El Partidaso de Los Diablos Rojos de Mazatlan, Part Three: "¡Preparense pa' jugar!"

Some time ago, before the invention of BABIP and OPS, even before saves were considered a statistic important enough to cover, there was an easy way to tell which child was the biggest nerd, the most likely to quickly abandon baseball dreams in favor of a career as an accountant or a lawyer or a bookmaker. Going to a baseball game and finding a child or a teenager with a scorecard said that this was the kind of child who, despite his intense love of the sport, wouldn’t make it, and would instead be confined to the grandstand, carefully observing, maybe eventually being good enough to work for Meyer Lansky or Bugsy Siegel or Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Though scorekeeping has dropped dramatically in popularity, the child who keeps score is almost certainly not a good player, he is the watcher on the walls. He wears no crowns, and wins no glory. He can’t even get a free hamburger from the Little League’s snack bar.

I know about the reputation and the hamburger because, despite living in the digital age, with any number of gadgets potentially at my disposal, I took up scorekeeping as a kid. It was an extremely easy way to avoid talking to anyone but the Umpire during the game. This helped me to avoid reopening the deep, traumatic scars inflicted on me by North Venice Little League. One day, I’ll talk to someone about these scars, which remain painful anytime I think of them. Maybe if I’m ever a guest on The View the ladies and I will cry about them together. My impression is that that’s basically how The View works.

But out of nearly every trauma springs an opportunity, no matter how small or how silly. I learned how to keep score so that I could pretend to be happy while at the games. It worked, and pretending to be happy has become my permanent strategy for avoiding real conversation.

But suddenly I was at the Diablos Rojos game, and Rica was asking whether anyone wanted to keep score, and people were looking down, trying to avoid being saddled with the deep and abiding responsibility of being a nerd, and I was done with the deportes section of the newspaper, and I was about to watch a baseball game with nothing to do but watch, and so I raised my hand a little and said “Hey Rica. I’ll keep score if you want.”

“You sure, man?” Rica is fluent in English, the only non-native speaker on the team to have that advantage.  It comes in handy in his business deals, apparently.

“Ya, it’s no big deal. I got it. Then y’all can focus on playing.”

“Cool, man. Here. Go get the lineup from the other team.”

And so I took the scorebook over to the other team, and found an extremely old Oaxacan lady holding the book for the other team. She was sitting next to an enormous cooler full of tamales, apparently prepared for the team. I felt a deep twinge of regret that my brother didn’t play for this team. The Diablos Rojos had no tamales. I looked at her and she saw I had the book, and she looked around, and I politely introduced myself in Spanish and then it turned out that she didn’t speak Spanish (or English) but her friend next to her told me that she would read me the lineup after I read her ours. 

“Segunda Base: Pony” I said.

“Solo quiero sus nombres, señor” She said. “I only want their names.”

I read the rest of the roster, and she read out theirs. I was set for the game.

Our stands were on the first base side, under a short, stout, leafy tree that seems to be the standard-issue shade device for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, whether it’s a tony Westside park or a tiny pocket of green among barely-earthquake-code apartments in South Central. As soon as I sat down a couple of rows above the team, none of whom were in the unshaded dugout, one of the players (not a starter) offered me a Bud Light. Taken by surprise, I politely declined. Drinking is, of course, technically against the law in city parks.

My brother sat down next to me (The Diablos Rojos were the visiting team, and they were still milling about waiting for the opponent to finish infield practice) and I asked him if he was ok with his teammates getting drunk. He told me that one or two or six “azulitos” (referring to the little blue cans of Bud Light) were fairly common for some of the little-used substitutes and the family members of the players who would spend the day in the stands. We talked briefly about his position for the day (First Base, his favorite) and he mentioned something which truly astounded me.

The man taking infield for the other team, over at first base, was a substantially older man, in his late forties at least. He was rotund, in that sort of way that aging relief pitchers are barrels, containing multitudes that would love to escape through the buttoned seam of the front of the baseball jersey. He had a massive moustache, in the style of Pancho Villa or Vicente Fox. His name, according to Preston, was Melchor. While naming children after famous historical figures is not unprecedented, going back to a man who was president of Mexico for a couple of months back in 1832 is certainly interesting. It is not, however, astounding.

What was astounding is that Melchor had been, until the week prior, the manager of the Diablos Rojos. He had then traded himself to the Maquileros (“Factory Workers”) the same week they were set to play the Diablos Rojos. Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover that kind of move.  I watched Melchor for a couple of minutes and decided the Diablos Rojos were probably better off with Preston at first anyway.

I was gazing out across the expansive, unfenced outfield which was basically the rest of the park, the short right field formed by the roller hockey rink still at least 250 feet from home plate at the foul line, and considering the vastness of America that must be enclosed by foul lines, and how much of the country must be in the fair territory of some or another baseball field, with older men running around when I was snapped out of my reverie. “¿Ey, compa, quien va a batear este inning?” (Hey, man, who’s gonna bat this inning?)

I realized that the man was talking to me, and I read out the list. “Dony, Victor, y Rica, y despues, Tristan.”

Everyone looked at me funny. They asked for me to read it again. I did. One of the guys grabbed it from me. “Pony, Victor, y Rica, y despues, Tristan,” he said. I had misread “Pony” (pronounced like a small horse) as “Donny.” Sheepishly, I corrected the sheet and got ready for my work.

As Pony strode up to the plate, the umpire, a hulking middle-aged Mexican man, came waddling down the first base line towards Rica. He exchanged words briefly, and then pointed at me. “Ey, come down here!”

I walked down the steps, expecting even greater embarrassment. I wasn’t making eye contact with the umpire, but he just asked to see the sheet. I showed it to him, he said it was ok, and I went back to the stands. That bullet had been dodged.

Apparently even in the most Mexican of American baseball leagues, it is customary for the umpire, upon crouching behind the catcher for the first pitch of the game, to shout “Play Ball!”

El Partidaso de Los Diablos Rojos De Mazatlan, Part Two: Pregame

When an American has gone a long time without going to a baseball game, something inherent in the soul tickles the conscience until it can smell the dust and hear the crack of the bat. It’s not that we all like baseball, far from it.  It’s not even that baseball is the national pastime anymore, or that we’re the only ones who are any good at it, like Football. It is the languidity of our summers, and the powerful attachment we have to slowing things down and having time to talk and to think and to ignore the realities of our lives for a couple of hours, which could stretch out to a whole evening. That is the reason Americans keep going to baseball games. That, or the beer.

When I went to the Diablos Rojos’ game that Sunday, I certainly wasn’t going for the beer. There is, of course, legally speaking, no drinking in public parks in Los Angeles. I had just completed the winter quarter at the University of Chicago. Winter is the cruelest quarter, mixing memory (of Fall) and desire (for spring) and coming back to LA and smelling the night-flowering jasmine helps to heal the wounds inflicted by the snow and the wind. I don’t usually go to baseball games in the early spring, though. The late summer, when Vicente Padilla’s slow pace and slow pitching gave Vin Scully’s perfect voice the time to tell his timeless stories, the ones that make summer last forever until it’s time to go to bed so that you can wake up the next morning with the birds and tell the kids at camp about how much Vin means to you while they chuckle at how old you sound, that’s the time I usually make time to go to the ballpark.

But since I knew I wouldn’t be returning to Los Angeles for a while, and I hate the trashy dump that is Wrigley Field (The people who think Dodger Stadium sucks should try to buy any food or beer, or hear who the relief pitcher is, or try to stay warm in their seats at Wrigley in May) and the unusually trashy fraternity house that is Wrigleyville, and going to the Sox is fun but hard to convince people to do, my baseball senses were up.

It certainly didn’t hurt the cause that my brother was playing for one of the teams. I hadn’t been to one of his games for a full year, and he had been on this new team for almost that long. I had also never watched a Mexican Sunday League game all the way through. The game was ten minutes from our house. His team had an awesome name. I had heard incredible stories about the fun the team had on the field. It was time for baseball.

I drove my brother to the game, picking up his friend Tristan on the way. We prepared for the game with the right kind of pump-up music, I put on 103.1 (El Gato: Salvajemente Grupero) and listened to Los Huracanes del Norte play some corridos. I have strange musical preferences.

The game was supposed to start at noon, but they had to get there early for practice. I dropped them at Mar Vista park at eleven fifteen, and went to the store to get some snacks.

Though the closest grocery store to Mar Vista Park is a Trader Joe’s, they do not carry La Opinion, the Spanish newspaper of Los Angeles, and I wanted to read about Cruz Azul’s upcoming match, so I went to Mercado Aqui Es Oaxaca instead. Like most treasured institutions of Los Angeles, Aqui Es Oaxaca is tucked in a strip mall with a check cashing place. I picked up La Opinion, making an error in Spanish on the way, and also grabbed a Sidral soda, because the only Jarritos available were “Jarritos Light” and that seems like bullshit.

I drove back to Mar Vista Park, intending to make the first pitch of the game, at noon. I had fifteen minutes to drive two. But when I turned the car on, I accidentally put on NPR. Ira Glass was discussing something. It was powerfully moving, even though today I don’t remember a word he said. I was captivated. When he was finally done, I realized I had probably missed the start of the game. This made me sad.

I should have known not to be down, though, about this event starting on time. When I walked to the field, I saw multiple players on both teams warming up in the outfield, throwing the ball to each other, and enjoying the beautiful day. I walked over to my brother to say hi.

He saw me coming, I think, because when I got over there he turned to his teammate and said “Hey Pony! This is Dexter. He speaks Spanish. ¡El habla español!”

Pony said “¿Como esta usted?” and I think he didn’t realize that his teammate was my brother, so I answered him, pointing at my brother “Estoy bien, compa. Soy el hermano de este pinche puto.” (I’m good, man. I’m this fucker’s brother.)

Pony cracked up, and then pointed at Preston. “¿Este joto?” (This [derogatory word for homosexual]) and then we both cracked up.

We talked for a couple more minutes, and then I took up my place in the stands. I opened La Opinion, and began to read the sports section. Then, while the opposing team came out to take infield practice, Rica, the manager of the Diablos Rojos, came over to the bench with the scorebook. I knew this was my chance to be a Diablo Rojo.

El Partidaso de Los Diablos Rojos De Mazatlan, Part One: Introduction.

Baseball is not my favorite sport to watch or play. I enjoy like nothing else on television the brilliant Shakespeare-quoting commentary of Vin Scully, and a game of 16-inch softball with friends on a Sunday afternoon brings much joy to my life. But without Vin, baseball conjures memories of my Little League failure, when the manager deliberately cheated so that he wouldn’t have to send me up to bat, I was so bad.  Softball at least is more democratic, the ball easier to hit, my weaknesses easier to conceal.

My brother, on the other hand, played Varsity baseball in high school. He was almost always one of the top players on his team, and if he hadn’t hurt his hip badly in his youth, he might have been able to play in college. His bat speed and eye are both excellent, but because of his injury he only swings with his arms, which dramatically reduces his potential power. Even so, he can clobber the ball to all parts of the field, and his defense behind the plate or at first base is good. He gives up a little bit defensively in the outfield, as he runs slowly now because of his hip.

I introduce his quality of play because he is now a member of the Diablos Rojos de Mazatlan, Oaxaca. (Diablos Rojos means “Red Devils” in Spanish) This does not mean that he plays baseball in Mexico. Though some might suggest that the diamonds in South Central LA are best described as being located in Mexico, nobody would mistake immaculately manicured Mar Vista Rec Center, (Home Field of the Diablos Rojos) with its legions of little children perfectly adorned in miniature basketball jerseys and its packs of soccer moms in Range Rovers for anywhere but the fanciest colonias just north of Chapultepec Park.

The Diablos Rojos are, however, proudly from the pueblito of Mazatlan, on the northern border of Oaxaca state in Mexico, a five to seven hour bus ride from Mexico City. This incongruity between their proud, if humble, home and their relatively posh home field, with real bleachers and a verdant outfield grass in an upper middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles is explained, like most things in that fair city, by adaptations to new lifeways by migrant communities. The Diablos Rojos team was founded by migrants from the pueblito of Mazatlan who have made their way to Los Angeles. They play in a mid-level division of Liga Unidos de Béisbol (The ungramaticallity of “Liga” and “Unidos” is based in the fact that Unidos refers to Estados Unidos, the United States) in LA.

The team is composed almost exclusively of men from their late 20’s to their early 40’s, who come from the town or its more rural environs. They’ve all moved to Los Angeles to pursue work in a variety of trades. One, the team manager, (Rica, named not as a shortening of his name but a reference to his wealth) works in food distribution and drives a shiny car. Several others have substantially less glamorous jobs.  All but two players are from that little Oaxacan town.

One of those two players is my brother, the other is his friend Tristan, who also played Varsity baseball in High School. How my brother ended up on the team I’m still not sure, but I do know that he’s thoroughly enjoyed his time there. My brother doesn’t drink on the sidelines like many of the rest of the players, and he doesn’t speak any but the most basic and the most profane Spanish. He’s the only player on the team who doesn’t speak any, many players are monolingual Spanish speakers, a couple speak Spanish and an indigenous language of Oaxaca, a majority have least some English. But despite these fundamental differences, and the fact that he grew up in Venice, (about as far, in all of its incarnations from hippie to hipster, culturally as it is possible to be from a small Oaxacan village) Preston has become a full part of the team. 

My brother’s time with the Diablos has been eventful, the team has been successful and is eyeing promotion to the next division. Some time ago, I went to one of their games, at my brother's invitation. It was the most fun I’ve had at the ballpark since Juan Pierre came in for Manny the night I had my JuanPierreWood shirt on at Dodger Stadium.  There is nothing like a beautiful spring day in a Los Angeles park, and to have it helped along by a baseball game is only the better.

Route 6: Jackson Park Express

I have wanted for some time to describe the strangest thing that ever happened on the same CTA vehicle I was on. This is that story.

University of Chicago students often take the 6 north, to get to Downtown. It doesn't require a transfer at the train station on Garfield, and can be faster, depending on traffic and train speeds. I didn't know this until the third quarter I was at the university. Or rather, I knew it, but I hadn't internalized the 6 as going anywhere other than south. I took it every other day to the Sullivan House community center, (76th and South Shore Drive) where I taught Gaelic Football, Chicago Softball and basic reading to a group of 12 or so children.

On the last beautiful day of Fall, I had brought my Mock Trial work with me to do on the bus. In a preview of what would become my specialty, I was cross-examining a scientific expert, and I had brought his report to pore over on my commute.

The huge bendy bus rolled up to the intersection of 55th and Hyde Park Boulevard, and I got on, and sat down in the first row of rear seats. There were some open seats behind me, but the light comes in nicely in that first rear row, and yellow bar atop the divider between the back and the rear door is a place to comfortably rest the knees and lean back while reading. I was very pleased with my good fortune as I remade the acquaintance of Doctor Loren Charney, the witness I'd be examining.

The bus driver was good that day, no abrupt starts or stops, the potholes that showcase the neglect of the South Side skillfully avoided. Surprisingly few people got on. At 66th Street, right before the bus turns left toward the Lake again, a man got on who I didn't recognize. Because I had been commuting on this route for some time, I thought I knew most of the commuters, but this guy was fundamentally different.

He was wearing a thin leather jacket over purple hospital scrubs with some sort of official logo on them. He was about 6 foot 6, African-American, and with extremely strange hair. It was as if he'd taken all the hair on his head, straightened it with all the product required to supply the cast of Mad Men, and then curled it up into little inch-wide mini-waves scattered at random across his head. A thick silver chain, the kind that was extremely popular among late-90's rappers and sk8trboiz, hung from his belt.

He came into the bus and sat down across the aisle from me, and one row behind. I returned to reading, but not before I noticed his fur-lined jet-black combat boots, which stuck out to me for their seeming incongruence with his scrubs. I'm not sure why that was what stuck out to me about his wardrobe, but they tell me people notice strange things, and I'm inclined to believe them.

Some 5 minutes later, the bus was filled with the sound of the famous Busta Rhymes hit Arab Money. I turned to see its source, and my bescrubbed friend was throwing himself a one-man dance party in the back of the number 6. He danced for about 20 seconds, and then snapped himself out of his reverie and answered his phone, stopping Busta Rhymes in his tracks. "Whaddup, dawg?" he bellowed.

There was silence in the back of the bus, the grandmother with her groceries behind me was also looking at our fellow rider. He was nodding his head sadly. Then he bellowed again.

"Ya, I came in, walked in, and there he was, fucking a dead body."

The grandmother behind me lost her hold on her grocery bag. I had turned in my seat enough to catch it, and while I was stabilizing it for her, the man spoke a third time.

"Ya, I came in, and I had laid the lady out on the table, and he was there, and I left, but I had to come back and get something an there he was, banging her." Apparently my stare and the grandmother's combined were enough to cool his language, but certainly not his volume, nor the graphic descriptions he gave as the bus made its way southward.

"And I told him to stop, that he was a disgusting effed-up pervert," he said, still under the sway of the grandmother, "and he said he liked it when they were still kind of warm. I told him I was gonna go get our boss, that he'd have to have it out with him, and he begged me not to."

At this point, the grandmother crossed herself.

"I told him 'Naw, dude, you'se one effed up mothereffer' and he said no, I had seen it wrong, it wasn't like that, and I said to tell it to our boss. I went up and got him and we came back in and he was doin' it again!"

Thankfully for her, the grandmother got off here, but I still had some distance to go. The man's detailed description of the threats he had received for ratting on the perpetrator were sad, but not surprising. The code of silence in Chicago is strong.

I got off the bus that day, and I went to work with the kids, and I think they sensed some terror in me, I really do. Something like that sticks with a person, even if it's only half a conversation, on a bus. I wish I could have known how the case turned out, just to get some closure. I hope the man who saw it was able to keep working in peace. I hope the guilty man went to jail. But most of all, I hope never to die in Chicago, just in case.