Harvesting Baseball Talent

By Janice Castro

Joaquin Andujar, pitching ace of the St. Louis Cardinal staff who last week became the season's first 20-game winner, was sitting in Dodger Stadium watching Los Angeles Outfielder Pedro Guerrero taking batting practice. Andujar's thoughts about the perennial .300 hitter went beyond the manicured Los Angeles diamond back to the rocky fields of San Pedro de Macoris, a hardscrabble town in the Dominican Republic where, as a teenager, he had first hurled fastballs and curves to Guerrero. Both Andujar, 32, and Guerrero, 29, are the sons of sugarmill workers, and there was little money. But, the pitcher recalls, "we found a rubber ball and a piece of wood for a bat and played with that." Both were signed up by major league scouts at age 16.

The journey of two local boys to the big leagues would be the talk of any other town. But in San Pedro (pop. 123,000), theirs are just two of many tales. For while San Pedro turns out a respectable amount of sugar, it refines ballplayers in unrivaled numbers. No other community of its size anywhere has produced so many big league players--some 270 in the past 15 years. A dozen Macoristas are currently playing in the majors, and about 140 more are on minor league teams in the U.S.

"San Pedro is a sleepy town, and there is little to do," explains Oakland A's Shortstop Alfredo Griffin. "Baseball is the big thing." But what makes Macoristas so good at the game? "It's the good weather," suggests Atlanta Braves Caribbean Scout Pedro Gonzales, who was born there. "It could be the water or the diet. No one knows," says Cleveland Indians President Peter Bavasi, whose Macorista shortstop, Julio Franco, 24, went into last weekend hitting .294. Says Franco simply: "People are poor. They want to play ball." Still, the town has no corner on poverty, sunshine or major league dreams.

Set on the south coast 40 miles from Santo Domingo, San Pedro began work on its two main export crops, sugar and baseball talent, more or less simultaneously. At the turn of the century, the game was cultivated by newly arrived American owners of the sugar mills, who sponsored company teams in local competition. The mill workers were good players, in part, it is said, because wielding machetes in the cane fields had strengthened their arms. Ensuing years of team rivalry and the 1916-24 occupation by U.S. Marines helped make America's national pastime San Pedro's major social activity.

In the '60s, a number of outstanding Dominican players--including future Hall of Fame Pitcher Juan Marichal, Rico Carty and the three Alou brothers, Felipe, Jesus and Matty--went off to the U.S. and major league success. Impressed, the Dominican government built three professional-quality parks on the island, one of them in San Pedro. Today the town draws youngsters from other communities who move there to play on San Pedro's 200 teams.

Four major league clubs--the Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros--now run permanent baseball camps in San Pedro. Says New York Mets Scouting Director Joe McIlvaine, whose staff keeps tabs on Dominican boys as young as 14: "If we get calls from San Pedro and another town there, we give the boy from San Pedro the first look." In 1984 the recruiting rules were tightened to protect young players; scouts who once signed athletic teenagers at first glance on the streets of San Pedro must now obtain proof that the boys are at least 17. Still, the competition is intense. "If you see someone you want to sign and you wait two weeks," says McIlvaine, "he will be signed by someone else when you return."

Coming to the U.S. is a dream that sometimes starts as a nightmare. Carty, the 1970 National League batting champion who played nine years for the Braves, remembers he ate chicken for three months because he did not know enough English to ask for anything else. And he never did adjust to cold weather in the early weeks of the season. A few teams now have programs, including English lessons, to bridge the culture gap, and some players take to the U.S. well enough to stay.

But most Macoristas do not settle permanently in the U.S. Added to the pull of home is the star players' status in San Pedro as demigods who can earn more in one year than their fathers did in a lifetime. To them, the U.S. remains a sort of fabulous offshore branch office. Says Andujar: "I love the United States. Every 15 days when I get paid, I say, 'God bless America!' " Still, he has built a new home in San Pedro, and on the terrace at Tio Miguel, a waterfront restaurant with a newly installed satellite dish to pull in the games from the States, the owner has permanently reserved Andujar's corner table.

Back on the dusty streets where horse-drawn carts roll alongside the occasional Mercedes, other boys hope to make it to the big leagues, and those who have are often there to help. "I wanted to be just like Rico Carty," says Cleveland Pitcher Ramon Romero. "Maybe someday I'll be someone's hero." Mindful of his own debt, Oakland's Griffin supplies uniforms, bats and balls to a San Pedro sugar-mill team called, appropriately enough, Estrellas de Griffin. Andujar spends much of the off-season coaching teenage players there. Says he: "I could go to the beach and have a good time, but they dream of coming to the United States to play professional baseball. That's why I try to help them." That, too, explains why San Pedro produces so many fine players.

With reporting by Cheryl Crooks/Los Angeles and Bernard Diederich/San Pedro