Alou

by Felipe Alou

  I have a friend in the Dominican Republic we call Negrito who years ago was telling me that his baby boy I used to hold in my arms was going to be a great baseball player. Negrito was an expert at training cockfighting roosters, but his other passion was baseball, and he was a huge fan of the Escogido team. When I managed the Caracas Lions in the Venezuelan Winter League, the general manager there once asked me to bring him a good rooster the next year. I went straight to Negrito, who gave me a beautiful rooster I carried with me onboard the airplane.

  As for Negrito’s boy who was going to be a great baseball player—he grew up to become Adrián Beltré, who in 2017 recorded his 3,000th hit in Major League Baseball, making him not only a guaranteed first-ballot Hall of Famer but quite possibly the game’s greatest third baseman ever. No doubt, Adrián Beltré is the exception, not the rule.

  That kind of talent, as with Barry Bonds, is rare. And that kind of talent also demands big money. It was no secret that Barry’s salary strained the Giants’ payroll, and our best chance to capitalize on his talent coincided with my first year managing the club in 2003. We went 100-61 and won the NL West. In the National League Division Series, we went against the Florida Marlins, who were now owned by the man who had fired me from the Montreal Expos—Jeffrey Loria. The first two games were at San Francisco’s Pacific Bell Park, and before Game One my old friend Jack McKeon, who managed the Marlins, ambled over to me on the field, and we shook hands.

  “I’m going to tell you this right now,” he said. “I’m not pitching to Barry Bonds. I’m going to walk him even if the bases are loaded. I’m sorry.”

  Here is how the series broke down:

  In that first game Marlins pitchers Josh Beckett and Chad Fox walked Bonds three times, twice intentionally, but we still won 2–0, thanks to our ace Jason Schmidt’s masterful three-hit shutout.

  In Game Two we lost a slugfest, 9–5, with Bonds walking twice, once intentionally, and getting an RBI double.

  We lost Game Three, 4–3, in eleven innings, with Bonds again walking twice, both intentionally.

  We lost Game Four and the series in a heartbreaker, when Marlins left fielder Jeff Conine threw out J. T. Snow at home plate in the ninth inning to end the game. It was a bang-bang play, causing a big collision with Marlins catcher Iván “Pudge” Rodríguez. Pudge held onto the ball, and we lost 7–6, with Bonds going 0 for 3 with an intentional walk.

  In the four games Bonds walked 8 times, 6 of them intentional. When they did pitch to him, not too many of those pitches touched the strike zone. In addition to those 8 walks, Bonds went 3 for 9 with 2 singles, 1 double, 3 runs scored, and 2 RBI. But we lost, and the Marlins went on to beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.

  After the game I was in my office talking with some lingering media members when, of all people, Jeffrey Loria showed up. He gave me a hug, and I saw tears in his eyes. “Congratulations on a great season,” he said. “I just want you to know I didn’t want to fire you in Montreal. I was given bad information.” He never told me what the bad information was, and I never asked.

  Although we won ninety-one games the following season, in 2004, we finished two games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West and one game behind the Houston Astros for the lone wild-card berth. This was a Dodgers team led by Adrián Beltré and his 48 home runs and 121 RBI. They were also managed by Jim Tracy, one of my former bench coaches from the Expos.

  I was at that stage of my career where a handful of my former coaches, or what some people might call disciples, were getting Major League managerial jobs. In addition to Tracy, six other former coaches managed in the Major Leagues—Jerry Manuel, Kevin Kennedy, Joe Kerrigan, Pete Mackanin, Luis Pujols, Mike Quade, and Tim Johnson. You’re happy for that, but you’re not happy about losing to one of them for a playoff spot.

  In fact, there wasn’t much happiness my last two years managing. I don’t care how many years you’ve been in baseball, you never get used to losing, and we lost a lot in 2005 and 2006. Bonds averaged a tad more than $20 million those two seasons, and it hamstrung our payroll while he battled through injuries. One of the bright spots for those two seasons was reuniting with my son Moisés, who came to us as a free agent, becoming the fourth Alou to play for the Giants’ franchise. Both those two seasons also had a couple of off-the-field distractions—one of which was particular disheartening.

  Early in August 2005 I was sitting at my desk when our media relations man, Blake Rhodes, came into my office and plopped down a transcript of what a radio guy named Larry Krueger said on the air with our flagship station, KNBR. “Look at what this guy said,” Rhodes told me. The words jumped off the page. I could feel my rage rising inside me. Krueger had gone on a rant over our 45-61 record, choosing only to attack me and our Latino players, saying, “I just cannot watch this brand of baseball any longer. A truly awful, pathetic, old team that only promises to be worse two years from now. It’s just awful. It really is bad to watch. Brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly. . . . You have a manager in Felipe whose mind has turned to Cream of Wheat.”

  His comments not only exploded in a city like San Francisco, which is known for its diversity, but also in the clubhouse of a franchise known for pioneering Latinos into Major League Baseball. For me Krueger’s comments brought back all the bigoted stereotypes that never seem to go away. With just a few sentences and seconds, he condemned me, my son who batted .321 for us that season, all of my Latino players, and all of Latin America. I heard that some of the Latino players wanted to retaliate in a physical way, and I could not allow that. I called them all into my office.

  “Let me handle this,” I told them. “Don’t get yourselves in trouble.”

  When the media came to me, I unloaded. I had a voice now. When I came to the United States in 1956 and they wouldn’t let me play in Louisiana because of my skin color, or eat at restaurants or stay in hotels, I didn’t have a voice. But now I did and I was going to use it, and I was going to get the message out throughout the world. On ESPN’s Outside the Lines I called Krueger “a messenger of Satan” and added that “I believe there is no forgiveness for Satan.”

  Krueger tried to save face and his job by apologizing, showing up at my office door. But I did not believe I was authorized to accept his apology. It wasn’t just me he insulted. It was all Latino players as well as all of Latin America. I told him he would have to go to each Latino player in our clubhouse and apologize to them individually, which he didn’t do. I later told the media: “He came to apologize to me? You have to be kidding me. There’s no way to apologize for such a sin. All of these people have been offended by this idiot. I can’t speak for hundreds of millions of people. This guy offended hundreds of millions of people.”

  KNBR fired Krueger, who within a month landed another Bay Area radio job. Ten years later he returned to KNBR. I see him from time to time, but we’ve never talked. All these years later, I do forgive him. Even back then I didn’t want him to lose his job, especially after I heard he had children. That bothered me. So even though what he said still hurts me today, I forgive him. But what I don’t forgive is the system, the mind-set that still fosters the type of bigotry that came out of his mouth.

  The following 2006 season was not as tumultuous, but the steroid saga was moving front and center in Major League Baseball, with Commissioner Bud Selig tapping into former senator George Mitchell to conduct an independent investigation. It created a lot of obvious distractions for our team, since it was apparent that one of the largest dots on the radar was Barry Bonds—if not the largest dot.

  I was ordered that summer to testify before Mitchell’s team. They grilled me from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and I had a game to manage that night. They resurrected my old quote, where I said “players will do anything to get an edge.” I didn’t mean it to imply steroids, because the worse thing I ever saw in a clubhouse were amphetamines to give players energy, pills to relax, and Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey to keep guys warm on cold days. B
ut they kept coming back to that quote. What they didn’t do is ask me about any players specifically. They never mentioned one player’s name. Not even Barry Bonds.

  As the season wound down, I knew it was going to be it for me. I was at the end of my contract, and I was seventy-one, with a full career behind me. We were losing too much, thirteen of our last fifteen games, and it wasn’t fun for me. The last game of the season was a 4–3 loss to the Dodgers in San Francisco, leaving us with a 76-85 record. I sat in my office, still in my uniform, waiting for the front office to announce that I wouldn’t be returning. Blake Rhodes came in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Who’s going to tell me I’m not going to be managing this team anymore?”

  “Everybody’s sad,” he said. “Nobody wants to be the one to tell you.”

  “Well, somebody better do it,” I said. “I have a flight home tonight at 10. I’m ready to go.”

  Rhodes left, and soon our managing general partner, Peter Magowan, came in. He told me they were going to let me go as the manager, but they would like me to stay on in another capacity with the organization.

  He left, and Brian Sabean came to my office. “I want you to be my special assistant,” he said. “The assistant to the GM.”

  I accepted.

  The media were hovering outside, and I invited them into my office to tell them what transpired. Henry Schulman, a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle, spoke up. “Felipe, all of us here want to thank you for the way you treated us,” he said. “Thank you for respecting us and for always being honest with us.”

  That night I sat on a six-and-a-half-hour red-eye flight home to Florida. I ordered a glass of wine. As the hours and the miles passed, I felt an enormous sense of relief. I wasn’t going to be battling the road, losing streaks, opposing teams, or umpires anymore, dealing with the daily pressure, the second-guessing, the grind. I looked out the window and saw the twinkling lights of Dallas, and I knew there was no turning back.

  I thought about how I would never manage a Major League team or wear a Major League uniform again, and I was at peace with that. I took a sip of wine, smiled, and leaned back in my seat. I thought about how my baseball career had come full circle, how I had been blessed to return to San Francisco, where it all started. I had gone home to my baseball family, and for that I was happy.

  And now, as the airplane continued east in the night sky, farther and farther away from San Francisco, I knew I was going home to my real family, and for that I also was happy.

  Epilogue

  My eighty-two-year-old eyes scan a baseball field. Not the hardscrabble one of my youth, where I led a battalion of boys in chopping down a coconut tree that obstructed our ability to play. This one is meticulously manicured, and it is in Boca Chica, about thirty miles east from where I grew up along the southern coast of the Dominican Republic.

  People approach me, smiling, shaking my hand, slapping me on my back, congratulating me. It is August 23, 2016, a balmy, breezy summer day, and with a dedication ceremony set to begin, I’m still trying to comprehend what is in front of my eyes. I read the words on the wall of the complex, and I cannot believe them. I blink, and the words are still there:

  FELIPE ALOU BASEBALL ACADEMY.

  It has not just one but three baseball fields, each of them resplendent in their emerald-green and clay-red colors. The fields are only a half hour away from the field my friends, brothers, and I played on. But it may as well be light-years away.

  When we were innocent boys, we played for the pure joy of baseball. Our mitts were often our bare hands. Our ball was often a small piece of fruit. And our bat came from my carpenter father, who would fashion something rudimentary out of a piece of wood.

  But these gorgeous new fields I’m looking at are big business, part of a state-of-the-art facility with batting tunnels, pitchers’ mounds, a weight room, a gymnasium, a dining hall, classrooms, a computer laboratory, conference rooms, training rooms, offices, and a residence hall for coaches, staff, and up to seventy-three players. The academy will serve as the San Francisco Giants’ headquarters for their Latin American operations, while also providing vocational and educational training for international prospects.

  I tour the complex. Every hallway I walk down and room I enter have that same new-house smell to it. New paint, carpet, cement, glass, furniture and, of course, the best scent of all when I walk outside—the smell of a freshly mowed baseball field.

  I try to soak it in, try to comprehend it all, but like most everything else that has happened in my life, I could never have dreamed of this. Me? A boy from Kilometer 12, who grew up in a fifteen-by-fifteen shack with his parents and five siblings, in a home my father built with his own strong hands in 1934, the year before I was born? No, I could never have dreamed of a state-of-the-art complex like this bearing my name.

  My chest swells with pride, yet my heart bows with humility. I feel so many emotions. Even sadness. Of all the things I see, it’s what I don’t see that my mind’s eye focuses on. I don’t see my parents, José and Virginia Rojas. I don’t see my firstborn son, Felipe. I don’t see my brother Matty. How can I not feel a tinge of sadness?

  My father died on August 3, 1994, when I was managing the Montreal Expos and we had Major League Baseball’s best record. He was eighty-nine. Nine days later MLB’s players went on a strike that eventually led to that season’s cancellation. My mother died fourteen years later, on January 1, 2008. She was ninety-three. They lived long lives, good lives, prosperous lives. My firstborn son, Felipe, wasn’t as fortunate. He died on March 26, 1976, his neck broken in a horrible swimming pool accident. He was only sixteen.

  And then there is my brother Matty, the third of six siblings. The smallest one, but also the toughest one. Matty suffered a couple of devastating strokes that debilitated him, robbing him of much of his body and mind. When Matty was in and out of the University of Miami Hospital, Juan Marichal opened up his Florida home in nearby Doral for Matty and his wife, Teresa, to stay. We eventually returned Matty to the Dominican Republic, where Jesús and I visited him almost daily. I would talk to Matty about our childhood, playing ball, fishing—the memories. On November 3, 2011, he suffered another stroke, and this one killed him. He was seventy-two.

  At his funeral, just before we were to lower his casket and return him to the earth, I was asked to say a few words. I told the throng of people that I never envied my brothers for anything. I always wanted the best for them. When Matty and I were battling for the National League batting title in 1966, I wanted Matty to win and felt so proud and happy for him when he did. But I did envy one thing Matty had—his friends. I always envied that Matty had so many friends.

  One day, hopefully not anytime soon, Jesús will be laid to rest next to Matty. I’ve chosen another cemetery for my final resting spot, the one where my parents are and where my son is.

  Life goes on. Life and death. From that small shack at Kilometer 12 have come generations bearing the names Rojas and Alou. Both the names are important. I thought about that when the Giants told me they wanted to name this baseball academy after me. They told me the academy would have three baseball fields, and they were planning to name one after Juan Marichal, another after Ozzie Virgil Sr., and the third for the Alou family.

  I thought about that and how when baseball came for me, it took me out of the Dominican Republic and it took my real last name—Rojas. I didn’t know how to correct that error then, so when I went to Major League Baseball and made a name for myself and for my family, that name was Alou.

  Now, with baseball bringing me back my country, I wanted my name brought with it. The Giants agreed. And so, at the Felipe Alou Baseball Academy, the third field bears two names.

  Alou.

  And Rojas.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all those who encouraged me to tell my story, which is really the story of a family—a poor family that has been richly blessed by Jehovah God. If my wife, Lucie, and my chil
dren had not encouraged me to take on this project, I never would have considered it. Because of them, I did. Even then I was stubborn. It was only after the urging of my friend Bruce Bochy, who enthusiastically endorsed both the book and my coauthor, that I finally followed through. I’m glad I did.

  How do I thank baseball, the profession I’ve given my life to yet has given me so much more in return? This beautiful game has provided me a second family and scores of relationships I cherish. Thank you to Horacio “Rabbit” Martínez, who believed that a young man from the Dominican Republic could blaze a trail for our country. Thank you to Dan Duquette for giving me my first opportunity to manage in the Major Leagues. Thank you to Peter Magowan and Brian Sabean for bringing me home to San Francisco and to Bill Neukom, Larry Baer, and Bobby Evans for keeping me here with the Giants.

  Thank you to Pedro Martínez for the eloquent foreword he wrote and to Tony La Russa, Joe Torre, Buck Showalter, Reggie Jackson, Bob Costas, and Tom Verducci for publicly and passionately endorsing this book.

  Thank you to my father and mother, José and Virginia Rojas. My brothers and sisters and I could not have asked for better parents.

  Thank you to my coauthor and friend, Peter Kerasotis, for his persistence in believing my story needed to be told, for his patience with my travel schedule, and for his professionalism. There is no doubt in my mind that Jehovah brought us together. Thank you to his wife, Shelley, for sacrificing time with her husband and for tirelessly reading, editing, and fact-checking everything Peter and I wrote together.