The Closer Page 4

  This is getting more absurd by the second.

  See me pitch? But I am not a pitcher, I say. If you guys are joking, please stop it.

  We are not joking. We’re serious, Mariano. They want to see you pitch and the tryout is tomorrow, Claudino says.

  I look at my teammates in complete disbelief. I couldn’t be more shocked if Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels rode into Puerto Caimito and said I was going to get a chance to be on The Lone Ranger.

  When I press for more details, Claudino tells me he was so impressed with what he saw from me in that game that he and Emilio got the idea to call up Chico Heron and tell him about me. Chico is a local coach and part-time scout for the Yankees, one of those baseball lifers who are always at one field or another. Emilio and Claudino are really good guys, but they also are looking to get a little piece of the action, if there is any. Turns out, if you refer a player to the Yankees who winds up signing, you get a finder’s fee of two hundred dollars.

  So what do you think? Claudino asks.

  What I think is that it’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard. But nets don’t make any money when they are on the boat. And I love playing ball.

  I’ll see you tomorrow, I say.

  3

  Two Buses, Nine Pitches

  THE YANKEES TRYOUT IS held in Estadio Juan Demóstenes Arosemena, a fabled old park with ornate turns of stone in its stucco façade. It dates to 1938 and is named for the Panamanian president who built it. The Latin words Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) are etched into the stone by the main entrance. I’m not convinced I am going to be any of the three, but I am here to give it a shot. Many of the top Central American and Pan American championship tournaments are held in Juan Demóstenes Arosemena. I spend the first half of the day repairing nets with my father, who isn’t thrilled that I am leaving but grudgingly gives me permission.

  Get as much done as you can before you go, he says.

  I set out for Panama City at 1:00 p.m. I take a bus from Puerto Caimito to Chorrera for 45 cents. Then I switch and get on another bus that takes me to Panama City, for 65 cents. The trip takes an hour and a half, and by then I am hungry, so I stop at a bodega and get six little rolls—pan de huevo, we call them—for a nickel apiece, and a 25-cent container of milk. It means I won’t have the full $1.10 I need for the bus trip home, but the drivers are usually good about letting you slide until the next time.

  It’s a twenty-minute walk from the bus stop to the stadium. Much of it is in a barrio called Curundú, a ragged section of the city with run-down houses, vacant lots, and starving stray dogs almost everywhere you look. Garbage is scattered all over the place. You see drunks, homeless people, and street hustlers. Crime is widespread. It’s not a neighborhood you want to linger in, but people tell me that nobody messes with ballplayers. I walk fast and don’t stop. I get through the barrio with no problem.

  It’s a good thing the Yankees don’t have a dress code for tryouts. If they did, I would’ve been sent right back to Puerto Caimito. I show up in old green pants, a frayed shirt, the shoe with the hole… and no glove. There are about twenty other prospects there, and when I arrive in my ragamuffin outfit, I see them pointing and laughing at me.

  Hey, look, they’re giving a tryout to a hobo, I imagine them saying.

  I’ve played games in the park before. I know the layout and the size—it seats twenty-five thousand people—so the surroundings are familiar enough. The first thing I do is look up Chico Heron, the Yankee scout who has organized the tryout. Chico is a small, round man who always has a Yankee hat on his curly mop of hair. I’ve known him for years; you can’t be a ballplayer around Chorrera or Puerto Caimito or any of the surrounding towns and not know him. I shake hands and say hello.

  I am glad you’re here, Mariano. We’re taking a look at some players and I’d like to have you throw to me. I hear you looked good in relief the other day. So you are doing some pitching now?

  Well, a little bit. It’s not like I pitch every day or anything. Really, I just pitched that one time, because the team needed me.

  Okay, fine. Get out there and warm up and we’ll get started.

  Chico had scouted me once before, about a year earlier. He was looking at me as a shortstop when I played some games there for Oeste. I made most of the plays, and had a couple of hits, but Chico didn’t see enough to recommend me as a prospect. He was concerned that I wouldn’t be enough of a hitter to be a pro prospect, and because he’d scouted me previously, he wasn’t all that fired up when he got the call from Claudino and Emilio.

  I’ve already seen Mariano Rivera as a shortstop, Chico told them.

  You haven’t seen him as a pitcher, Emilio said. You need to take a look.

  Trust me. I caught him, Claudino said. This is a kid who can put the ball wherever he wants.

  I recognize quite a few of the guys at the tryout from playing against them. At twenty years old, I am one of the oldest players there. The guy they really want to look at is a big kid pitcher named Luis Parra, a really hard thrower. There’s another pitcher they like a lot, but I don’t even know his name. I ask one of the guys if I can borrow a glove and start to warm up. I am not worried about Luis Parra or anybody else. It is not even in my mind to make an impression, or do anything but play ball. Performance anxiety is not in my makeup. What is the worst thing they can do if they don’t like me—send me home? I am not thinking that this is my big chance to escape Puerto Caimito and change the course of my family’s life forever.

  All I am thinking is: Let’s play ball, and then I’ll get on the buses and go home.

  After a few minutes, Chico calls me over.

  Why don’t you get on the mound and throw some pitches?

  Okay, sure.

  I head out to the mound and dig in front of the rubber a little. When I look down I see my big toe poking out of my right shoe, but I pay no mind. I face the plate, pitch from the traditional windup position. I rock back with my left leg, raise my hands up slightly, then bring my left leg forward and push off with my right. I wind and deliver—a fastball on the corner. I get the ball back from the catcher and throw again, another strike on the black that pops into the catcher’s glove. I am throwing easily, fluidly, with no grunting or flailing limbs, and seemingly little effort. I may be built like a pipe cleaner, but the ball seems to know where it needs to go.

  I throw a total of nine pitches. They are all fastballs, because that is the only pitch I have.

  That’s good, Mariano. That’s all I need, Chico says.

  I am not sure what he means. Nine pitches? That’s it? Is it time for me to get back to the fishnets now?

  A few minutes later Chico pulls me aside.

  I like what I saw from you today. I would like you to keep coming back for the rest of the week, and then have Herb Raybourn, director of Latin American scouting for the Yankees, take a look at you. Herb is the one who has to make the final call. What do you think about that?

  That’s fine, Chico, I say. As long as I can get off of work, I’ll come back. Thank you for having me in today.

  I hope I see you tomorrow, Chico says.

  I walk back through the barrio, dodge a few panhandlers, and get on one bus and then another (and talk the driver into accepting a reduced fare of twenty-five cents for today). My father signs off on the additional tryout sessions. The rest of my week follows the same schedule. I repair fishing nets in the morning, then take two buses and walk through Curundú to get to Estadio Juan Demóstenes Arosemena in the afternoon. I work out for Chico all week, and it’s all good. I get to play ball every day, and get time off from the nets—always a welcome thing. Herb Raybourn shows up at the end of the week. I find out I will be pitching against the Panamanian National Team. I don’t know much more, except that I am sure I will be pitching last. Parra is obviously the pitcher they are most interested in, and there are other guys whom they’ve been looking at a lot more closely during the week, guys who are throwing more
and getting much more feedback.

  I am a bottom-of-the-barrel guy. That much is very clear to me.

  And that’s fine. I don’t burn to teach them a lesson for underestimating me. I don’t fill up with private fury at the sight of Luis Parra or the other guys. Nothing is really registering with me about what doing well here could mean. It’s as if they are talking in a foreign language, like English, whenever they speak to me. I am just doing what they ask. They tell me to go here, and I go here. They tell me to go there, I go there, and when they tell me to pitch, I pitch. I don’t see the future. I can’t even imagine it.

  Why aren’t the possibilities on my radar?

  What’s radar?

  On the final day, I ride the same two buses, and stop for the same pan de huevo and milk. When I get to the stadium, I see Herb talking to Chico. Herb has white hair and a medium build, and his radar gun is ready to go. Like Chico, he is surprised to see me as a pitcher, because he had looked at me as a shortstop, too. I know Herb a little bit. He used to work for the Pittsburgh Pirates and signed several Panamanian big leaguers, including Omar Moreno, Rennie Stennett, and Manny Sanguillen. But mostly I know him because he once signed my uncle Manuel Giron, my mother’s brother. Manuel was also a pitcher, and a lot of people thought he’d be the first player from Puerto Caimito to make the majors. He played three years in the Pirates’ system and then got released. He came back to Puerto Caimito and went to work—where else?—in the fishing business. My uncle never talked much about his baseball career, and I didn’t ask him. He was back home, which happened to almost everybody, and that was that.

  About a half hour before the game is going to start, Herb finds me in the dugout.

  You’re going to pitch first, so you should warm up soon, he says.

  I am shocked.

  I am starting?

  Yes. I want to put you right out there and show these guys some pitching, Herb says, smiling.

  He’s got to be kidding, I think.

  I get my arm loose and I feel good as I walk out to the mound. Herb settles in behind home plate with his gun. I don’t know what he’s expecting, or what numbers the gun will spit out. I’m not worried about it, either. As inexperienced as I am, I understand pitching enough to know that it involves much more than what digits you put up on a gun.

  The leadoff hitter steps in and I get ahead right away. I settle into a groove quickly, throwing strike after strike, hitter after hitter. There is no deception to anything I am doing. The ball is going exactly where I want it to, on almost every pitch. The strike zone looks as big as the side of a house. My approach, even then, is to keep it simple, and get out of there quickly.

  I go three innings and strike out five and give up one hit. I’m not counting, but I probably don’t throw more than thirty or thirty-five pitches, almost all fastballs with one or two very primitive changeups mixed in. When I walk off, Chico shakes my hand.

  Good job, Mariano. You’re done for the day. We’re going to look at some of the other guys now.

  I thank him and sit in the dugout and watch Parra and the others, wishing I could get out there and play some more, maybe run around the outfield. Not to make an impression. Just to play. I’d always rather play than watch. After the game, Herb asks me if we can talk for a few minutes.

  Sure, of course, I say.

  You looked very good out there today, he says.

  Thank you.

  You made some good hitters look pretty ordinary.

  Thank you.

  I think you have a future as a pitcher. I’d like to talk to you and your parents about you signing a contract with the New York Yankees. Can you come here tomorrow and meet me, and then we will go to your house so we can all meet and discuss this?

  Yes, sure. That would be okay with me, I say.

  I am not sure why Herb wants me to meet him, instead of just driving to Puerto Caimito himself, but I do as he asks. After I get to the stadium, we ride together through the hills and the sliver of rain forest, through Chorrera and finally back into my village. My father is down at the boat when we arrive, so I have to go get him. Herb has a small briefcase with him. I wonder what is in it, and wonder what this all means, because it is still not at all clear to me.

  When we all get to our little block house, Clara is there, too, and that’s a big comfort. If something important is happening to me, I want her there. Herb opens his briefcase and puts the contract on the table and explains what happens from here, as Clara and my family listen, all of us a touch amazed.

  With my parents’ blessings, I sign a contract with the New York Yankees. I am getting a $2,000 bonus to be a ballplayer. It is February 17, 1990, a Saturday.

  My little marble is about to get a lot bigger.

  4

  Gulf Coast Revelation

  GETTING TO THE NEW World isn’t easy. My fellow prospect Luis Parra is my traveling companion. We have to change planes in Miami. That means navigating the Miami airport, finding a new gate, and getting there before the plane leaves. Luis is as clueless as I am. It feels as if we’ve been dropped in the middle of a big city in a foreign country, because we have. People are racing around with manic looks on their faces. Babies are wailing. Announcements are blaring. I’ve never seen so many people or heard such chaos.

  Fortunately, there are enough Spanish-speaking people that, after asking about ten of them for help, we manage to get to the gate for the short hop to Tampa. The flight is memorable only because I discover, two trips into my flying career, that I am terrified being off the ground. I will fly millions of miles in the next twenty-plus years. It never gets better.

  We get off the plane and start walking down the concourse of the Tampa airport. It is less hectic but still bewildering. I see all these signs in English that I don’t understand.

  Bagel? French fries? Home of the Whopper?

  What do these things mean?

  Baggage claim? Lost and found? Ground transportation?

  Can somebody please explain?

  Parra and I keep walking. We have one objective: Find a guy in a Yankee hat and Yankee jacket. This is all they tell us: Look for a guy named Chris wearing Yankee stuff. He’s sort of a roly-poly guy in his late thirties. You can’t miss him.

  Actually, we could miss him, very easily. If anybody else is wearing a Yankee hat and jacket, we’re in big trouble. They probably wouldn’t leave No. 1 draft choices who don’t speak English on their own in a strange airport, but we are obscure Panamanian kids who sign for roughly the equivalent of a pound of shrimp. So, no, we aren’t going to get the royal treatment.

  We’re going to get Chris and his Yankee outfit.

  Down the escalator we go, near the baggage carousel. Wait.

  Look, there’s a guy in a Yankee jacket. Maybe that’s him, I tell Parra. He looks as if he’s waiting for somebody.

  We walk over.

  Chris? I say.

  He extends his hand.

  That’s me. Welcome to Tampa. You must be Mariano Rivera and Luis Parra. C’mon, we’ll get your bags and head over to the complex.

  Neither of us has any idea what he is saying. English isn’t even our second language. It’s not our language at all. Our blank faces tell him as much.

  The short trip from the airport to Yankee headquarters blows my mind. The roads are so big… and so paved. The office buildings and stores are all huge and new and look so impressive. The layout of everything is dazzling in size and scope, and then we pull into the Yankee complex and get out of the car, and my awe takes off like a speedboat in the Canal.

  I look one way and see the most beautifully manicured ball field I have ever laid eyes on. I look the other way and see another field, just as perfect, and then see two more beyond that, and wonder how it is that baseball fields could look like this (I am guessing the grass is not cut by a kid with a machete).

  I am not in El Tamarindo anymore. I am in Hardball Heaven.

  There are spotless offices and a spacious clubhouse. There
are batting cages and training rooms and more bats and balls and helmets than I knew existed. Chris, who is a clubhouse guy when he isn’t an airport driver, hands us our practice gear and uniforms. I also get a glove and a set of spikes, so I can retire the pair with the hole. It’s like Christmas in April. We head over to the Bay Harbor Inn, the nearby hotel that belongs to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; it is where we will be living for the season. I have stayed in a few roadside motels that cost ten or twelve bucks a night traveling around Panama, but those are places where you are lucky if you get a bed. Here, Parra and I have a television and our own bathroom. We have a stockpile of towels and soaps and shampoos. There is room service, too.

  What’s room service? Parra asks me.

  I have no idea.

  Luis and I don’t venture far from the hotel very often, mostly because of the language barrier. When we go out to eat, if we don’t have a Latin server, we point to the photo on the menu that looks good. Iguana dishes are strangely absent.

  When we get on the field and start the workouts, I am struck right away by the size of the players, the pitchers especially. They are all big and a bunch of them are thick-bodied. Our top pitcher, a left-handed kid from Duke University named Tim Rumer, is six foot three and over 200 pounds. Russ Springer, from Louisiana State University, is six foot four and about 200 pounds, and even a six-foot right-hander from Clemson, Brian Faw, outweighs me by 30 pounds or so. I watch these guys throw and I figure the radar gun is about to break, they are throwing so hard. Rumer has a curveball that breaks about two feet.

  But the more I am out on the field with the Gulf Coast Yankees, the more I know I can compete with them. When we run and field and do drills, I am right there with everybody. And when I am on the mound I discover that, as skinny as I am, and as underwhelming as my 86- or 87-mile-per-hour fastball is, I can do one thing better than just about anybody else: