by Dick Cluster
Manatí proceeded to set up a council in accord with the recommendation. It was called the Council for Improvement of Manatí and was made up of merchants, ranchers, farmers, the local authorities, and, in sum, the cream of the town. Its admirable mission was described succinctly in a yellow flyer printed up for the purpose: “To oversee the continued progress of the town, provide for general needs, protect individual initiatives, and, in general, keep Manatí in the place of honor, the Privileged situation, that its hardworking sons have earned it.”
The Mamporalese waited for Manatí to form its council, and, once aware of its program, they then launched their own. Theirs was called the Council of Progress of the Municipality of Mamporal. As a subtitle, their flyer declared, to wide approval, “Glory to the Queen of the Plains!” It went on: “The goals toward which the council is proceeding are the continual and incessantly growing greatness of our beloved Mamporal, the young sultana of the Plains. Thanks to our efforts, the tidal wave of Progress will forever wash over the smiling streets of our Privileged villa, which will emerge greater and greater in the Privileged situation brought on by its hardworking and heroic sons. Viva Mamporal!”
So far, no actual aspersions had been cast. But in a fiery speech on the day of the council’s inauguration, the esteemed high school graduate Mirabal Villasmil allowed himself to say, “The Council of Progress of the Municipality of Mamporal shall make the witless snouts of our treacherous neighbors feel the eloquent blow of the back of our hand.”
It also happened that, when a lady of Manatí was entering into the throes of labor, a call went out to Teobaldo, the male midwife of Mamporal—a repellent sort of fellow, his back half-twisted by a spinal ailment, with one eye turned toward Mamporal and the other toward Manatí. So Teobaldo set off in his lame gait and arrived to officiate at the birth of the new Manatían, and someone stuck a nose into the room and inquired, “What is it Teobaldo, a girl or a boy?”
Teobaldo, the midwife from Mamporal, displaying a strong newborn boy in his arms, answered most sweetly, “A girl. As always.”
They wanted to kill him. But Teobaldo returned to Mamporal to recount over and over, to universal chuckles, the pasting he’d given “the fairies of Manatí.”
But soon the confrontation between the two baseball teams became the dominating event. Mamporal won the first game, thirty-two runs to twenty, on twenty-seven hits. The return match, played in Manatí, went to the local team, the Nine Stars, thus tying the series. And the third and decisive game ended with no result. When the Mamporalese saw they were on the point of losing, all hell broke loose. The story goes like this:
In the eighth inning, with Manatí leading thirty-nine to twenty-three, a Mamporalese runner tried to steal second base. The catcher made a strong and perfect throw, grabbed by the second baseman who awaited the runner, blocking the base path while holding the ball. The Mamporal player stopped for an instant, then head-butted his antagonist in the chest. The fielder dropped the ball and fell to the ground, vomiting blood from his mouth and his nose. The runner dashed on to third and rounded toward home when the umpire stopped him.
“You’re ao!”
“What do you mean ao? Call your grandmother ao!”
“But you . . .”
“One moment,” the Mamporalese captain intervened. “What’s going on here?”
“The gentleman is ao.”
“Ao? The fielder interfered with his running.”
“No sir. Your runner head-butted him.”
“No more than he deserved.”
A group formed around them, compact and threatening. The Manatíans gathered, too, gripping their bats. The umpire, unintimidated, shouted, “Forfeit! I declare the game a forfeit, in favor of the Nine Stars!”
“The Nine Stars? A thousand stars are what you’re going to see,” and they clobbered him with a swing of the bat that left him flat on his back, blood spurting even from his ears.
As havoc threatened, the Registrar intervened. He represented the national authority. Tempers cooled.
“Now, friends,” he said. “The man on second is not ao, because the other one got in his way. But he is being turned over to the police. As for the game, it’s called on account of rain. We’ll decide the championship another day.”
The only thing raining was the harsh rays of the sun. The Nine Stars sauntered off. The high school graduate Mirabal Villasmil declared, “If Mamporal loses, what you just saw is only the beginning.”
The next piece of news fell on Mamporal like a bomb. The consternation was unprecedented. On April 19 a bust of the national hero Colonel Julio Rondón was slated to be unveiled in the town square of Manatí. Rondón, born in Manatí, was the pride of the armies of the plains.
Desolation was widespread, and not without reason. A catastrophe had befallen Mamporal, leaving it humiliated overnight—depopulated, destroyed, a thousand leagues beneath its hated rival. The reason was clear. Manatí would have its town square and its bust, because Manatí had its hero. Mamporal had no hero, no glory, nothing at all.
Well, Mamporal did have its town square, but up till then no one had ever thought of using it for anything but market day, or tying up burros, or the solitary parading of the occasional wandering nighttime cow. At most, it might be possible to consider building a monument to Bolívar or Páez, but as far as any local “glory,” any glory of its own, any glory as anyone’s place of birth, there was simply nothing to be done.
The Council of Progress of the Municipality of Mamporal was in session. Considering the gravity of the situation, member Francisco de Paula Vera suggested that “by any means necessary, the erection of the unfortunate bust of Julio Rondón must be prevented.” The Registrar, however, protested in the name of individual freedom.
“Whose fault is it that you don’t have anyone to honor?” he asked. “In Carora where I’m from, we have Pedro León Torres.”
The high school graduate Mirabal Villasmil, secretary of the council, made a proposal. It was seconded by Don Antonio Karama, a Syrian, owner of the tiny inn. “The glory of having given birth to Colonel Julio Rondón, illustrious Father of our Independence, should be challenged, since there are indications that he was born in Calabozo and not in Manatí.”
Teobaldo the midwife rejected that proposition.
“No, sir, Julio Rondón was born in Manatí. Even the alley cats know that. And his baptismal certificate is there.”
Felipe Rauta tentatively put in a word. “What if we could show that Julio Rondón was really a jerk. . . .”
“Never!” the Registrar retorted. “That would be an action against one of the glories of our nation.”
“Then there’s nothing more to talk about. What else is there to do?”
“There is one thing,” old Teobaldo suggested slyly.
“One thing? And what’s that?”
“Well . . . a bust.”
“Another bust? Of whom?”
“I don’t know. In my house I’ve got big bronze one. It’s been there a long time.”
“But who is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Rojas Paúl, from Andueza . . . I don’t know. Maybe Vargas.”
“But who does it look like?”
“Nobody. That much I can say for sure. It’s been sitting for twenty years in a corner of my wife’s room. I don’t know how it ended up there. But what I can say for sure is that it doesn’t look like anyone.”
“Then,” the high-school graduate Mirabal Villasmil exclaimed, “we’re saved! Viva Mamporal! Viva Mamporal! Viva Mamporal!”
Teobaldo echoed, “Viva Mamporal!”
That last Viva!, in the mouth of the male midwife, sound like a birth, the birth of a hero.
On April 19, at the same time as the launching of fireworks in Manatí to welcome the first bronze effigy of Colonel Julio Rondón, the brave combatant from the plains, in the clean and sundrenched town square of Mamporal the Registrar pulled away a white sheet to unveil the bronze bust of a severe looking
man wrapped in an equally severe civilian cloak. Its pedestal held a simple and noble inscription:
Mamporal is grateful to its benefactor.
A NOTORIOUS HOME RUN
Cezanne Cardona Morales
(Puerto Rico)
Born in 1982, Cezanne Cardona Morales is a novelist, short story writer, professor, and columnist. In 2009 he won one of Puerto Rico’s most prestigious literary awards, the Short Story Prize of the newspaper El Nuevo Día. In 2010 he published his first novel, La velocidad de lo perdido (Editorial Terranova, Barcelona). In 2011 he was included in El ojo del huracán, the new anthology of Puerto Rican short story writers (Grupo Editorial Norma).
I owe center fielder Reba Kigali’s story to the intersection of a genocide and a grand slam. Though I remember the first time I saw Reba’s name, in a list of prospects during the big league strike of 1994, it wasn’t till he hit the homer in the ’96 World Series—a homer that almost cost us the championship—that I understood the stain it bore.
I can still hear the ironic laughs that were the automatic reaction of all three of us on base when Reba Kigali stepped up to the plate. I was on first, because my single to left had just moved the other runners over. That was enough to bring the crowd to life, even as they were beginning to file out in the face of imminent defeat. It was the bottom of the ninth, the Atlanta Braves had seven runs, and we, the Yankees, only four. Though there were no outs, I doubted we still had the makings of a last-minute miracle in the tank. The Braves’ manager called time and walked out to visit his star hurler, Greg Maddux, on the mound. His glove in front of his face to prevent anyone from reading his lips, Greg talked with the manager. Neither of them looked nervous. Maybe they were reciting the world’s best poems. Probably the manager was offering the usual advice. Either way, Greg knew he wasn’t about to be pulled. Most likely the advice was just what he expected: fast ball, then something filthy for the batter to flail at, then a curve and Kigali would be out of there. It’s hard to fault them. Throughout the ’95 season, Reba Kigali had been the best hitter on the team, but this year he’d been in such a slump that the rumor mill said nobody wanted to pick up his contract, not even the Cubs, worst team in either league, even worse than the Pirates in their dog days. Given his constant bouts of depression, Reba was about to be consigned to Double-A, the cemetery of ballplayers and the back door to paradise for those who still believed in dreams.
Early in ’95, though, it was obvious why he’d been hired. Reba was an outstanding outfielder, and he soon hit his way into the starting lineup with an average of .375. There was just one thing that struck everyone as strange, as well as provoking the deep-seated racism to which we blacks are not immune. Reba always cried when he hit a home run. He cried the way only brave men who know how to cry can do. I don’t know whether this was involuntary or it was intended to make us forget the terrible story that was always told about him. All I can say is that his repeated action seemed like a kind of unction, a stylized expression of pain, or even a device to provoke his notable and imminent disappearance.
Reba had reached the big leagues amid glorious comparisons to Josh Gibson, the “black Babe Ruth” of the Negro leagues in the 1940s. But Reba seemed to be pursuing Josh’s psychotic side, beset as he was by some sort of attacks of rage or madness, like what happened to Gibson when he was playing in the Puerto Rican winter league of 1945 and was arrested for stumbling drunk and naked through Old San Juan in search of the airport. Reba had also missed his flight, apparently forever. The last time anyone calculated his career numbers, his batting average stood at .190, and he looked clumsy at best in center field. No kids flocked to the exit gate for him to sign cards, balls, gloves, or the breasts of their single mothers who came with them, one of the best perks of the line of work we’re in. I seem to remember being present when Kigali asked a photographer to surrender the film of him crying over one of his last home runs, one of the weakest and flimsiest of his career. How could anyone suddenly lose the genius for the game the way he did? There are plenty of theories. Some of them are even sensible: Genius is nothing but the residue of luck.
Back then I thought I knew what was going on—or had a good guess, at least. It wasn’t that Kigali wanted to escape his career, but that he wanted to escape himself, and baseball provided the exit. Wasn’t that only fair, given the crime he had supposedly committed? The few times I heard him speak, he was talking about players who had made costly mistakes in crucial games. He told me about all the times Ted Williams struck out in the late innings instead of saving the game. His nerves got the best of him, Reba said. It felt like self-justification, but there was more to it than that. He described those games in an uncanny way, as if he’d been there himself, though that was impossible, because those miscues took place before we were even spermatozoa running our first marathons.
Of all the mistakes he narrated, the one he most like to tell involved not just one standout player, but two—Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, like two astronomical bodies crashing in a dark, starlit sky. It happened during Mantle’s rookie year, 1951. In the fifth inning of the second game of the World Series, he came charging out of right field to capture a blast by Willie Mays. But the great DiMaggio, who was in center, went after it too. It was a duel, a race to end all races, Mantle and DiMaggio like Achilles and Hector, each running after an out that wouldn’t, in fact, change the result of the game or the series. Neither one called for the ball. At last minute, DiMaggio did call it. Mantle, just before crashing into DiMaggio, who knew he was right there, stopped and tore the ligaments in his knee. Mick wanted to shine, to make an impression as a rookie, and indeed he owed some of his immortality to that mistake, that devastating excess of rookie ego that wanted to outshine a giant like DiMaggio. The cry of pain and then the bad knee that followed him the rest of his career gave Mantle the best years of his life, a sour victory of pain and glory. Anything he did wrong, it was the fault of his damn knees; anything he did right, you had to marvel about how someone with busted ligaments could play so well. It’s all about finding the lesion, the wound, the failure, the death in life that will save us from a life that’s worse.
When the Braves’ manager left the mound and we saw that Maddux was indeed staying in the game, we knew it was over. I remember glancing at the first baseman and him telling me not to take much of a lead, because the bases were loaded and I’d soon have to come back in humiliation, because Kigali was a sure out. It wanted to tell him the opposite, just like I always do, but I decided to leave him to the noisy silence of his conscience. Of all sports, baseball accepts failure most easily. We’ve all struck out, we’ve all been hit by a ball that has sent us to first base or to nowhere, we’ve all swung at a curve that avoids our bat, we’ve all let the best pitch go by, the pitch to hit, the one that turns out to be right over the plate, fooling us till our last sudden sigh. Maybe it was this pulse of failure that made me fall in love with baseball as a kid, maybe that’s why I was able to find more imaginary fathers in the game. After a while you realize that you can only play baseball if you know how to embrace your own anger, how to be as big as your own nonexistence. And, besides that, it’s the only sport that lets you adjust the position of your cock and balls in front of thousands of people, as naturally as you might adjust your glove or you might toss off an insult at Homer or at God.
I came out of my stupor to listen to the pointless silence that precedes the pitcher winding up. Straight down the middle, a swing, a faint, futile breeze, and back I went to first base. I swore at the African—the Rwandese, as he clarified for me once from his full height of six feet six. Reba was broad-shouldered—he looked like he’d been a boxer before taking up baseball—and in his well-sculpted muscles there was a music of hunger and poverty, among the best sources of muscle in the world.
The first baseman told me what I’d already heard about Reba, but I hadn’t confirmed that it was true, and I don’t know whether I ever will. In Rwanda, he claimed, Reba’s father was a famous a
nnouncer and radio station owner who broadcast the play-by-play of baseball games gone by, but he was also an activist for the Hutu people and never lost a chance to insult their enemies, the Tutsi, who had, thanks to the Belgians, enslaved the Hutu for years. When the time of Hutu vengeance came, after several unsuccessful revolutions, Reba had no option but to join the Interahamwe, which, I read recently, meant simply enough, “Let us hit together.”
“Look at him,” the first baseman said, showing off what he’d recently learned. “Can’t you see him, machete in hand? Don’t you see how he’s looking at his bat? Eight hundred thousand dead in a hundred days. Those Hutu were more effective than the Nazi bastards or the Communist clowns. A model genocide. You’d better believe it, and don’t go pitying him because he happens to be on your team. That fucking African is guilty of genocide. And don’t tell me there isn’t any proof.”
I watched Reba stand up straight, inches away from home plate, where he’d never stand again. I crept a little bit away from the bag. Kigali banged his bat against his spikes to loosen the dirt that had been stuck there, then spat on the ground. I don’t know why we do this, but we do it better than anyone. I spat, too, like someone automatically copying a yawn. Reba regarded his bat with the confidence of a samurai admiring the perfection of his sword. The pitcher decided not to spit on the ball, given the tighter enforcement of that prohibition since the ’70s, and instead filled his hand with saliva, which was almost the same thing. (Spit on a baseball is like the vaseline on a boxer’s face.) He straightened his cap, studied the catcher’s sign, said yes like a teenager on his first visit to the bordello, bent his knees, gave a look over to first, and threw a curve that ended up in the dirt underneath a hollow sound. Strike two. I swore at Reba again.
