El Profe: Scanning the Pages of My Own History

The marks of history are all around us. We carry them with us. The artifacts of our travels and encounters, they are also in the symbols and memories we hold dear.

I was reminded of this when I headed south to Florida for the first time in decades to cover spring training for La Vida Baseball. Childhood memories rushed over me: my family heading to Fort Lauderdale Stadium — better known as Little Yankee Stadium — car rides to West Palm Beach to see the Atlanta Braves and Montreal Expos. Meeting Gary Carter, who gave a dozen kids a free catching clinic. Having Tim Raines sign a baseball card for me as he walked between Municipal Stadium and the practice fields.

And here I was again in West Palm Beach, at a sparkling new complex serving as the spring training home for the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals. Our task was interviewing a few key Latino players on the Astros: José Altuve, Carlos Correa and Carlos Beltrán. This time I was on the field — as a member of the media.

The Past is Present

Before we left the hotel that morning, I decided to add two pins to my lapels. Both were deeply meaningful, and represented why I was there: A Puerto Rican flag given to me by my wife in 1995, and a Roberto Clemente pin, a gift from Doña Vera Clemente after a visit to Ciudad Deportiva Roberto Clemente in Carolina, Puerto Rico, that same year as part of my doctoral research.

Visiting the Roberto Clemente Sports City complex that Clemente had dreamt of building for the people of Puerto Rico is an encounter with the past. As you walk around the facility, you are compelled to consider whether we have fulfilled his dream. Have we accomplished his vision of not just a sport city, but of a society in which everyone’s human dignity is respected? It’s an ideal that matters even more today, Aug. 18, on what would have been his 83rd birthday.

To press that Clemente pin onto my lapel was both a symbol and a reminder: of who Clemente was, of who gave me that pin, and why I was there at spring training. History, culture, and identity.

And I am certain that the pins helped me get interviews with two Puerto Rican stars that day.

Figuring Out Clubhouses

Clubhouses are fascinating spaces. You notice where the players congregate, what music is playing, the locations of the players’ lockers (something the team’s management decides). All these things matter. They create an atmosphere, a heartbeat and a character of the club.

Members of the media are invited into this space but still considered interlopers. The task is to not disrupt player preparations or create discomfort while getting interviews. The players are both hyperaware of the media presence and trying to ignore it.

I noticed that the Astros had arranged the lockers of Altuve and Correa together. This is strategic. Double-play combination partners side by side. The mentor and respected veteran Beltrán next door.

Latino players, in particular, are often wary of sports media. Coming from other countries and different cultures, with English a second language only recently acquired in the minor leagues, dealing with the media causes distress. Latino players don’t want to be misrepresented, have their words twisted, or their English-language accents made fodder for jokes and sound clips.

I approached Beltrán, introducing myself as part of La Vida Baseball, partners with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

His reaction on first blush was typical Beltrán. “After practice,” he said.

It was hard to read his emotions: Was that a good “after practice”? Or a blowing-you-off “after practice”?

The magic of a pin

When the clubhouse reopened, I shared with Beltrán that my dad was born in his hometown of Manatí, a municipality on the north coast of Puerto Rico west of San Juan. I told him that La Vida Baseball is part of the Hall of Fame’s effort to reach out to Latinos and share with an English-language audience his stories — our stories.

Then came the Roberto Clemente pin. I noticed him looking at it. Doña Vera gave this to me when I visited Ciudad Deportiva Roberto Clemente, I told him, before adding, Clemente was an influence to us all, boricuas and Latinos. He’s a big reason why we (you and I) are here.

That sealed the deal. Beltrán smiled his smile: “Let’s do it.”

Here to Talk about the Past

I’d had a strange experience the previous spring. A Big Ten Network camera crew had been following me around the University of Illinois campus where I teach. The crew was filming a documentary about the research for my first book, Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line.

I found myself prepping my students for a class session that was to be taped. They were offered the opportunity to opt out. They could strategically seat themselves outside of the camera’s view.

None opted out. They were all in.

In fact, the presence of a film crew intrigued them; they were curious about why someone had deemed their professor a subject worthy of a documentary. [See below.]

That realization — that my students wanted to learn more about my research — motivated me to open up with them about my research. Most were interested not in the historical facts about Latinos in baseball, but rather about my encounters with the stuff of the past, the people I met, the places I traveled. They were drawn to my interactions with the history-makers and those who lived those historical moments.

In the same way, I am opening El Profe’s notebook as a way to share with La Vida readers these encounters. I will be scanning the pages of my own history, after decades of researching Latinos in baseball, to pull out a story here and there. I want our readers to see these individuals transform from two-dimensional characters into live individuals sitting in a living room or a dugout. In sharing these stories, I hope to provide access, an insider’s view.

In a certain sense, these stories by El Profe represent my discovery of how things operate within the baseball world. The stories are about learning that history is alive, not resigned to some grainy clip of men in woolen uniforms rounding the bases — that history is a relationship between those of us in the present and those in the past. And that our understanding of these events will change over time. Just like baseball has, too.

Featured Image: Jesús Jacobo