Ozzie in ’85: Rookie of the Year

By Efraín Ruiz Pantin

More than 30 years later, there are some discrepancies. Details more than anything, whether it was at Estadio Universitario de Caracas or at the hotel where they held the gala for the 1984 Venezuelan League All-Star Game.

Minor things.

This much is certain: With the excitement over Luis Aparicio’s election into the National Baseball Hall of Fame somebody decided to get Aparicio, David Concepción and Alfonso ‘Chico’ Carrasquel together for a portrait.

“I’m missing,” Ozzie Guillén yelled before the picture was taken.

The kid was only 20 years old, but he already stood out in Venezuela even though he hadn’t reached the majors.

“I’m missing there,” he yelled again.

According to Guillén’s friend Domingo Fuentes, there are those who swear that Guillén had to be stopped from getting into that picture. Whatever the case, he wasn’t allowed to join the group for the portrait.

One year later, everybody in Venezuela wanted to pose for a picture with that skinny kid, including the Venezuelan President Jaime Lusinchi.

“Chicken bone,” as they called him, had won the 1985 American League Rookie of the Year Award.

Looking Back to the ‘80s

Venezuelans have grown accustomed to seeing a countryman do something special each year in the majors. Jose Altuve won the AL MVP in 2017, and he already has three batting crowns. Miguel Cabrera has two MVP awards, four batting titles and the only Triple Crown in baseball since 1967. Pitchers Johan Santana has won two Cy Young Awards. Félix Hernández won one.

Things were different in the 1980s for my countrymen. We had good players, beginning with Aparicio, who became the first Latin American to win the Rookie of the Year in 1956.

But a Cy Young? A batting champ? A MVP? A 20-game winner? A single-season home run leader? No, Venezuelan baseball was not ready for those things yet. Our countrymen weren’t just few in the majors in the 1980s; they were also primarily bit players.

Amid that reality, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that Aparicio had been elected to the Hall of Fame. It was the first and only time a Venezuelan earned a spot among the immortals in Cooperstown, N.Y.

That same year Tony Armas exploded and led the American League with 43 home runs and 123 RBIs for the Red Sox. Those feats were truly national stories in a country crazy about baseball. Then on Nov. 25, 1985, Guillén was named Rookie of the Year.

A Day of Celebration

Guillén, who was playing winter ball for the Tiburones de La Guaira, received the news by telephone at his apartment in the suburbs of Caracas.

The next day every newspaper in Venezuela had Guillén on page 1. Many media outlets sent reporters to Guillén’s apartment the next day.

“I (had) never seen so many cameras and media together,” he told La Vida Baseball. “We only had cameras when somebody was murdered or somebody (was) caught selling drugs. We never had a positive camera crew in our neighborhood.”

Humberto Acosta, who teaches baseball writing in Venezuela, was one of the journalists who went to Guillén’s apartment.

“Oswaldo was excited,” he said. “But he also was trying to control himself, as though he didn’t want to believe what was going on.”

Acosta remembers Guillén’s answer to a question that was posed by a female reporter who clearly knew nothing about baseball and had not done her research.

After she asked Guillén what award he won, he quipped, “The Nobel Prize for Literature.”

In Venezuela, where baseball has always been the top sport, the Rookie of the Year Award might as well have been equal to a Nobel Prize.

Pedro Padrón Panza, who owned los Tiburones de la Guaira, took full advantage of Guillén’s accomplishment. In the middle of the winter ball season, he organized an exhibition game in Ocumare del Tuy, Guillén’s hometown.

“Everywhere I go, Rookie of the Year, not just because Ozzie won Rookie of the Year, but because Luis Aparicio,” Guillén said. “They (brought) Aparicio back on the map.”

A Different Time

For fans who love and follow winter league baseball, it might be difficult to fathom now that Guillén played 63 of the Tiburones’ games that winter, including the playoff games and the Caribbean World Series.

That’s in stark contrast to Gleyber Torres and Ronald Acuña, the two Venezuelan rookies of the moment who still haven’t made their winter ball debut at home.

Not that anybody wants to blame them with the economic crisis and social unrest in Venezuela.

Nonetheless, it was such a gift for Venezuelan fans in 1985 to see the Rookie of the Year every day. It was another country.

The Rookie of the Year Award proved that the White Sox hadn’t gone crazy when they traded their Cy Young Award winner and turned the shortstop role over to a rookie, as Carlton Fisk said at the time.

The award also transformed Guillén into a national figure, surely Venezuela’s most important player until Andres Galarraga revived his career in 1993 with the Rockies.

Nobody would ever again dare say that Guillén didn’t belong in a portrait among the greatest shortstops in Venezuelan history. He was already one of them.

Featured Image: Focus on Sport

Inset Image: Ron Vesely / Getty Images Sport