| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MAY 10, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Lucky Catch AWAY GAMES The Life and Times of a Latin Ball Player By Marcos Breton and Jose Luis Villegas Simon & Schuster 272pp $23 There is no shortage of books by athletes burning to disclose the details of what they had for breakfast and why they love their moms so much. The list of nonfiction by coaches who want to tell us all how to play the game of life is impressive, too. And now even sports agents, the used-car salesmen of the jock world, have begun sharing their wisdom in tomes that invariably identify them as the ''real Jerry McGuire.'' So Away Games: The Life and Times of a Latin Ball Player, by Marcos Breton and Jose Luis Villegas, is like a blast of reality in a locker room full of blather. Besides chronicling the rise of Oakland Athletics shortstop Miguel Tejada from the grinding poverty of a Dominican Republic barrio, Breton and Villegas aim to celebrate the contribution that Latinos have made to American baseball. In the process, they describe another U.S. industry that--depending on your point of view--exploits or uplifts the Third World. The Big Business here is sports. Tejada grows up as the eighth child of a family living in the slums of Bani, a city 40 miles southwest of Santo Domingo. As a young boy, he shines shoes. By 11, he has quit school and is working in a garment factory washing clothes and ironing pants. But whenever he can, like other urchins who dream of playing baseball in the grandes ligas, he spends untold hours fielding balls fashioned from rags and running bases until his feet are calloused and hard. The formative years of this ball player, Breton and Villegas make clear, are a million miles from the lives of American kids getting shuttled to Pop Warner and Little League games in the family 4x4. When Tejada is 13, his mother dies, his father moves on in search of work, and he and a 16-year-old brother are largely left to fend for themselves. Tejada would probably have remained a physically undeveloped and undisciplined street player had his flash not caught the eye of Enrique Soto. Following a lonely season as the only Hispanic on a San Francisco farm team in Montana, Soto had drifted out of baseball. When he meets Tejada, he is trying to establish himself as a scout for Oakland. After years of working with Soto and training with other Oakland prospects in a dilapidated park in Santo Domingo, Tejada is offered a deal by the Athletics: a $2,000 bonus and $100 a week to play in the Dominican summer league. The contract makes Tejada part of what one baseball official calls ''the boatload mentality''--signing up dozens of Latin prospects on the cheap in hopes of landing a star. ''This history of how Latins are brought into America's game,'' Breton and Villegas write, ''is a story of capitalism and cutthroat competition. It is a story in which opportunity is held out like a lottery ticket that most impoverished Latin kids will never cash in.'' According to Major League Baseball, the book says, almost 95% of all foreign-born players signed to pro contracts are cut before they reach the big leagues. They are given one-way tickets back to the barrios or become illegal immigrants--washed out and washed up at 21. Away Games tells a tale of one who made it--but it also reveals a gritty underside to the game's glamour. BY CIRO SCOTTI _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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