The Time I Almost Walked Away from the Yankees

The first time I received an offer to cover the New York Yankees, I took three days to decide.

Kid you not.

This was back in early 1982. I was still at my first job, working on the city desk of the Hartford Courant. I covered cops, neighborhoods and education — and dreamt of becoming a foreign correspondent and winning a Pulitzer Prize.

Back then, we were still in the prehistoric age of sports. The New York City tabloids notwithstanding, a culture in which sports are entertainment and the top players are bigger than Hollywood stars was in early gestation. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had yet to hook up in the NBA Finals. And Michael Jordan was in the midst of his freshman year at the University of North Carolina.

Baseball had Reggie Jackson — Mr. October, the leading star of the “Bronx Zoo” and the self-proclaimed “straw that stirs the drink.” But the game was recovering from the strike-interrupted 1981 season and Jackson, after five tumultuous seasons with the Yankees, had just left the biggest stage sports had to offer to sign as a free agent with the California Angels.

In the world of journalism, way before the internet and social media, covering sports was the equivalent of working in the toy department — all fun and games and not socially redeeming.

And I still said yes.

The lure of the Yankees

Little did I know at the time, that decision irrevocably changed my life, launching a lifelong career in sports and baseball that has taken me from English to Spanish and back again to English, and from print to broadcast to digital with La Vida Baseball.

Shortly afterwards, I flew to Fort Lauderdale carrying a primitive computer that weighed close to 20 pounds. I picked up a rental car and, without the aid of a GPS, found the ballpark.

Fort Lauderdale in February was somewhat reminiscent of my youth in Puerto Rico: Commercial strip malls, fast-food joints, palm trees and an almost tropical breeze welcoming those of us fleeing from the Northeast. I quickly loosened my tie and wondered why I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt.

The Yankees trained at Fort Lauderdale Stadium, which back then was considered fancy. Besides being relatively large, with more than 8,000 seats, it had air-conditioned clubhouses, offices for team executives and a private box for owner George Steinbrenner.

I grew up in Puerto Rico listening to an uncle who broadcast baseball. But this was new territory for me — the Yankees beat.

Small Family

The Yankees were happy to see me in Fort Lauderdale. The Hartford Courant, the biggest paper in Connecticut, had never before assigned someone to the cover the team full-time. The press was limited to beat writers, so the vibe was that of a small family. You had access to the players at all times. And I kept my Baseball Writers’ Association of America card in my wallet, pulling it out only when a security guard didn’t recognize me.

Of course, the rest of the New York press corps wasn’t sure what to make of me. I was young, I was brown and, if memory serves correctly, I was the only Latino beat writer in baseball for a major English-language daily. And the only one covering the Yankees able to speak to Latino players in Spanish.

Except that there weren’t any Latinos to speak with. The 1982 Bronx Bombers were literally black and white, a team with a veteran roster coming off a disappointing loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. With Jackson’s departure, left fielder Dave Winfield became Steinbrenner’s favorite target for biting barbs.

On Opening Day, Ken Griffey Sr. and Jerry Mumphrey shared the outfield with Winfield. Going around the horn, the infield was Dave Revering, Willie Randolph, Bucky Dent and Graig Nettles. Ron Guidry, “Louisiana Lightning,” started, with Rick Cerone catching and Bob Watson at DH.

No Latinos

Latinos? Cuban catcher Roberto “Bobby” Ramos was acquired in an early April trade but didn’t see the field until Aug. 16, playing a total of four games. Rookie Dominican catcher Juan Espino debuted on June 25 but got only three games and two at-bats. Rookie Puerto Rican infielder Edwin Rodríguez debuted on Sept. 28 and played in three games.

That was it in a crazy season in which Steinbrenner fired managers Bob Lemon after 14 games and Gene Michael midway through the summer before finishing the campaign with Clyde King.

Few were spared. Watson, who would later become the Yankees’ general manager, was traded to Atlanta in April. “Bleeping” Bucky Dent, the hero of 1978 when he hit one of the most memorable home runs in history to beat the Boston Red Sox in an elimination game that decided the AL East, was sent packing to Texas in August for Lee Mazzilli.

So, with whom did I speak? When you are young and inexperienced, you follow the crowd. If there were reporters in front of Winfield, you joined the scrum. If they switched to the always accommodating Randolph, you did the same. You kept your distance from gruff veterans, starting with third baseman Graig Nettles. I did a lot of watching and observing, always waiting for Steinbrenner to make a grand entrance.

If I wanted a taste of home, Randolph was my only recourse. A six-time All-Star second sacker, he grew up in Brooklyn admiring Puerto Rican Félix Millán, a sure-handed fielder who won two Gold Gloves at second base with the Atlanta Braves before finishing his career with the New York Mets. Randolph sometime even choked up on the bat like Millán.

Guess who spoke Spanish?

But I did get to practice my Spanish. Lou Piniella, who was nearing the end of an 18-year playing career that would take him into managing, surprised me one day in Fort Lauderdale by reacting to something I said out loud to myself en español. It was a word much stronger than “caramba.” Piniella, whose sardonic disposition belied a fiery temper, looked up, wondering who else had a short fuse.

¿Qué te pasa? What’s wrong with you? Piniella said.

“You speak Spanish?” I blurted.

Though Piniella was born in Tampa, I had always surmised from his last name that he was Italian-American. Oops, I was so wrong.

My rookie mistake taught me another lesson — never to presume, always ask. Piniella’s family came from Asturias, in northwest Spain, and was part of the Spanish immigration to Florida, just like the family of a later Yankee, Tino Martínez. “Sweet Lou” could talk the talk. As he himself noted, the correct pronunciation of his last name in Spanish was Pi-NIE-ya.

Amid the Yankees’ dysfunction, I had occasional conversations in Spanish with Piniella, but I never got to talk to Ramos, Espino or Rodríguez. My season came to an abrupt end on Memorial Day weekend in late May.

In a Sunday company softball game, a baserunner barreled into my left knee as I waited to tag him out. His name was Danny González — the one other Puerto Rican who worked as a reporter at the Courant. I suffered an ACL tear, among a multitude of injuries, sending me to the disabled list and ending my season.

Hall of Fame Ending

But there’s a Hall of Fame ending to my story.

James Herbert Smith, the same editor who hired me for the city desk and then later offered me the Yankees’ beat, had hired Claire Smith that spring to cover boxing and general-assignment stories. An African-American female sportswriter who aspired to cover baseball, my misfortune became her long-awaited break and Claire took full advantage of it. She went on to cover the Yankees for the Courant and baseball for The New York Times before becoming a columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer and then moving on to ESPN.

It was a trailblazing career that culminated last year with one of the highest honors in the profession. The BBWAA voted her the 2017 J.G. Taylor Spinks Award recipient, making her the first female and fourth African-American winner of this prestigious award.

Like Wally Pipp, whose headache and day off gave way to Lou Gehrig’s Hall of Fame career, my knee injury gave way to Claire’s Hall of Fame honor. I’m not at all regretful of the circumstances, because I became a trailblazer in Latino media and I’ve come full circle with my first sport here at La Vida Baseball.

It took me three days, but I’m so glad now that I took that Yankees job.

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