by Paul Volponi
She wasn’t holding a tape recorder. But I didn’t really want to answer any questions. So I shrugged and said, “I’m just waiting. That’s all.”
She must have been able to see through me, because there was suddenly sadness in her eyes.
“Wear this,” she said, taking off one of her TV credentials and then placing it around my neck. “Stay behind me. I’ll talk for you.”
A moment later, we were walking through the press entrance together. She said something to security about me working with her. The next thing I knew, we were inside the stadium’s offices. She guided me down a series of halls, first left and then right.
I tried hard not to make eye contact with anyone, and mostly stared down at the blue carpeted floor. When we came to a stop, we were standing in front of a door with a sign on it that read, MARLINS CLUBHOUSE: PLAYERS ONLY (PRESS AT DESIGNATED TIMES).
Cadence showed our tags to a guard at the door. Then she walked me inside. My entire body was on pins and needles as my eyes darted from player to player. The instant I saw him, it was like ice water had suddenly filled my veins. Chills shot up my spine. He was sitting on a chair, alone in front of his locker, tightening the laces on his cleats.
I took a hesitant step forward. Maybe he sensed me coming, because he suddenly looked up and his dark eyes zeroed onto mine.
27
PAPI RUSHED ACROSS the room. With my legs suddenly weak, I managed just another half step forward.
“Junior,” he said, as his chest thumped against mine.
He was holding me so close I could feel his breath and smell the soap he must have used to shave.
Then he took a step back, with his arms extended, holding me by the shoulder blades. In Spanish, he asked, “How did you get inside here?”
His voice was like a weight bearing down on me. My mouth had gone bone dry. And even if I’d had an answer on my tongue, I wasn’t sure I could have gotten the words out. I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing Papi in the flesh, not on TV or hearing him described on the radio. I’d never been this tall before, standing beside him. The pores on his face looked huge, and there was a blemish beneath his right eyebrow. Then Papi noticed the press credential around my neck, and shot a fiery look at Cadence.
“Did she bring you?” he asked, nearly seething. “To do a story about my family?”
I shook my head and said, “I came on my own. I was stuck outside. She brought me in. To help.”
“Gracias,” Papi told her, an instant before he pulled me away toward his locker.
A pair of Papi’s Hispanic teammates came over, trying to find out what was happening.
“This is my son,” Papi introduced me.
“His oldest,” I added, hoping he would feel the sting.
I could tell he was embarrassed by how this was playing out. Both his teammates gave me huge hugs, congratulating me on escaping from Cuba. They’d seen the TV footage and had all kinds of questions about the trip and the Buick. But Papi cut them off. Then he told one of the clubhouse workers to get me a Marlins jacket.
“You’re going to need one to stay with me,” he said.
I didn’t know what to make of that.
Cadence waved good-bye to me, without trying to disturb us. But as I put my arms into the jacket’s sleeves, other reporters gathered around us. They were mostly older men with long yellow notepads and chalky faces. Papi blew off their questions, ushering me past them without a word. I thought I was going to bawl. I could feel my eyes welling up and the dam about to break. But just as the first tear started to escape, I sucked it all back inside.
Papi led me down a short tunnel, through the dugout, and then onto the field.
For a few seconds, my senses were overwhelmed. It was like stepping into some kind of baseball video game. There were thousands of people in the stands already. Most of them were dressed in either bright orange or black Marlins T-shirts. I could see the aquarium built into the backstop behind home plate and that giant home run sculpture beyond the outfield fence. The stadium’s roof was rolled open, and the clouds in the sky looked like cotton candy.
“Junior, come,” said Papi, bringing me back to reality.
He started jogging around the perimeter of the field, next to the stands.
I was still a half stride behind when I said, “I don’t go by that name anymore. Call me Julio.”
“So, my oldest. Then you know about your half brother? Did Ramon tell you?”
“No, I found out on my own. Does Mama know?”
“Not from my mouth,” he answered, as we made the turn along the outfield fence.
Some of Papi’s teammates who were loosening up in the outfield started over toward us. But Papi went from a jog to a sprint, leaving them behind. Only I stayed right with him.
“I’m much faster now,” I said. “The days of you running away from me are over.”
As we slowed back down to a jog, passing the Marlins’ bullpen beneath the right-field stands, Papi caught his breath and said, “I can’t explain my feelings right now, especially what it’s been like not seeing you all these years. I need to stay focused. People are depending on me—my teammates, the fans—”
“Your new family?” I said, interrupting. “So you can get another million-dollar contract? Keep them living in a mansion while Mama and Lola scrape to get by?”
Papi came to a stop and looked me square in the eye.
“I already told you, I can’t explain my feelings now. I have to be ready to pitch. You’re a baseball player. You should understand that,” he said, with the muscles in his face pulling tight like a stone statue’s.
Staring down at Papi’s bare left hand, I said, “You know, Mama still wears her ring.”
“It’s out of respect for her that I don’t wear mine,” he snapped, before he started jogging back toward the dugout.
I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to follow him. But I didn’t know where else to go. When he entered the dugout, somebody handed Papi a towel and he wiped the perspiration from his face. When he was finished, Papi grabbed me and put me down on a seat near the end of the dugout, by a door leading back to the clubhouse. I was almost out of sight from everyone else, and a few feet behind the TV camera in the corner.
“Julio, you stay here,” he said. “Don’t move without me.”
Then he disappeared through the door. I guess word spread fast, because I didn’t have to explain who I was to any of the players, coaches, or trainers. The Marlins’ manager even walked past and gave me a big thumbs-up.
A few minutes later, Papi came back. He was holding his glove and had his game face screwed on supertight.
“Ramon says you’re a shortstop. Still using the glove I gave you for your birthday?”
“It’s back in Cuba,” I answered. “Along with my old bike.”
“Easy to replace them both,” he said, opening a package of sunflower seeds.
“Yeah, I guess everything’s easy to replace,” I sniped.
A voice on the PA system announced the lineups to the crowd. The umpires and managers met at home plate. They talked for a while there, going over the ground rules of Marlins Park. Then someone led a blind man with a guitar to a stool and microphone near the backstop. Everyone stood as he began to play the American National Anthem. Papi took his cap off and we were almost shoulder to shoulder.
For that moment, whatever private war we were having didn’t matter to me. And I don’t think it mattered to him either. We were two Cubans who’d risked everything to be free. Him in a car outside a Baltimore hotel and me in a ’59 Buick on the Atlantic Ocean.
The blind man sang in English, with a thick Spanish accent. I swore he started out the song with the words, “José can you see.” At his final note, the crowd went wild with applause. And I clapped my hands together so hard that they hurt.
Three fight
er jets roared over the stadium in a tight formation, leaving a trail of white smoke across the sky.
“Those are US navy jets,” Papi told me. “They’re called the Blue Angels.”
They reminded me of Gabriel. I was thinking how he would have loved to see them, and maybe even learn to fly one.
The Marlins’ starting pitcher finished his warm-up tosses, before an umpire wiped the dirt away from the corners of the plate with a small brush. Then the first Yankee stepped into the batter’s box. Papi already had a mouthful of sunflower seeds. He was chewing on them and spitting the empty shells onto the dugout floor.
“Here,” said Papi, holding out the open package and pouring some into my hand.
The Yankees’ leadoff hitter took a fastball down the middle for strike one. That’s when I realized that Uncle Ramon and Luis must be back at the apartment in front of the flat-screen. I knew that Uncle Ramon wouldn’t be too worried about me, because he probably had a good idea where I was.
I popped some of those seeds into my mouth, and the salt from them sat on my tongue until it started to burn at the cracks of my closed lips.
28
I HEARD THE crack of the ball off the bat. Papi jumped to his feet at the sound and so did I. It was a long fly smacked to deep center field. Papi was bending his body with the flight of the ball, like maybe that could influence it. Only it couldn’t. The baseball vanished over the 418-foot mark on the fence. The Marlins’ home run statue stayed silent, though. Most of the crowd did, too. That’s because it was a Yankee who’d homered. They’d had a runner on first base at the time. And after the top half of the first inning, New York was ahead, 2–0.
Papi gave the Marlins’ starting pitcher some words of encouragement as he came back to the dugout. Then he turned to me and said, “Those Yankees think Game Seven belongs to them, because of all their tradition. They think this moment’s too big for us. It’s not. We’re not afraid of their uniforms or anybody wearing them.”
We’d gone more than six years without speaking. Not a single word. I couldn’t believe that Papi was actually talking to me about the Yankees’ stuck-up attitude.
The Marlins went down in order in the bottom half of the first inning. When they took the field again, their shortstop made a slick play on the first Yankee hitter, robbing him of a base hit.
“Ramon tells me you were the best young shortstop in Cuba this season,” said Papi. “Is that true?”
“If they’d let me play.”
“Explain that.”
“You defected,” I said, spitting out the last of my seeds. “They wanted to punish me for that, afraid that I’d do the same.”
“Those bastards were right,” said Papi, as if he were teaching me something.
“You explain that,” I said, annoyed.
“Well, would you rather I’d stayed? Or that I left, so one day we could both be free?”
I didn’t know how to respond. Part of me wanted to curse him out for leaving us behind. Another part wanted to say thank you, for making me walk that long, hard road to right here. And when the grateful part started to win that tug-of-war in my heart, I became angry with myself.
After a few more pitches, Papi said, “I don’t blame you for not having an answer. Sometimes I don’t have one either.”
Both teams put up goose eggs on the scoreboard in the second inning. Then Papi left the bench and walked back to the clubhouse. This time I refused to sit still.
He was on the floor in the middle of a hurdler’s stretch, with the fingers of his left hand reaching for the toe of his right cleat, when I walked in. The game outside was being shown on a pair of huge flat-screens at either end of the room. That’s when it came to me that Luis was watching the game on TV with his father, and now I was watching it the same way with mine.
“How’s the apartment you’re living in? Nice enough?” asked Papi, as he popped off the floor and started to do a set of jumping jacks. “I’ve never seen it.”
“Uncle and Cousin really love it,” I answered, measuring my tone. “What’s your place look like? Full of tricycles and kiddie toys?”
“No, I live alone,” answered Papi, beginning to run in place with his knees coming all the way up to his chest.
“What do you mean?”
“Julio, I’m not with Milo’s mother. We were never a real couple or going to get married. This baby was a surprise. But Milo’s my son and I love him. So I provide for him and his mother.”
Suddenly, I was less jealous of the kid. But I still had plenty to challenge Papi on.
“So how come you never—”
“No more!” demanded Papi, who stalked over to a huge trunk full of equipment. Searching through it, he pulled out a right-handed glove. “Here, take this. You’re going to need it.”
I remembered the last time Papi gave me a baseball glove. It was for my tenth birthday. He’d promised to play catch with me every day until it got broken in. That was a promise Papi never kept.
I took the glove from him. But I didn’t even want to put it on my hand. So I tucked it beneath my armpit.
“Come on. I have to get back out there and support my teammates,” said Papi.
All I could think was that he’d spent a lot of effort supporting everyone except Mama, Lola, and me.
The hallway between the clubhouse and the dugout was covered in a collage of hundreds of photos, reading like a history of the Marlins’ franchise. But there was a blank space in the corner, where there was just blue wall.
Papi stopped right in front of it and said, “There used to be a picture here of me and my former manager. He told some sportswriters how he admired Fidel Castro for being so tough.”
“Uncle Ramon told me about him on the trip over.”
“From the moment I read that quote, he lost my respect—even after he apologized,” said Papi. “Because my children were stuck in Cuba, without the freedom to follow me here.”
“What happened to the photo?” I asked, as the crowd outside let out a roar.
“The day he was fired, I told the general manager to get rid of that picture. He gave me some excuse about how they’d have to redo the whole wall. So I came here with a putty knife and I cut it out myself. That way I never had to ask about it again.”
When we got back to the dugout, Miami had a runner on second base with just one out. That’s when the Marlins’ shortstop came to bat. He hit a high chopper to the left side of the infield, with the runner holding at second. The Yankees’ third baseman had to wait for the ball to come down, and then gunned his throw across the diamond. I could hear the sound of the runner’s foot striking the bag an instant before the ball hit the first baseman’s mitt. It was like the rhythm of a song—swish-pop.
Only the umpire called, “Out!”
The Marlins’ manager charged onto the field. He got between the umpire and his player, who was already arguing the call. That way his shortstop wouldn’t get tossed. The umpire was acting smug as anything, like he could never blow a call. The Miami manager completely lost it. He spun his cap around. And without the brim in front, he could get his face about a quarter of an inch from that umpire’s. Before he got ejected from the game, he really had his say. I didn’t know all of those words in English. But I could guess.
The manager was supposed to leave the dugout. Instead, he hid in the doorway right behind me and Papi at the end of the bench. That way he could manage the team from there.
“He was safe,” said Papi, with his eyes glued to the slow-motion replay on a TV monitor. “I hate when umpires become more important to the game than players.”
I didn’t need the cameras to slow it down. I’d heard the music of that bang-bang play and knew he was safe.
The shortstop was standing right in front of me, looking at the monitor. I was watching him watch himself, being present in his past. It reminded me of
those two sets of footprints I’d left on the beach in Cuba—one coming and one going—before I decided to defect.
All that emotion the manager showed on the field had an effect on the crowd and the players in the Marlins’ dugout. Even I was up on my feet. I had my thumb and pointer finger jammed into the corners of my mouth, emptying my lungs into one long whistle. Papi was blowing just as hard with a sharp tsssspp! But the next Marlins batter struck out to end the third inning. And that surge of emotion was suddenly gone, like the air escaping from a punctured balloon.
Neither team scored over the next two innings. After the Marlins made the final out in the bottom of the fifth, I could see them starting to get really tight. The Yankees’ starting pitcher was sailing along. The Marlins had just four innings left—twelve outs—to put a crooked number on the scoreboard. It was either be winners—World Series Champions—or losers. As a baseball player, that I understood.
“Let’s go. Come with me,” said Papi, walking out of the dugout and beginning his jog to the bullpen in the right-field stands.
I was on his heels in front of that huge crowd, with the glove he’d given me still stuffed under my arm.
That’s when I heard a high-pitched voice from the first row calling, “Papi! Mi papi!”
29
I TURNED TO put a face with that voice. When I spotted who it was, I knew it had to be Milo, Papi’s son. He was the right age, standing on a seat next to a woman who was probably his mother. There was a cascade of dark curls flowing from beneath his baseball cap. He wore a Marlins jacket like mine and smiled from ear to ear, waving a huge foam finger that read, #1. The woman was much younger than Mama, maybe thirty years old, with bleached blond hair. She was clapping her hands over her head, with lots of silver and gold bracelets on both wrists. And from where I stood, her fingernails looked perfect and polished, just like Mama said they would be.
Papi never looked in the boy’s direction. I guess he was too focused and didn’t hear. I wasn’t about to bring his attention to it.
