Boquete Ball: Catching Lightning in a Bottle Where the Clay Kicks Up
Boquete Ball: Catching Lightning in a Bottle Where the Clay Kicks Up
Manuel Galeano
Romanticism is the last thing on my mind when I think of that sweltering, armpit-soaking, Evergladian ball-swamp-having night in August when the evil empire made its way down to South Florida to play the Fish. The ballpark’s struggling air conditioning was no match for the ludicrously stifling Miami heat. Romance? Far be it from me, a member of a generation purported to have lost any interest in traditional romance, to wax poetically, but what the hell, I’ll take a good faith run at it.
Boys often talk about first loves. Be it at the bar, the couch, the golf course, or the ballpark. For me, unequivocally, my first love, the first time I got excited about anything other than toy cars and action figures, was baseball.
At First Sight
I remember the night I fell in love. On a pizza oven of a summer evening, the people around me were doing their best to remain cool, throwing beer and water on each other and relentlessly fanning themselves with whatever they could fashion into a handheld, quasi-Japanese-looking fan. Sweat covered my forehead, came down my brow, and clawed all the way down my back in an annoying tickle gifted by summer and the restless crowd. It was a ferociously muggy Central American night at the local ballpark. Instead of peanuts and cracker jacks, tajadas verdes, chicarrones, and vigorons were on hand. Instead of Coca-Cola it was Pinolillo, the national drink. Instead of a shot of Jack Daniel’s, they went for one or two of generously poured Flor de Caña, and instead of beer, well, no, that remained the same. There were plenty of beers to go around that night. Hell, some of it, to my mother’s horror upon inspection when I got home, got on me as well.
Los Tiburones de Granada (The Sharks) were hosting the best team in the land, from the capital city, Los Indios del Boer (the Boer Indians). El Boer bore the colors and sigil of the famed Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball. The local gang hosting the Indians was not a first division ball club. Whereas the Indians were touted again to be the national champions, like they had done multiple times in their many decades of dominance of the country’s national game. Suffice it to say, this was the Tiburones national championship game.
The atmosphere was absolutely electric, even a half hour before first pitch. Loud, boisterous, cheerful, violent, and dangerous. This was an old Central American ballpark; the seats were as hard as a cement-encrusted concrete bench, and the heat was nearly unbearable. No AC in this joint. This is not exactly the kind of place where you get to wear the visiting team’s colors and live in perfect health to tell the tale. Cordiality, collegiality, nor fair play live here. Nah, none of that. To quote The Game: “Wear the wrong colors, be cautious.” This was baseball at the roots, baby. Filthy, nasty, crafty, mischievous, and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. In these stands, fistfights are not a rare occurrence. The ushers don’t get paid enough to risk life or limb to stop them.
Boquete Ball
Before they wear the Tiburones or the Indians colors, the kids who grow up playing the game in these unpaved dirt roads, Spanish cobblestone streets, alleys, and lots aren’t exactly outfitted to the T, as they say. They don’t sport a beautiful Rawlings glove, wear a colorful neon sleeve on their glove or throwing arm, nor don a sparkling fake diamond link chain. They aren’t mentored or coached by willful weekend warrior leaders eager to pass on what it means to be a man to the next generation. They grow up playing the game barefoot, policing its rules themselves, fist-fighting at every chance, with a milk carton for a glove if they are lucky and any type of stick resembling a bat. Without question, getting their asses absolutely mollywapped by the older kids every step of the way of the journey to adulthood. No McDonald’s trips after wins here and certainly no “chin up, champ, you tried your best” after a loss. Either complete victory and we go to Telepizza for dinner or total loss and we go to sleep with a growling stomach.
The ball, the center of the baseball universe, is often the purview of a beautiful, caring grandmother or mother. She oftentimes will rustle up a hardened tempered glass marble from the kids playing in the dirt, carefully wrap it tight in rags of any kind, as tight as her loving hands will allow her to bind the source of joy for many a kid in the street. She often finished it by sealing it with black or red electric tape. My grandmother, Mimi, would give it a kiss when she was done and would tell me, “Te la hice con amor, no la perdas fácil.”I made it with love, don’t lose it easily.
En el boquete, baseball was a cause for celebration. On Sunday afternoons, the kids would play. These games were the gauge to determine who the best players in the whole neighborhood were. The neighborhood consisted of different alleys, and the kids who played for their alley’s team were the best. This wasn’t the type of game where anyone can play or have fun or have a turn with a bat. No participation trophies or pats on the back are handed in the boquetes. Nah, this was the game where kids from other boquetes came to play against the boys from our alley. As you can imagine, as far as age groups went, if you were good enough, you were old enough. Adults didn’t really play in these games, mostly teams of players no older than 17 or 18 years old.
People in the alleys lined their porches with plastic chairs, eager to see what the afternoon would bring in terms of entertainment—sometimes gossip, sometimes news, sometimes baseball. El boquete’s tias and abuelitas, aware of these contests, would suddenly appear from their kitchens with their offerings. String cheese quesillos in plastic bags, crispy corn enchiladas with spicy sauces, green mango slices with salt and vinegar, and juices of all kinds of fruit in plastic bags with a straw sticking out of the tied knot in the bag if you were lucky; if not, they were closed completely to be irreversibly opened by the body’s own factory-made cutting tool, the teeth. And the shit talking—my word, the glorious shit talking. We are talking about people’s grandmothers verbally and viciously disinheriting their own grandbabies because they dropped a ball in the outfield or hit the ground with a knee on a spine-twisting swing and a miss. Meanwhile, alley corner drunks constitute the welcoming heckling torture party for the away team from the next alley over. Our very own ultras, like Europeans have in their soccer stadiums. The foul lines were the spectators’ front porches, unless the ball bounced on the plastic chairs they were sitting on and came back into play, and the outfield fence was the street. You wouldn’t believe how many times a granny hit the ball back into play, or didn’t, depending on what team she wanted to win on that particular day.
Until I was old enough, or good enough, whichever came first, I would sit with my grandma and watch the action. This is where I would learn the finer intricacies of the game. This is where I would learn that a pitcher’s best friend is the double play, that if you are up two on a hitter (two strikes, no balls), the dirt isn’t such a bad place to throw one into and see if that son of a bitch (as my grandma said) would chase it and fan out. That if you are going to go down on strikes, you better swing out of your shoes and get struck out (or get ponchado, as we say), because if you get caught bird watching (pajareando), you are not allowed to have any extra queso frito that night. Mimi would tell me about how these games were being played even when she was a little girl, in the alleys in her home village. She would proudly go about telling me what a great glove my uncle had, or how masterfully my other uncle could pitch, or the sound my younger uncle’s bat made when he ripped into a ball.
Some of the grandpappies who would sit and watch the games in the alley had played in their time, saw their sons play, and in my time would come and see their grandbabies play. The lessons imparted by these beautiful, wise, and totally depraved old gentlemen were as beautiful as they were life-changing. If you are going to take a chance in life, do it just like when you steal a base; you better commit 100 percent, no pussyfooting allowed. Or, oh, the ump made a horrible call? Your boss sucks? Guess what, church is a great place to cry at, but we ain’t there, are we? And one of my favorites: sometimes if you wanna reach home plate, you’re going to have to lose some skin on the slide. All these moments of conversation would take place in the interim between pitches. When the pitcher started his motion, silence fell, and if it wasn’t the roar of the crowd due to a hit, or the collective gasps of a strikeout, or the sigh of an out, then it was back on with the conversation until the next pitch came.
Home
The crowd at the Tadeo Zavala stadium that night before the first pitch was thrown was anything but silent. I remember my dad expressing some regret to my mom for having taken me to the stadium that day. If his eyes were guns, she’d be dead. This was no place for a five-year-old. Again, this ain’t the type of joint where they would play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and opposing fans would sway side to side arm in arm and share their Cracker Jacks all kumbaya-like. But my mother, I mean, she was Grandma incarnate. We had been in the country a few days, and she figured it was of extreme importance for me to experience a game. We were hoping for the game to start being played on the field, just so the fights would stop in the stands. Before we knew it, in heavily accented English, the ump shouted “Pley bol” and we were off to the races. What followed was one of the most magical things I had ever seen up until that point. Sitting at the edge of my seat, days after my parents were deported to their country of provenance when I was five, this was a foreign land to me. In fact, this was the first live sporting event I had ever attended in my five years on earth.
The one thing about my mom is that she is a hustler’s hustler, and by god, she got us seats right behind home plate. The only thing separating me from being able to literally land a loogie on the ump’s back was a shaky, worn-down, rusted, dangerously thin, see-through protective fence. I mean, I could see the dirt fly out of the catcher’s mitt with every fastball. I could hear the ump calling balls and strikes, and I could hear the batter chirping at the catcher and vice versa. I vividly remember the pitcher on the mound projectile spitting a massive wad of saliva and tobacco juice on the clay just in front of the mound. This was the first time I had seen that beautiful melodic rhythmic action right before the pitch came, when the ump, the catcher, and the batter prepared for its arrival, the ump ever so slightly placing his hand on the catcher’s back as the three huddled closer for the incoming smoke. The beauty of a strikeout, a ponche, being called with that beautiful emphatic gesture from the umpire pulling a bowstring, and the shout of “You’re out!!!” My god, this was a grand spectacle already, unlike any I had ever witnessed. The sounds of the crowd, my mom cheering and cursing, my dad talking about what the pitcher should do, and the beer sprinkling all over us, chaotic, reverberating, deafening, simply the most awesome thing I had ever experienced.
To see the clay kicked up after a batter made contact and ran to first base, to see a throw from deep third take a hop once into the glove of the first baseman who had to go into a perfect split to dig the ball out of the dirt for an out. to see the Indians get a man on first only for the next batter to hit a grounder to the hole and watch the shortstop effortlessly run to the ball, scoop it with his left gloved hand, and transfer it virtuously to his right hand for the throw to second to gift me my first ever six-four-three double play.
And then the main man for the Indians, Sandy, I believe his name was, walked up to the plate. My dad said, “Keep your eye on him; he reminds me of old Charlie Hustle.” That’s when I heard it for the first time; the pitch came, the trio at the plate came close together, and pop! the loud crack of the barrel of the bat, right on the sweet spot—you could hear the loud echo reverberate all over the ballpark. Such a sweet, sweet sound to my five-year-old ears! How can anyone produce such a loud, explosive sound with a piece of wood and a leather ball? How is this possible?! We leapt out of our seats to see where the ball would end up. I could barely make out a white speck bouncing off a wall in center field, back into play? And thrown to second, where Sandy had arrived safely on his feet.
This being my first ball game, I had no clue that stealing was not only allowed but also encouraged and, when done majestically, even deeply admired. The next batter stepped to the plate, and when the ball was still in the pitcher’s hand during his windup, Sandy, unbeknownst to the pitcher, darted off for third. Catcher was wise to it, caught the pitch, and threw, sitting down goddammit, to third, but Sandy adroitly slid feet first safely. The third bag was his. The catcher ran to the mound and had a discussion with the pitcher. But I had just seen someone steal a base for the first time. What followed would leave a lasting impression and an everlasting love for the game, for risk-taking, for decisiveness, for mavericks, and for good ol’ clever dealing baby. As the left-handed pitcher prepared for his windup. My mom said, “Sandy is really far from the third base bag.” As if on cue, when the pitcher raised his leg, the clay kicked up behind Sandy’s metal spikes. What in the hell was happening? Someone behind us screamed in an excited, bewildered, incredulous tone, “Sandy is stealing home!!!” It just fucking slowed down to a near stop time did man. I could see the eyes on Sandy, and wow, pure fire and hunger. The man wanted this really badly, craved it even, it seemed. The pitcher, already in his motion, finally caught hold of the attempt by Sandy and hurried his release. His throw came to the right side of the catcher, away from his glove hand, in the dirt and into the glove. Sandy came in to the left of the catcher and straight up, head first, with both hands, and slid for home plate. It was a commotion of kicked-up clay, the sound of the slide, the grunt from the catcher trying to reach back over to his left to get Sandy out, a moment’s pause, a deafening momentary silence that enveloped everyone in the ballpark, and then the ump, as fast as a switchblade, beautifully stretched his arms out like a condor flying overhead: safe! Sandy was home.
Pinstripe Pandemonium
Now in Miami, gratefully and expectantly sitting here in my pinstripe Yankee jersey behind their dugout, drenched in sweat, I can’t help but get a little moist around the eyes when thinking about the first time I saw clay and grass together all those years ago in Granada. Every bit of 35, no longer a dewy-eyed child, jaded and disillusioned with most things in life, fed up with the inescapable mundane routine of existence in the best country on the face of the planet. Completely disappointed with my teachers for telling me to get straight As and everything would be alright. Eating bags of dicks at a job I hate just to keep the health insurance. I know, at the very least, I can always count on the old stick and ball game to make me feel like a blissful child once again.
As we were walking to the ballpark, the three of us—yours truly and two coworkers, Nicky and Nelson—I said to them wishfully, “Man, it will feel like late October in there, trust me.” Dare I say, even if it was a figment of my imagination, for a brief moment walking in through the first gate, the air got lighter, and I felt a breeze. “Fucking A,” I told Nelson, “it does feel like fucking late October, doesn’t it?” I believe there was a concurrence. The spectators were orderly flowing into the stadium, unlike I have ever seen them for a Marlins game. Usually tickets are very cheap and the stadium is empty. No one could ever figure out why, in a city of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans, the Marlins hadn’t really been filling out the seats of their new stadium. Today was different. The Yankees were in town, and Miami knew it. Among the three of us, only one proudly and fearlessly wore a Miami Marlins jersey, Nelson, with the last name Stowers on the back. The jewel in the Marlins’ rusting crown. The other two proudly displayed their pinstripes in enemy territory.
We cleared security, entered the ballpark, and directed ourselves to locating our seats for the evening. The smell of hot dogs, nachos, Cuban coffee, and chicken tenders filled the night air. Obviously a pit stop at the nearest alcohol dispensing stand was in order before we took our respective seats. The boys got beers, and I attempted to get a triple Jack neat, my usual. However, being that life is never smooth and fuck you you don’t get what you want, the gentleman running the stand told me I could only get a double of Jack, and what’s worse, he had to, at the very least by stadium policy, put one ice cube in it. I took it on the chin as well as can be expected, got my drink, paid the exorbitant markup cost of being at the ballpark, and directed my attention to snaking through the gathering crowds on my way to the seat. Man, these were the best seats I had ever had at a ball game. Aside, of course, from my baseball maiden voyage to a ballpark on that Nicaraguan summer night all those years ago behind home plate. Today we were right next to first base and behind the Yankee dugout. We could already see Aaron Boone, Anthony Volpe, and his honor himself, number 99 in the program number 1 in all our Yankee hearts, Aaron Judge, hanging out with their arms over the dugout railing. We looked at each other, raised our drinks, and made a toast to baseball. Here we are, boys, I said. And here we go, off to the races, baby. Play bol.
Can Opening 101
The first three innings were closed, scoreless, and hitless. Like the first few rounds of a prize fight, measuring each other out, seeing what the other has brought for the fight that night. Me being an avid seeker and enjoyer of greatness in any shape or form, of course, I started thinking, no-hitter? I jokingly nudged Nicky with an elbow and said, “So we’re not saying anything, but we’re seeing this, right?” “We don’t talk about that,” he said with a grin. I remember telling him, “This game is going to open up big time, and when it does, it will be absolutely beautiful.” The atmosphere was absolutely unreal at the ballpark at this point.
One of my earlier wishes had come true; it was October in the beginning of August. Marlins games are seldom sell-out affairs, to put it lightly. The contrast with previous games couldn’t be starker. Right now, as the Yankees took the field for the top of the fourth, the stadium was absolutely brimming with people. There was a goosebump-inducing electricity in the air. So palpable it would stand the hairs on your forearms. Everywhere you looked you saw people expecting for something to break open in the game. No hits so far, only blue-balling excitement with near home runs caught by the outfielders past the warning track, great defense, and great pitching. But the crowd craved some action; the crowd wanted to see a base hit, a stolen base, or a double play. Things that required someone to actually put the ball in play or get on base. The crowd wanted carnage.
Generational Pastime
I find it beautiful that baseball, for most of its history, from the very beginning, was at its very core a great hang for everyone. For those playing, for those watching, for those talking and thinking about the game in the budding cities of the mid- to late 19th century. Baseball was an outlet, a way to blow off steam, and a way to come together and escape the mundane nature of a working life. Our national pastime was based somewhat on the old British schoolboy game of rounders and was polished later in the cities of the northeast United States and the pastures surrounding them. But from those early contests in the Elysian Fields of New Jersey, to the Zavala in Granada, to Fenway in Boston, to this very ballpark I now sit at, baseball was always a place to play, watch, or talk to the heart’s desire. Our pastime has always indisputably been a great avenue for people to come together and engage in one of America’s purest traditions: hanging out and talking shit while other people do the hard work.
The game was tied with blanks. Zero zero. No hits, and Grisham stepped up to bat. The former Padre is now the Yanks’ center fielder and is notable at a glance due to the mustache on his upper lip. Center fielder is a beautiful source of nostalgia and melancholy for Yankee fans. The names, like DiMaggio, Mantle, and Williams, are spoken about in absolute reverence like old war heroes and legends, even today, despite the fact that those names were spoken long ago before many of us were born. Now Trent makes his way to the plate, bearing the weight of Joe, Mikey, and Bernie on his broad shoulders. Physically, Grisham is as wide as a refrigerator, with legs like tree trunks. I always said, in football and in baseball, the players who do not wear gloves are ones to watch for. In football, Jamal Lewis, Larry Johnson, and at times, the great All Day (Adrian Peterson) come to mind. In a world that is captivated by, as the kids now say, “drip,” to see someone without batting gloves is a rarity. Trent has no gloves on, and we can see how he grips the bat with his bare hands. The pitch came, and off it went off the pine toward right field. A single—the Bronx Bombers finally had a man on base. Although the can hadn’t been opened fully, Grisham’s hit was the beautiful sound the soda can makes just before it’s opened all the way, the tssssssss. This, however small, meant the can had been opened.
I’m a pessimist by nature. I’m ashamed to say, in my mind I thought, “Man, this could really be the last hit of the inning.” J Dawg stepped up to the plate next. Jasson Dominguez, a five-tool player, was playing left field. He had grounded out to second base at his first opportunity at bat, reinforcing my pessimism. Ding!!! Base hit, and boom, just like that, Trent was on second, carrying with him the go-ahead run, and Dominguez made it safely to first. The next batter up is Cody Bellinger, who has been having a hell of a year, both hitting for average and power. The next swing of his bat could bring about the first run of the game, hope. Two speedy men safely on bases. As fast as it came, the hope died nestled safely in Fernando Tatis Jr.’s glove. Cody flew out to right field. One out, and that’s when I heard it.
Undeniable, unmistakable, unnerving, the deep expectant silence. It literally shook me off my seat. Right before Bellinger had flown out to right, I told Nick, “Here comes Cody; he’s on fire, and Batman is on deck, baby.” And now, as soon as the silence hit, that’s when I saw him. Every single bit of six foot six, two hundred and forty-five pounds of man with the waist of a ballerina. The old-timers of baseball would say he had a great baseball body, a scout’s dream. With shoulders as wide as a semi-truck and legs like Greek pillars, Batman walked toward home plate to take on the pitcher. The silence was absolutely skin-tingling. Even his batting stance was menacing. Bat on shoulder, chin low, eyes directly on the flamethrower on the mound. “My god,” I thought, “the guy was born to wear a Yankee uniform.” The air was so rife with electricity you could discern a popping, crackling sound over the now extremely excitable silence. And the first pitch came, a sweeper, strike. Stanton took it without swinging.
And now it started, the whispering. Scoring the silence in such a beautiful way. I had never experienced this before. Maddening dead silence coupled with extremely loud whispering. It was as if the whole ballpark was having the same hushed conversation about what we were watching. A 95-mile-per-hour fastball came down the pipe. Ball 1. A 94 mph four-seamer came next; it too was a ball. My ears were about to explode at this point. The whisper-ridden silence seemed to be going somewhere, climbing, heading in a beautiful crescendo toward an apex off in the distance. An 87-mile-per-hour slider came for a try, drawing the first swing of Stanton’s at bat, strike two. Jesus Christ, how loud can this silence and whispers get? Two-two count, no runs. Two men on base go ahead run on third. My god, my skin was crawling. The level of intensity in this moment was truly magnificent. The next pitch would soon come. Would it be a strikeout? A hit? A double play somehow?
The pitcher started his motion, and I instinctively reached for the knees of Nick and Nelson to brace myself. An identical pitch in speed and form came next. 87-mile-per-hour slider. Hung one over the plate, as old man baseball says. A grave mistake, Mr. Pitcher. The sound of Stanton’s bat will live in the deepest caverns of my mind for as long as I live or until that old pesky German Alzheimer’s gets me. A pop, crack, or snap wouldn’t do it justice. This was a thunderous, eardrum-rupturing smack. How the ball kept its cover I’ll never know. That ball was punishingly pounded, pelted, and pulverized all at once. It came off the bat at a blistering 116 miles per hour. Those of you like me who like to spend our weekends sweating under the sun chasing an uncaring little white ball through nature will enjoy this next bit. The trajectory of the sizzling fireball that came off Mr. Stanton’s bat was truly a magnificent sight to behold. The ball could not have been higher than 35 or 40 feet off the ground, displaying right-to-left movement, a draw as we say in golf, and almost as soon as we heard it being struck, we saw it leave the field and go over the left field wall. Couldn’t have taken more than a second for that ball to go from bat to stands, it seemed. It was a mesmeric, powerful sound and sight that cut through the whisper and silence of the night like a hot knife through butter.
The ballgame had opened up beautifully. Batman rounded the bases like a proud racehorse taking a victory lap after winning a derby. His teammates awaited his arrival at home plate; they celebrated by leaping in the air and locking their right arms at the top like a big claw-hug hybrid. Three-run blast, exquisite. Yanks on the board and up by three. Who knew the only thing you needed to catch lightning in a bottle was a ticket to a ballgame? Now sitting in this comfortable, cushy seat blowing ice-cold air conditioning up my ass, repelling the claw of sweat on my back, I couldn’t help but feel like Sandy at the Zavala, arriving home.
Manuel Galeano is a Miami-born criminal defense attorney with Nicaraguan roots. Raised between Miami and Nicaragua, he developed a lifelong passion for baseball and the art of storytelling. A graduate of the University of Florida and the University of Missouri School of Law, Manuel spends his time away from the courtroom traveling, writing, playing golf, and watching the game alongside his family and his puppy, Vitto.
Jason David Córdova lives in Puerto Rico as an illustrator and painter. Some of his art can be seen on Instagram at @jasoni72. You can visit his shop on Red Bubble.
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