Béisbol!

In the mid 1970's, my job gave me the opportunity to transfer from upstate New York to Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. That might sound somewhat regular to us living in the "oughts," but for me and my family it was an adventure. Although a Bronx boy by birth, a college graduate and working for a large pharmaceutical company, my trip to visit our manufacturing plant in Barceloneta, PR and look for housing was the first time I had been in an airplane. That first trip was an eye opener for me. Palm trees and sugar cane for as far as I (eye) could see. Tropical beaches and staying at a resort hotel nestled between golf courses and the Caribbean Sea, there was nothing not to like.

The initial drive out to our company's manufacturing plant at Barceloneta, seemed endless, with sugar cane growing on both sides of the small highway. When we reached the main road, there were small stores and businesses and even some sleepy towns. The landscape changed as we neared the plant. The sugar cane fields were now replaced by pineapple fields, or at least that was what I was told. I had no idea how pineapples grew and always wondered how they fit them into the cans. But lo and behold, in the middle of acres and acres of pineapples was the Winthrop Laboratories pharmaceutical plant.

A couple of months later on New Year's Day, the family was on an Eastern Airline jet headed for Dorado, Puerto Rico about half way between San Juan and Barceloneta. We rented a home in a golf community just outside of Dorado, a small town with very few stores and maybe one traffic light. Our belongings including Christmas gifts for our young daughters were coming by sea. They arrived about two months later primarily due to a port strike that affected the entire island. We had a week for sightseeing. In Puerto Rico many businesses close the week before Christmas and do not reopen until after Three King's Day, January 6^th. We visited El Yunque, Fajardo and San Juan. Brilliant sun filled days. For our first two months we only experienced rain overnight. We were in paradise.

Living was easy, as long as you could accept you were not in New York or Delaware, but in Puerto Rico. The water was good and plentiful (not always the case in the Caribbean), electricity worked (most of the time), telephone service was good and with a short car ride, shopping was OK. At the plant, the management team in place before I arrived had transformed local pineapple field workers and stay-at home moms to be stellar chemical and pharmaceutical workers. Things were great except for one small faùx-pas. In those two months before we left New York, I do not know how many people we told, "You have to come down and visit us." They all did! It was hard to explain to them that I had a job and needed to go to work each day.

I have done it again. This post is titled béisbol and I have not mentioned it once. Winthrop Laboratories had a softball team in the Arecibo Industrial League. We actually built our home field on the edge of our property – we had pineapples cultivated both inside and outside our property line fences. Just beyond our right field fence there were rows and rows of pineapples. Each year the two divisions of the Arecibo Industrial League held a ceremonial all star game. The game was held under the lights in Arecibo and drew quite a crowd. I was the sole "gringo" on the field. I felt quite honored. Baseball (béisbol) is quite respected in Puerto Rico. It is almost as popular as soccer (fùtbol) and dominos.

All aspects of the game are played to their fullest. During this game we had a thirty minute delay due to the pondit just being the pondit. Playing shortstop with a runner on first base, I moved to my left to field a low line drive. Rather than simply catching the ball and recording the out, I let the ball hit my open glove, picked the ball up after it hit the ground, stepped on second base for a force out and threw to first for a double play. This seemed like a good idea to me. Immediately there was a gaggle of base runners, managers, coaches, umpires and I suspect several spectators milling around second base arguing and gesturing in very rapid and animated español about what had just taken place and citing nonexistent rule books as well as moral and ethical codes. Does Abner Doubleday or a supreme being permit someone to purposely drop a fly ball to their or the team's singular advantage. After twenty minutes, it was decided that one should not be allowed to purposely drop the ball. They then spent the next ten minutes debating whether the drop was on purpose or just happened. Finally there was a philosophical discussion on how to distinguish when a ball was simply missed or maliciously dropped. This was all for a game that had no bearing on anything. [By the way, I believe the decision was correct. A fielder cannot intentionally drop a ball to gain advantage.]

Béisbol was fun in Puerto Rico. Even the arguments were entertaining and civil. We spent three very good years in Dorado and learned lessons being away from "home" that stayed with us the rest of our lives.