 home runs. I was miserable, feeling sorry for myself. But as I convalesced, letters arrived, many of them from parishioners whose churches I had spoken at in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some even came from fellow ballplayers, like Al Worthington and Bobby Richardson. I thought often about Mickey Mantle and the chronic knee problems—and surgeries—he dealt with and found myself feeling sorry for him.

  It also turned out to not be such a healthy year for my brothers. On June 2 a pitch thrown by Pittsburgh’s Bob Veale struck Matty on his wrist, breaking a bone. And Jesús suffered a spike wound that hampered him much of the season.

  The Braves wanted to shut me down for the rest of the season, but I rejected that notion. When the cast came off my leg, it was atrophied. I did my exercises faithfully. I even went to Lake Michigan and ran miles, plodding along in the soft sand. People stared at me, keeping their distance, and I knew why. I was a black man running, so I must have been running from something or someone. Their looks and evasive postures annoyed me more than they angered me, but I didn’t allow them to stop me. I was on a mission.

  Barely five weeks later I announced myself ready to play. Again I struggled, getting only 1 hit in my first 17 at-bats. My batting average sank, settling at .231 on September 4. That same day New York Mets second baseman Ron Hunt accidentally spiked my brother Jesús during a rundown. Jesús needed ninety-one stitches on his foot, ankle, and calf, which ended his season. Knowing what he was going through made my own woes less painful. It helped that Bobby Bragan stuck with me, and I will always be thankful to him for that. Six days later, on September 10, I hit my first home run since the surgery. Later in that game I hit a ninth-inning RBI double, scoring Denis Menke, to help us beat the Mets 7–6. That was the boost I needed, the spark that not only ignited me for that season but also finally made me feel as if I was a part—an important part—of a new team.

  Ten days later I hit a three-run homer against the Chicago Cubs
in a game we won 5–2. Momentum was building. I was on my way. I went on a tear, getting 17 hits in my final 44 at-bats to finish with a .253 average, 9 home runs, and 51 RBI. Not great. But given all I had been through, and that I managed 455 plate appearances in spite of knee surgery, I’ll take it. Mostly, though, I’ll take the fact that I finally felt like I was a Milwaukee Brave, eagerly looking forward to the next Opening Day.

  16

  Settling In

  Once I settled into Milwaukee I became fond of the city. I quickly made friends with Lake Michigan, where I would fish for salmon, perch, and walleye. I fell in love with the great cheese, the bratwursts, and the beers—Miller, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee—which you could find at any tavern, which were seemingly on every corner. And the fans were great. Really nice people. The only thing that wasn’t nice was the weather.

  But I was there to play baseball, to further my career and become part of something that I hoped would be special. What really makes you feel part of a team is winning and knowing you’re contributing to those notches in the W column. What is also meaningful, and what really makes you feel connected, are the friendships. By year two with the Milwaukee Braves I knew I was contributing, and I could see I was fitting in with a great bunch of teammates. As with anything else in life, it’s all about relationships.

  Our manager, Bobby Bragan, set the tone. As with Alvin Dark, Bragan was from the South, in his case Birmingham, Alabama. But thanks to having been a teammate of Jackie Robinson, an experience he said evaporated any traces of bigotry, Bragan displayed not even a hint of racism. He also played and managed in Cuba, which meant he not only loved Cuban cigars but also understood and appreciated Latino players. Bragan was a character, a funny guy with a big smile that seemed perpetually plastered on his mug. I always thought the face of the Milwaukee Braves’ Indian logo looked like him.