Three months: values/Tres meces: valores

December flew by for me. That means I'm almost home. I'm in the library at UNIBE in between final exams right now, killing time by screwing around on the internet, which is my go-to activity domestically as well as internationally. I apologize for the gap between blog posts but rest assured that you didn't miss much between Thanksgiving and the last week of school for me.

The three month mark passed on December 2, a week ago. As with the previous milestone posts on my first and second month here, I chose an aspect of my journey to write about as I mark one of the final steps of my adventure in the Dominican Republic.

Since I've already beaten one literature concept into the ground, I'm going to steal another classic from one of my favorite narratives, the Wizard of Oz. The protagonists are all searching for heart, brains, courage, and a way to go home through the story, but each found they had their coveted qualities all along. You know all that. Here's the story of how I discovered each of those values in the Dominican Republic.

Dorothy met the scarecrow first and he said he wanted a brain. Once he got it, he spouted off equations and other boring nonsense. For me, the brains I wanted all along was the ability to speak Spanish fluidly. As everyone in the DR predicted, I am able to do that now...a week before I leave for the United States. It's true. Spanish has never been clearer or easier for me to understand. That doesn't mean I'm fluent. Not even close. But I have a grasp on the language enough to express what I want and to sort of follow what others want and I no longer break down in tears over misunderstands.

Then Dorothy met the Tin Woodsman, who is a lot like me in that we both have rusty old joints and shiny foreheads, but I do not dress is silver lamé. Give me about 40 years, and I might. My grandmother did. The Woodsman wanted a heart. This aspect was the hardest one for me to come by, because I'm famous for being closed off emotionally. Before I came here my career goals were to rule the world, one sports media outlet at a time. In my research I found all the good things baseball does in the DR, and I got a fantastic quote that I want to use for the non-fiction book I want to write: "mira que buena es la pelota," or, look how good baseball is. I gained compassion and concern for the young men who play baseball and can afford only one dream: to play ball in the United States. I want to work in development and management to give those young men the chance to dream about more: an education, a good life for their families, including a wife and children someday, and a life after baseball. If I deserve to dream of a future that includes those things, everyone does.

So that's how I found my heart. I had the capacity to love something so much it transcended my budding megalomania and turned into compassion. That picture I chose, with the little robot guy, represents me perfectly. His headphones are plugged into his heart and he's listening to what his heart says. I think all along I had the compassion and caring in my heart, but I just wasn't listening to it.

Courage is something I've never lacked. My former roommate, a great gal, once described me as a "freight train" when it came to getting the things I wanted. I decimate things that stand in my way. Courage in the domain one masters is easy. Having that same quality in a brand new place is a horse of a different color. (Come on, I had to go for the easy joke with the silly picture.) I had to double up on courage to come to the DR in the first place, and then follow through with the usual activities I mastered in my domain, this time in a different language, in a different culture, and with a totally different set of standards.

I knew that I had the courage to do these things all along. But there was another aspect to courage that I did not expect, nor did I define right away. No matter how brave a person is, that person can do very little without needing help from time to time. In the US, I'd rather disembowel myself than ask for a hand. Here, I am required to ask for help because I'm not the master of this domain. I found it wasn't a scary awful horrible thing to lean on another person from time to time. I found it was helpful to build bonds and relationships with people, thus boosting the heart factor, and it helps me to learn new skills, which is brain food. It helps a lot that most Dominicans here have been exceedingly kind and helpful to me and really made me feel at ease.

The Lion was the one who wanted courage and he was awarded it in the form of a medal. So far fellow posters on my usual sports blog haunts have been asking me "hey, how's the DR?" over the last few weeks and have been fascinated by my stories. Perhaps my medal of honor is the intrigue from my peers for traveling to foreign lands.

Dorothy herself just wanted to go home. Believe me, I'm there. I can't click my heels together, though. I have to wait until Sunday and crowd onto an overbooked flight (twice!) and bite my nails with worry over being detained at customs over the rum I'm bringing home. Unlike Dorothy, I am torn between two aspects of home. It's time for me to get back to my life in the US: work, school, friends, family, and Sam. But I've really come to love the Dominican Republic and I feel comfortable here. It's a place I would like to make my home someday and I get sad thinking of when I will see this beautiful country again. As I've mentioned a few times before here, I struggle a lot with a sense of place and belonging. I have trouble finding my place in the US, but I found my place quickly in the DR. The thought of leaving that domain behind, mastered or not, makes me sad and it makes me wonder what was so different about finding my place here versus questioning my place in the US. I think that will be the most challenging value for me to bring home.

The Wizard of Oz went on for several books. My life also has several volumes. This story is almost over but there are still a few chapters to write. We haven't yet reached the conclusion. Stayed tuned, my friends.

Giving thanks/Dar agradecimiento

Most (if not all) of my readers are gearing up for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Let it be known that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite cold-weather holidays and one of the few things that gets me through the fall/winter months. I hate being cold and I hate being without baseball, but cooking a humongous meal  for my family and friends and chowing down with them takes a little of the pain away.

Here I am in a beautiful tropical country where it's warm and sunny and there's baseball the day before Turkey Day. That fact depressed me for weeks prior to the event. It sucks enough to be apart from your family and friends and to be all alone on any given day, but when it's one of the biggest deals of your home culture, it sucks even more.

That's right. Indhira went home to New York. Her time here was up about a week ago so here I am fending for myself for the next three weeks.

As I saw it, I had two options: one, continue to be depressed about being alone (not just for Thanksgiving, but for the duration of my time here), or two, make the best of my time here.

I chose the latter option.

My Thanksgiving plans involve me going to Plaza Lama, a supertienda (kinda like a big box store a la Target or Wal-Mart) and finish the rest of my holiday shopping. Tomorrow evening I'm going to Il Cappuccino, this delightful Italian place down the street from my apartment, where I will treat myself to a full Italian dinner: pasta, steak, bread, wine, and the most decadent dessert in the house.

The last time I went out for Thanksgiving dinner was right before my grandmother died. It was just the two of us and we went to Mimi's Cafe for their holiday turkey dinner. We ate, drank wine, and toasted to a year that sucked overall but it was okay because we had each other. It was one of the last good memories I have of my grandmother.

I can give thanks while I am here. Here are the things I appreciate about being in the Dominican Republic, and other things in my life:

The weather. I wake up with the sun streaming through the blinds onto my face every morning. The oppressive heat from September has cooled to a mellow, pleasant tropical warmth. Even the rain is charming. Sometimes it's soft and sometimes it pours like crazy and I love watching every minute of it from my balcony. After the rain everything smells fresh.

I value my time alone here. I need time to myself in any setting, to recharge my batteries and do my own thing, but I'm also happy to be alone here because it's forcing me to get out there and do things, which requires me to ask for help. I'm going out to eat more often and I'm going shopping tomorrow alone, things which would have terrified me when I first got here.

The people are lovely, in every sense of the word. From my English-speaking cab driver to my grocery boy to the InteRDom people to the security guards at my building, most of the people I've encountered here are helpful and kind. Whenever I felt alone or like an outsider in this culture, those people have endeavored to include me.

I love the culture here. Aside from the obvious things like music, dance, and fried food, I value that tomorrow and Friday aren't big ass deals like they are in the US. I get annoyed when everything is closed in the US for a holiday and I loathe the hype around Black Friday and Christmas shopping in general. I've seen far too many obnoxious ads for Black Friday and for jewelry stores on the American TV channels here and each one of them makes me want to throw up. I get to sidestep all of that here for the next few weeks. I can go shopping tomorrow, even!

I'm thankful for baseball. Everywhere. Everyone who plays it. Everyone who works in it.

I'm very thankful for my MacBook Pro. It's been my window to the world I left behind these three months here. I've been able to keep up with my friends, complete the work for my online class, and it's become my best friend here. It's just so very handy. I did a complete project for my online class, using solely my laptop: I shot and edited video, put together a PowerPoint presentation, edited photos for said PP, and slapped all three together using programs and software already included on the machine when I bought it--save for MS Office, which I got from my boyfriend. I love this thing.

I am thankful to have strong people behind me in the United States, people who loved me enough to encourage me to go on this adventure and people who love me enough to welcome me home from my adventure. I would not be here if it weren't for Sam, my roommate Phil, my best friend and surrogate sister Jenna, my advisors at San Jose State, my various bosses and coworkers and colleagues in sportswriting and at Santa Clara Swim Club, and I know I'm forgetting some people.

I am thankful for all the lessons I've learned here, about myself, about my two cultures, about Spanish, and about how I look at the world. I will never be the same person I was when I left the US and I really like the person I'm becoming.

I'm thankful that I can return home in 17 days, but I'm thankful for the time I have here. I'm thankful for the views of the sea from my balcony and the banana and coconut palms growing in my neighborhood. When I go home I know I'll see oak trees, gray skies, and concrete jungles. I'm enjoying the beauty of this country for as long as I can.

I am thankful for the culinary tricks I picked up here. I'm going to wow them back home with my slick Dominican cooking skills. Even though the only thing I can replicate to Dominican standards is tostones (fried plantains), I still make other Dominican dishes that are at least edible.

I am thankful for the credits I've earned here that will get me another semester closer to graduation at San Jose State and I am thankful for the future opportunities that will come thanks to what I've done here. One already has come--I was accepted into SJSU's Provost's Honors Seminar this spring, a class for the top 25 students at the school. It's by invite only and it will look great on my resume. Hopefully it will make my applications for grad school a slam dunk.

I wish all of you the best Thanksgiving with your family and friends, and don't get trampled if you do venture out on Black Friday.

Some things don't change/Algunas cosas no cambian

I visited CDN's studios in Santo Domingo this morning. CDN's motto is "the national leader in news." I don't have enough information to confirm or deny that, but I learned that CDN has exclusive rights to broadcast Major League Baseball and the Dominican Winter League games in the Dominican Republic.

I met Ambiorix Vidal, the sports producer of the network. He's very young (mid 20s, and I am very old) and a former ballplayer, and when he spoke to me of his station's mission for baseball broadcast he smiled from ear to ear. That's why I came here--to find others who understand why baseball is so beautiful.

The details of my interview with Sr. Vidal are coming up in a future article. He showed me around the CDN studios. Our tour took me back nearly 10 years, to my first year in college and my first professional aspirations in broadcast journalism.

I got to see CDN's main television sets. Studio A has setups for four desk sets, plus a green screen and a few panels for sports broadcasts. It's not the largest or most advanced set in Santo Domingo, but it has everything necessary to produce a news broadcast. They have HD cameras and their typical news broadcast uses a two-camera setup, different from the three-camera set up I was trained on back in the day.

There's also a studio for programs broadcast on CDN2, geared for women and children, and a separate studio for cooking shows. We got to watch a bit of a live cooking show broadcast in progress. We also saw the editing rooms, the control room, and the radio studios. CDN produces radio and El Caribe, a newspaper in Santo Domingo.

When I started college I was a broadcast major and I was hellbent on being the very best sports announcer there ever was. Deep down, I also wanted to be a news anchor. I met one of the anchors for CDN's news program and was reminded of why I never could have been an anchor. She was tall and gorgeous with flawless cheekbones. Now, I have some damn good bone structure too, but next to this Dominican beauty I felt like Frumpy McStumperson, all fat and squat and awkward. They don't put flops like that on the TV.

But then I remembered the real reasons why I got out of the broadcasting game. Things really haven't changed all that much in how news is produced. The major changes have to do with the switch to digital broadcasting and HD--soon to be 3D, which I'm sorry, is gimmicky as a mother and annoying for people who wear glasses to see. I HATE those tacky 3D glasses and using them every time I want to watch TV? The hell with that noise--and non-linear editing, i.e., editing via computer programs instead of physically manipulating the videotape. I started out right as the industry straddled the line between linear and non-linear editing and I was taught how to edit videotape as well as via computer programs, like Final Cut Pro.

All that means is that I could get back into the game after a few crash courses in shooting, editing, and producing video. The question is not if I could do it. The question is if I want to, and the answer is a big fat resounding NO.

Basically in broadcasting, a few people do all the work while everyone stands around watching you do it. In my production classes, I ran the board in the control room. I ran the sound board. I ran video tape. I was floor manager. I was on camera. I did everything while the other nosepickers stood around doing nothing. It was enough to throw my headset at them.

Plus half the classes were girls and you can guess their motivation for a BS in broadcast journalism: "I want to be on TV! Tee-hee!" After a while, the women who were serious about production defected. One really smart girl who had a lot on the ball and who produced solid news reports just up and left in the middle of the semester because she was tired of the bubbleheads who didn't actually do a damn thing but always were on camera because their only talent was to sit there and look pretty.

Those frustrations pushed me pretty close to the edge, but I eventually found that I enjoyed the writing side of things more than the production side. I gave script writing a try, both film and broadcast news, and I didn't care for it as much as I thought I would. By the time I was completely exhausted with broadcasting, I was offered some opportunities to write about sports on the internet--back when that was still a novel concept--and that took its own course.

I enjoy the interviewing process a lot. Sometimes I think having my own newsmagazine program a la Anderson Cooper, with interviews and stuff, would be great. I love learning new things about people, places, and events, and I love to hear the stories that come out of my questions. I get a deep sense of satisfaction from turning the interviews into articles which introduce previously untold stories. At the end of the day, I'm a much better writer than a speaker and I flourish when I write.

My visit to CDN was still a valuable and fun experience. I got to relive a time in my life that I rarely give any consideration to, and I got to see that I made the right choice after all. Those are the best moments.

Baseball: the insane tragedy and the majesty of being/Béisbol: la tragedia del loco y la majestad de ser

I like to think of my adventure here as a version of the hero's journey. I've brought that analogy up before here. Sunday night I achieved the step called "atonement with the father." In monomyth analysis, the atonement of the father is when the hero confronts and is initiated by the person or thing that holds the ultimate power in his/her life. It's the central point of the hero's journey. Everything has led up to it and everything thereafter will be directly influenced by it. Most often this step concerns the hero meeting a human male figure, but it can be any gender or even any entity, not just a person.

Naturally, my atonement step was meeting baseball here. I went to my house of worship for my religious experience: taking in a Dominican League baseball game at Estadio Quisqueya.

Here is the photo album from the day

And the prettiest picture of the day:

I went to see Licey and Escogido play. They are the two teams from Santo Domingo and they share the stadium. That made my game crazier than I could have imagined. There was a home team in name only. Escogido was the home team for the day, meaning they had last ups. I saw red for Escogido and blue for Licey in equal amounts around the stadium. Cheers were equally loud for both teams.

Dominican baseball is the same sport I know on the field. Off the field, I was treated to a different experience. The entire stadium was louder than most games I've been to in the States. Only the two major games I attended in 2010 were louder: the 2010 NL West clincher on October 3, and Game 2 of the World Series, both in San Francisco. The fans had horns and noisemakers, plus there was a small marching band with thundering drums and blaring brass playing tunes for Escogido. Every play had the fans waving their flags, red and blue, and blaring their horns.

I'm a veteran of minor league baseball, so I'm used to the gimmicky between innings entertainment featured in minor league games. They have that here too, in the form of a cheerleading/dance team, wacky mascot antics, and a parade by the marching band. The dancers are Venezuelan and Colombian models who fire T-shirt guns into the crowd, dance on the dugout roof, and ride around the warning track in a classic car with red Escogido flags. Every team has dancers and they all wear skimpy outfits.

The mascots had an epic war the entire game. Escogido's mascot, a lion, had several costume changes throughout the night. He wore a devil costume for Halloween and an umpire's getup to make fun of the umpires. When he challenged Licey's mascot, a tiger, to a dance-off and won, the tiger responded by bringing a stroller out of the dugout with a plush lion toy in it, and pushed the stroller around to make fun of the lion.

I can't go anywhere without talking about the food. The ballpark featured several national brands (Presidente beer, Pizzarelli pizza) and some international brands (Chili's margarita stand). Vendors walked around selling a variety of food: pizza, hot dogs, empanandas, Pringles, and the best vendor of them all would fetch a cold beer for you and bring it to your seat. All you had to do was ask. I was told they have vendors serving people in their seats to eliminate people walking around during the games. Brilliant, if you ask me. I got a beer for 80 pesos, a slice of pizza for 95 pesos, and a hat for 125 pesos. All in all, about US$8, and all of it was top notch. Compare a similar day at the yard in the US; $6-10 for a beer (Budweiser on the cheap end, good beer like Anchor Steam on the expensive end), pizza for $7-10 (quality widely ranging from crappy to mediocre), and a hat for $15-30 (fitted caps run more). On top of your ticket, that can be a pricey day.

I had a hard time choosing a hat to buy. There were several stands set up outside the ballpark with hats from all the teams around the league. I decided to wait until I got inside to check out the team stores. Licey and Escogido had one store each. I didn't find anything I liked for Escogido--their fitted caps were either 6 3/4 or 7 1/4, and my size is 6 7/8. I have a rare size I know. But it's possible to find it. I have several 6 7/8 fitted caps. None of the adjustable hats looked good to me. So I went to the Licey store and realized how limited my choices were there too. Licey is blue. Dodger blue. I can't have a hat in any shade of blue that isn't San Jose State, and I especially can't wear anything blue with my Giants gear. I wore my Juan Marichal shirt to the game. No way in hell would I wear a blue hat with that.

I found an all black Licey adjustable cap that fit me well and looks great, so I bought it. I think it's a kids size, because it's really small. But it fits great so I'm happy with my purchase.

We had an hour long rain delay after clouds quickly swept in. It rained hard for about 20 minutes and the rest of the time the grounds crew worked on the field to get it ready for baseball. This keeps up my streak of rain delays at every ballpark I visit outside of San Francisco. I went to Coors Field in Colorado in 2006 and it rained. Biblical downpour thunder and lightning rain. I went to Comerica Park in 2008 and it rained.

Once the rain left and the players could begin their warmups, I saw Brandon Belt come out of the Leones dugout. Belt plays first base (not outfield. Do you hear me, Giants? NOT outfield) in the Giants system and I've interviewed him a few times for my various reporting jobs in the US. I was excited to see him play. I find it hard to get excited about what I see on the field because I spend so much of my time working around baseball. I wouldn't call it boredom, just getting used to what's there. I don't get starstruck easily, I should say.

But I bounced in my seat to see Belt swing a bat in the on deck circle. I felt a link to what I do in the States to what I'm doing here. I was initiated. Dominican baseball was no longer this cloudy subject I had no real picture of. It became real for me at that moment.

I had a flash of a moment buried in my past last night, too. Years ago, I sat in the arcade section of AT&T Park with some friends and watched the Cardinals and Giants play on a foggy July evening. Next to me was a painfully cute Cardinals fan who tried flirting with me the whole night. He asked me questions about my scorecards, about the field, about the teams and I basically gave him the ice queen act. I didn't realize he was trying to get with me until my friend brought it up on the car ride home.

Sunday night, the cute Escogido fan next to me asked me why I was writing in my notebook. He asked my why I was rooting for Licey. He asked me a lot of things I didn't understand. I tried my best to engage him in conversation.

Naturally, when I was as single as they come and dying for a baseball fan boyfriend, I act like a buffoon. I'm with the love of my life now (baseball and Sam) and I become warm and loquacious. Que malo.

I value my first game outside the US for several reasons, but the biggest one for me is having the chance to go to a game as a fan. I don't get to attend many games just to watch them. Most of the time I'm working: taking notes, keeping score, scouting, watching radar guns, shooting the shit with scouts. When I went to the key games for the 2010 San Francisco Giants, I was on edge the whole time because those games meant something. While last night's game meant the world to me, it wasn't watching the team I gave my life to. It wasn't work. I was able to kick back with a beer and chat and take in the most rewarding experience of my life.

Joseph Campbell, who coined the term "monomyth" offered this explanation of atonement of the father:

The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned.

I opened my soul by submitting to the Dominican Republic's definition of baseball in all its insane tragedies. And still it's as beautiful to me as it ever was. It is the majesty of being.

Baseball and I are atoned.

Dream job/Mi trabajo de mis sueños

Today I visited Major League Baseball's offices in Santo Domingo. The official title of the operation is the office of the commissioner in Latin America. I went in thinking it was a massive compound with mega signage telling everyone where it is and how important it is. Especially with a formal title like that.

It's a tiny house converted into an office structure in a cul de sac off Avenida 27th de febrero (a main highway in Santo Domingo). There are pictures of baseball stadiums, legendary players, and team logos on the walls. It's small and meager and I love it for that very reason.

I met the community affairs director, who's another Hispanic-American from California. She explained to me what the office does. Everything you can think of for MLB to do in Latin America, they do it. It's not just Dominican Republic. It's Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, anywhere where they play baseball in the region. We talked a lot about the educational opportunities for prospects in the Dominican Republic and she introduced me to the rest of the staff. I met quite a few other American ex-pats there, including a guy from Cupertino (aka the Silicon Valley, where I live in the States).

Obviously I can't go into detail about my visit as MLB plays their cards very close to the chest. Especially here. My contact at the offices here got into some trouble when a writer from ESPN Deportes blabbed a bunch of sensitive information and this confirmed what I suspected going in. I have to play by different rules here as a journalist. I know to stay in the game, you have to play the game, and you have to know the rules wherever you go.

What I can tell you is that I'm helping put together a newsletter for the offices. I jumped on it the moment my contact mentioned the project. I'd do anything to be involved in working here. I'm a good writer and I have the background for producing news content, so why not?

A few years ago someone on a Giants blog I frequent jokingly suggested I become the Giants general manager. I laughed and said something like "yeah, that'll be the day." But then I thought, why not me? That started a long journey of contemplating my future in sports. Is writing enough? Where is journalism going as an industry and trade? How can I stay with baseball for the rest of my life and make enough to support myself and my family?

I did the research. I interviewed a few general managers and other sports executives in minor league baseball. I learned that in the minors especially, being an executive is almost all about business. Apologies to the business people out there, but that bores me to tears. I want to be involved in the day to day operations of baseball. So maybe being a GM isn't for me.

However, working for the MLB offices here could be for me. Everything I saw and learned about today excites me. Literally anything I can think of concerning baseball development in the DR happens in that office on a daily basis.

This is my dream job.

I struggled to find the idea of what I really wanted to do. For a while it was limited to becoming someone's protegee. First, I was supposed to be the next Jon Miller, Hall of Fame television and radio broadcaster, before my broadcasting dreams died. Then it was the next Rob Neyer, a high profile baseball columnist, writer, and author (who tabbed me to work on the now dead Baseballin' on a Budget, and who called me a "fine writer." I'm still proud of that). Then my destiny was to be the next Keith Law, who started out in the Toronto Blue Jays front office and jumped to writing about prospects and scouting for Baseball America and ESPN.com.

These guys are great at what they do, but I need to find what I want to do. I'm not here to be the next version of anyone else. I'm here to be Chris Martinez, and I think I found the title I want to attach to my name. At least, I found the place where they can award me that title.

It doesn't bother me that the dream is still ambiguous. I've learned as I grow in my journalism career and as I get older that success isn't necessarily doing the same thing forever. If you asked me, even in 2008 where I'd be in 2011 in my career, I couldn't tell you. Now I'm doing things that are completely different from what I did three years ago. And I don't know what I can or will be in 2016. I just know that I want to be here, working in the office of the commissioner of Major League Baseball in Latin American affairs.

The dream also confirms what I have to do next: graduate, get my MA in sports management, and become fluent in Spanish. Those plans are already on track. My visit confirmed that I've done everything right on my path to get here.

First things first. I have to rock the shit out of the newsletter.

Out of practice/Me falta práctica

How many of you thought that things would be totally different once I got here?

I also thought things would be completely different. I put my journalism work on hold to focus on what I had to do here and I put my daily Spanish lessons aside in the belief that I'd learn enough just by immersion.

As I mentioned in the last post, I pitched the idea for winter leagues coverage while I'm here to my collaborators at Bay City Ball, and they loved it. Starting next week, I'm writing a weekly feature on Giants prospects in the assorted fall/winter leagues. 

The Arizona Fall League starts today and the Dominican League starts October 14. The Mexican League starts October 11. The Australian League starts November 3. The Venezuelan and Puerto Rican leagues don't have start dates published on MLB's website, but traditionally the Venezuelan league starts in mid-October and the Puerto Rican league starts in November. I'm keeping tabs on the Nicaraguan and Colombian winter leagues in case any Giants players show up there.

The AFL is a showcase for the top minor league talent in baseball. Each MLB team sends about six or seven of their best (in theory) prospects to Arizona for six weeks in October and November. I covered the AFL for ten days a few years ago and it was a really great experience.

The other leagues are just regular old winter leagues, with locals from the countries and some MLB players. Although I caught myself, in my American brain, thinking that the DWL was the "winter league." Absolutely not. It's THE league here.

This is writing I would be doing if I was in the States. The more things change, as they say, the more they stay the same.

I'm joining a beginning Spanish class at UNIBE, starting tomorrow. It's Spanish as a foreign language class and I'm not taking it for credit or for a grade. It's for practice. It was my internship coordinators' idea to get me more practice and help me be comfortable with speaking and listening. 

Tomorrow is my first day in the class so I have no idea how it will be. If it's anything like my other classes, I'll be with other international students. The class meets three days a week and there's no pressure on me to do assignments or take tests. I'm looking forward to working on my Spanish in a low-pressure setting.

If I were doing a regular semester at San Jose State, I'd be in Spanish 25A right now, the first class of the intermediate level. While I'd have a lot on the line there--a grade and a requirement for my minor, plus the added pressure of learning Spanish well--I'd still be learning. 

So I'm still writing about baseball and I'm still studying Spanish. I'm just doing it in the tropics. I was out of practice for a month and it found its way back to me.

I take that as a sign that I was meant to do this all along.

East coast bias/Prejuicio de la costa este

In sports fandom, and sometimes in sports journalism, there's a thing I refer to often called east coast bias. It's the national media's insistence to cover and often fawn over teams on the East coast of the country. Almost 100% of the time, that means New York and Boston. Other teams don't get equal coverage.

ESPN is notorious for this and it's one of the reasons I dislike the network and their coverage. ESPN also has an annoying tendency to pick up a news story and shake it to death like a dog. They did it with their incessant Brett Favre coverage a few years ago. They created an entire block of programming dedicated to where LeBron James would go after his contract with Cleveland expired. They make a mountain out of a whole lot of "who cares?" but their greatest offense is the extreme bias they show toward New York and Boston teams.

Which means they show nothing but Yankees and Red Sox games. They talk about nothing but those teams. In the Bay Area, I can ignore it by watching my regional sports networks and take solace in knowing my sports broadcasters (for the most part) aren't as horrible as the national media.

Here is a different story. I've only seen a few baseball games on TV but all, with the exception of one, has had either the Red Sox, Yankees, or Tampa Bay Rays involved in the contests.

I can see the motivation for this. David Ortiz, the immensely popular Red Sox designated hitter, is Dominican and is one of the best hitters of his generation. Hell, I even like him because he's so jolly. He's such a big deal here that the local newspapers refer to him only as "David." It also makes sense that they would show more Yankees games here because of the large Dominican population in New York. Also, Robinson Cano (born in San Pedro de Macoris) plays for the Yankees and he's very popular as well.

Don't ask about Alex Rodriguez. I did a straw poll a few days after arriving here and I learned that the people here do not like him because he chose to play for the US in the first World Baseball Classic rather than the Dominican Republic.

I can even see why Dominicans would care about Tampa Bay. I assume there are some Dominicans in Florida. They can't all be Cubans.

Last night was one of the most insane nights of my life, and I wasn't even doing anything. I kept an eye on the box scores from the Yankees/Rays and Red Sox/Orioles games, as it was the final day of the regular season and both American and National League Wild Card slots were on the line. The Rays and Red Sox went into Wednesday with identical records. It was the same for Atlanta and St. Louis in the National League. St. Louis won while Atlanta lost, completing a huge collapse and rise for both teams. St. Louis was 8.5 games behind the Wild Card pace on August 25, and now they're in the playoffs.

The Orioles and Rays both came back from deficits in the bottom of the ninth inning. Tampa was down 7-0 before they came back with six runs in the eighth, and then Dan Johnson, a former Oakland scrapheap pickup, hit the game-tying home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The teams battled through three more innings before Evan Longoria hit his second homer of the game in the 12th inning, giving the Rays the victory.

Up the seaboard in Baltimore, the Orioles scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and won the game on a bloop single. Longoria was standing in the batters' box at 12:02am eastern time as the out of town scoreboard flashed the final score of the Red Sox game. At 12:05am, the Rays were AL Wild Card champions.

In the span of three minutes, an entire baseball season changed. That's why this sport is so beautiful.

I was at the final game of the 2010 season in San Francisco, when the NL West title came down to the last day. The Giants won of course, and it was absolute bedlam. I swear I felt the whole stadium shake. The Giants players took a victory lap around the warning track high fiving fans. Tim Lincecum dropped an F bomb on live television over the jumbotron (thus a swearing legend was born). On the way out of the stadium, I saw a SFFD fire wagon roar down King Street with sirens blaring and lights flashing and a huge Giants flag flying behind it.

A month later we were World Champions.

 

So I know how those Tampa and St. Louis fans feel. The Rays or the Cardinals could be World Series winners, or they could not be. But they won with their backs against the wall and I can tell you that feels so damn good.

It also feels good to be a fan of this beautiful game when the fates of so many teams depend on the final day. It's akin to Game 7 of any sport. Everything is on the line. It's the highest level of excitement we can get.

Around town here I see billboards for the MLB playoffs on TBS and FOX. I will get to see the World Series in its entirety. FOX, despite being located in Los Angeles, has horrible announcers that are experts in East Coast bias rhetoric. That didn't stop me from watching the World Series last year, or the year before, etc.

As for me being a Giants fan and watching my team take a complete nosedive and miss the playoffs, I'm not as upset as I should be. We won last year, and after 56 years of nothing, I'll take it. The Red Sox are out, which pleases me. And the Dodgers still suck, which is a moral victory for us all.

Longoria's home run puts him in exalted company. He and Bobby Thomson ("The Shot Heard 'round the World") are the only players in Major League history to hit walk-off homers in the final game of the regular season to clinch a playoff spot. 

From 1951 to 2011.

Baseball really is beautiful.

And hey! My first article on my research in the D.R. has been posted: Epy Guerrero’s baseball legacy lives in the US and the Dominican Republic. Go! Read! Thank the gods that they picked semi-flattering photos of me!

The beginning, part II: The objective/El comienzo, parte dos: El objetivo

When I started the series of background posts, I said I would write them on days where nothing new happened. Today, I defined the focus of my investigative reporting and my eventual final paper: the sociological aspects of baseball in the Dominican Republic, focusing on six areas (economics, business, race and gender, law, media, and education).


That's an enormous step forward for me. Plus, it dovetails perfectly into this blog post. Part II of the backstory involves why I'm studying baseball and why I'm doing it in the Dominican Republic.


I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. I was born and raised a baseball fan and I embraced the San Francisco Giants right away. Later on, I came to appreciate the Oakland Athletics. It's all Bay Area love as far as I'm concerned. I don't subscribe to the non-rivalry between the two teams. I see no need for inferiority complexes or stadium debates between fans, either.


My dream job growing up was to be a sportswriter. I made that happen. Until recently, I worked for San Francisco Dugout, an online magazine that covered the Giants minor league system from top to bottom. I was there for nearly seven years and that's where I learned everything I know. 


We enjoyed a strong relationship with most of the media personnel among the Giants' minor league affiliates, including the Advanced-A San Jose Giants. If you'll allow me an extended metaphor, I had a sort of sportswriting residency in San Jose. I did the majority of my work in San Jose over my seven years with SF Dugout.


SF Dugout job helped me get a gig writing the California League notebooks for minorleaguebaseball.com, which was my first real paying job in the business. I've been doing that since 2009 and it's allowed me to open up to a new style of writing. I write stories about up-and-coming prospects, players with interesting stories, and whatever else is worth reading about in the Cal League.


Last year I joined the A's blog on ESPN.com's Sweet Spot network, Baseballin' on a Budget. You can read that blog here: http://baseballinonabudget.com/ I don't write often, but I cover the A's minor league system all by myself. It was the best way for me to learn about a new organization and I have enjoyed my time there quite a bit.


This August the guys at Bay City Ball, the Giants blog on Sweet Spot, brought me on board to handle their minor league stuff. Here we are: http://www.baycityball.com/


So this journalism thing isn't new to me. Or so I thought.


I came here through InteRDom, an internship program sponsored by the Dominican government that brings students to the D.R. to develop brilliant minds in a global society. We're here to show the world that the D.R. has more to offer than tourism. So what the hell am I doing here, telling stories about one of the few things that everyone knows about this place?


I still feel like my dream job hasn't arrived. I want to write about baseball and get paid well enough to support myself and my family, which right now is just me and my boyfriend Sam. While I've worked hard enough to earn such a job in the business, it's not my time yet.


So, rather than wait around for my time, I decided to enrich myself, challenge myself, and learn something new. I'm here in the D.R. to learn about how baseball works here. I know how it works in the States. I want to know more than just what I can read in a box score. I want to know the stories of the people in it and the stories of the people who love it just as much as I do.


I also followed a lifelong dream of studying abroad and writing in another language. I've always been fascinated by cultures and languages and societies other than my own. For a while I had a boner for Japanese culture. A few years of Japanese language classes and too much money spent on English translations of manga volumes, I let that go. I retained an appreciation for geisha culture, but that's about it.


I knew that to hang onto the allure of cultural studies, I needed to get serious about it. I made a career objective to become fluent in Spanish and to understand the Latin American perspective as best as I could. After all, Latin Americans are the largest non-American group in MLB and those numbers are even higher in the minors, which is my forte. Dominicans by far make up the largest section of the Latin American baseball population, and the LA population makes up more than half of the total in the minors.


I also know I'm not a finished product as a writer and a journalist. I came here to learn a different style of writing. All my professors say my academic writing is strong, but I've been dinged more than a few times for writing too tersely or too matter-of-factly, "like a journalist," in the words of my favorite polisci professor. I'd give the guy more crap for saying that, but he knows me pretty well and he knows I'm a journalist.


My articles here will be no more than 500 words. I'm the kind of writer who hates word counts. Not because I can't fill a page. It's because I can't shut up. 500 words to write about Epy Guerrero's contributions and impact on MLB? I'm tearing my hair out just thinking about how to condense that to 500 words. I could easily go 1500-2000 words on such a subject.


Part of learning to be a good writer is to write concisely, I suppose. I've just never been asked to do it.


When it came time to decide where to go for my study abroad semester, I had some difficulties. I could have gone to Puerto Rico and studied at UPR as an exchange student, focusing on voting rights and congressional representation for the US territory. I could have gone to Nicaragua to study in Managua and write a book about Dennis Martinez (you know, the first and only pitcher born outside of the US to throw a perfect game). I could have gone to Mexico and gotten capped or sold into slavery and forced to work as a coke mule. I kid. Not really. 


I didn't know the D.R. was an option.


That was until my advisor looked me in the eye and said, "why aren't you going to the Dominican Republic?" He asked me like I'd just told him the sky was green. The answer was so obvious to him. It wasn't to me. Before we found InteRDom through one of his contacts, I was getting ready to spend a year of my life in Puerto Rico.


And no offense to PR, or Nicaragua, or even to Mexico. Everything I'm doing here in Santo Domingo just makes sense. I'm so glad I never settled for one of the other options, even though it was a bitch and a half to get here.

But that, mis amigos, is another story for another day.


Thursday I'm visiting the Mirabal sisters museum, a memorial to a group of sisters who stood up to Rafael Trujillo in the 1950s and 1960s. Trujillo is the D.R.'s greatest monster and he definitely ranks up there among the biggest bastards in history. More pictures will come from that trip. 

Epy and me/Epy e yo

I'm writing this on a Saturday evening, sitting on the couch in my living room watching clouds roll in from the east. I can tell when the storms are coming; my view of the sea gets hazy when the cloud cover comes in.


It's a perfect evening for stories. The best story of my two weeks here, and possibly of my entire voyage here, was meeting Epy Guerrero. I knew of Epy before I came to the D.R., although I did not entirely understand what he did here. I knew he was a baseball scout and was a tremendous resource for my research.


Upon meeting Epy, I leaned that he is the most influential scout of the last 40 years of baseball in North America. He built the Toronto Blue Jays teams that won back-to-back World Series titles in 1992-1993, signed and developed numerous stars in Major League Baseball for Toronto, Milwaukee, and Houston, and continues his work as an independent scout in the D.R. today. Among his pupils and others who benefitted from his work: Carlos Delgado, Tony Fernandez, Damaso Garcia, Pat Borders, Jose Mesa, Roberto Alomar, Alcides Escobar, and Pat Gillick. Yep, Gillick the Hall of Fame executive. Gillick made it to Cooperstown because of the embarrassment of prospect riches presented to him by Epy's scouting work. Epy is in the Dominican Sports Hall of Fame and has received many scouting awards.


I met him for the first time at his training complex, far removed from the city and into an untamed world I could only imagine before. We drove on an unpaved road and over a dangerous land bridge to make it to the baseball grounds. Before this my most harrowing reporting assignment was running up and down the concrete stairs at San Jose Municipal Stadium in California. Traipsing through the jungle and maneuvering over the scary land bridge is my version of crossing the first threshold, if you're following this story as a version of The Hero's Journey. It kinda fits.


Immediately I was led to one of the diamonds on the grounds, where a baseball game was already in progress. You can tell where my priorities are, because my gaze was drawn to the tall, thin right-hander on the mound, throwing harder than I can recall seeing in person and popping the catcher's mitt loudly. He had a 3/4 arm slot and good late movement on his breaking stuff. 


(I don't know how to simplify that for the non-baseball inclined readers, aside from saying the pitcher threw impressive fastballs, has a semi-low release point for his pitches, and has a good curveball. I fancy myself a scout. Just be glad I didn't refer to his slider as a "slide piece.")


Epy introduced everyone around him before he introduced himself. I met some coordinators at the camp, some assistants, and a scrawny yellow lab, whom Epy introduced as another advisor.


I was asked to sit down and explain why I was here, something that made me really uneasy. Not because I have problems talking about myself. If you've read anything prior to this entry, you know that. I learned a long time ago never to turn your back on a baseball game, especially not when the pitcher throws so hard I could hear the ball whistling through the air. That's a good way to get a knot on your head.


Epy took me to the house on the property, decorated in lush furniture and family photographs. Then we went to a room in the back of the house, where he took me on a tour of his 40 years in the business. The walls were covered in pictures of Epy and his kids, articles about Epy's work, and plaques honoring him for his kids and his work. The room had trophies and awards and memorabilia on almost every inch of the floor. 


It was the greatest room in the history of mankind.


Epy supplemented the tour of the room with stories attached to almost everything I stood gawking at. He bubbled over with excitement showing me everything. He gave me several articles and pictures to take home with me. I earned his respect by correctly identifying some of the men in his pictures. 


When we got down to brass tacks, the real reasons why I'm here, aside from roll around in baseball and call it academic research, Epy gave me almost more than I can handle. Almost. There's already a ton of information to sift through and we've only met twice.


He invited me to his home in Santo Domingo for the following day, to celebrate his wife's birthday. This time it was a lot different. More informal. I was integrated into the family. I met two of Epy's sons, who both work as scouts in the D.R. They fed me asopao, a ridiculously rich Dominican stew that's sort of like pozole. And then we took a tour of another room of Epy's stuff, where I snapped pictures and got more stories.


You can see the pictures from Wednesday afternoon here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150288940411373.332029.731621372&l=182ded7084&type=1


It was a huge departure from how I usually work. In my usual journalism assignments in the States, I spend about five minutes with my interview subject. We meet in a public place in the open, usually the dugout. And that's only in the case of in-person interviews, which I'd say I do maybe half the time. I've always felt it necessary to keep a distance from those I talk to in my work.


This time, I chatted with Epy over asopao for over an hour. He introduced me to everyone at the party, all his family members, and told them who I was, where I was from, and what I was doing here. He took extra care to tell his grandchildren that I am American; some of his grandkids speak English fluently. 


The whole thing made me a little uncomfortable, because I was out of my element. I'm an efficient machine when it comes to banging out a story, but when it comes to getting to the heart of a really good story like what Epy can teach me, I guess I need more work on that.


I also felt awkward because I have trouble being integrated into a group. Like I talked about in previous posts, I don't understand why someone I just met would be so kind to me and eager to know me. I had an instant big loud boisterous Dominican family on Wednesday, and I was there just doing my job.


Epy is like the awesome Dominican abuelo I never had. I can tell his naturally a vivacious person, but I could tell he was eager and excited to talk to me about everything he knew.


I'm not discussing details of what he told me here. I'm saving that for my articles, which will be published in early October, most likely. They will have qualities of both academic and journalistic writing. I'll post links to those works when they are published.


As I wrote this entry, the rain started falling. It's a gentle rain and the air is cool and fresh outside. The moisture on the palms lining my street shine under the street lamps. It doesn't relate to my story of how I met Epy Guerrero at all, but I felt like it was a nice way to end my day with you.