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| Mexican League champion Monclova Acereros |
Monclova's Erick Aybar socked a three-run homer in the bottom of the fifth inning and stroked a go-ahead RBI double one frame later as the Acereros went on to beat Yucatan, 9-5, last Wednesday at home in Game Seven of the Serie del Rey, giving the Steelers their first Mexican League pennant after debuting in the LMB in 1974. The two teams came into Monclova with Yucatan holding a 3-games-to-2 lead in the series, but the Acereros responded with a pair of wins at a sold-out Estadio Monclova to take the flag from the grasp of a Leones team looking for their second title in three seasons. Monclova had to win three consecutive Game Sevens versus Monterrey, Tijuana and finally Yucatan over 21 playoff contests in order for owner Gerardo Benavides two bring a title to his hometown team, which was formed by his grandfather 45 years ago.
The Acereros had pulled even with Yucatan at three wins apiece by virtue of their 6-2 Game Six win last Tuesday night. Bruce Maxwell grounded a single to left to score Noah Perio in the bottom of the first to give Monclova an early 1-0 lead that held up until the top of the fifth, when Walter Ibarra's RBI single tied it up and a Jorge Flores sacrifice fly to center plated Xavier Scruggs with Yucatan's go-ahead run. Perio tied the contest back up with a solo homer off Leones starter Yoanner Negrin in the bottom of the fifth and Francisco Peguero's three-run bomb against reliever Manny Parra in the seventh put Monclova ahead for good. Alex Mejia's run-scoring safety in the eighth added an insurance run as former Detroit middleman Al Albuquerque came out of the bullpen to toss 1.2 scoreless innings with three strikeouts for the win. Acereros starter Spencer Jones lasted one out into the fifth inning, giving up two runs on four hits with five strikeouts in a decent pitching battle with Negrin. The 2016 Pitcher of the Year went six entradas on 107 pitches and allowed a pair of runs on five hits before Leones manager Geronimo Gil replaced him with Parra, a move that boomeranged with Peguero's longball. Aybar and Mejia each had two hits for the winners while Perio scored three times. Ibarra and Scruggs had two singles apiece for Yucatan.
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| Monclova's Serie del Rey MVP Noah Perio |
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| Monclova manager Pat Listach |
Besides Benavides, Monclova manager Pat Listach received a measure of vindication when his team copped the pennant. After a playing career that saw him win the 1992 American League Rookie of the Year award with Milwaukee en route to a six-year MLB stint, the Arizona State grad coached in the majors with the Nationals, Cubs and Astros before managing the Mariners' AAA Tacoma affiliate for four seasons before he was let go following the 2018 season. Listach was hired in Monclova on July 1 to replace the fired Pedro Mere, a curious move because Mere had the Acereros at 44-25 overall at the time. Listach went 31-20 over the rest of the regular season and we all know how the playoffs went for him. Benavides has shown a proclivity for hiring former Major League players as manager (including one, Wally Backman, who could not speak Spanish, a helpful skill in Mexico). This move worked out fine, but Listach should savor the off-season as much as he can because no manager's job in Mexico is ever safe, even on the heels of a championship season.
PROCESCO's PEREYRA: 48-YEAR-OLD P DIAZ A NATURAL SURVIVOR
When Durango Generales pitcher Rafael Diaz entered a 2-2 game in the bottom of the tenth inning on the road against his former Tijuana Toros teammates on April 6, it was the first game of his 22nd season pitching in the Mexican League. And a game he'd likely love to forget, as the 48-year-old righthander allowed a walkoff homer to leadoff batter Logan Watkins. It would be that kind of year for Diaz, who was 0-2 with an 8.53 in 13 relief outings before being released May 25. He has not pitched since and the only man in LMB history with more than 100 career wins (102) and saves (106) faces an uncertain future in a sport that's meant a paycheck since 1990, when he went 4-3 and 3.02 for Montreal's Short-Season A Jamestown affiliate in the New York-Penn League. The four-time All-Star became a baseball survivor after life had prepared him for such a grinding existence, sometimes harshly.
There are many good baseball writers in Mexico. Fernando Ballesteros, David Braverman, Hector Bencomo, Salo Otero, Bambino Sedano and Dean of cronistas Enrique Kerlegend rank among the best and there are others. However, the most prosaic baseball writer south of the border may be Beatriz Pereyra of Mexico City's Proceso. Her August 25 feature on Diaz contains a frequent Angellesque elegance that even Google Translate couldn't butcher into submission. With as little editing and guessing done as possible (a few sentences couldn't be ungarbled), here is Pereyra's piece in its entirety:
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| Pitcher Rafael Diaz was with Durango iin 2019 |
MEXICO CITY (Proceso) - Rafael Díaz Adame was encouraged by three things to be a professional baseball player: his paternal grandmother, who raised him and insisted on taking him for three years to a baseball league in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; the Fernandomania that he witnessed as a teenager in the Dodgers stadium, every time his father's salary was enough for a ticket; and Nolan Ryan, the pitcher of five thousand 714 strikeouts and seven games without a hit or run in the majors.
As a starter or reliever pitcher, Díaz has spent 22 seasons in the Mexican Baseball League (LMB). He is now 49 years old. He is the oldest player on Mexican diamonds in the last decade.
Skin tanned by the sun shows a few wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. The odd gray hair looks out from his dark fine hair. His right shoulder is intact. Same elbow of the same arm. The 1,552 innings thrown in summer baseball did not dent him.
He reached 1,067 strikeouts with fastballs up to 97 miles per hour in his years of splendor that time diluted to 88. He has also lived on the curve and the change of speed, and from a slider he wanted to learn from Chito Rios, with much work that he went through, before he eventually invented it himself.
“I asked coaches and players how to throw and it didn't come out, the ball didn't move. I throw the curve with the knuckle inwards and break the wrist at the end of the pitch. I practiced the slider like I hold the curve, but I threw it as if it were a fastball. It began to move better and better. No one believed how I hold the ball because it is not the typical way for a slider. ”
Is that why his right arm is intact? Dr. Cuauhtémoc Reyes, a famous orthopedist in Mexican baseball, assured him that yes, the angle with which he throws him does not stress his joints.
U.S. abuse
Rafael Díaz takes care of his arm with the care of a collector. He just gets off the mound and already brings his five-pound dumbbells: He does two sets of five repetitions with side and front lifts lying face down on the massage bed. He must strengthen shoulder and elbow. Then a bag of ground ice is placed, but not for more than 20 minutes. It’s been the same ritual for 31 years.
The rest of his body receives a similar treatment: He sleeps between seven and nine hours a night, gets up very early, eats protein and carbohydrates, zero sweet drinks, only drinks water. His physical condition is envied by rookie players.
“If a team is still interested in my services, I will continue to compete,” says Diaz. “When I see that I can no longer pitch because my performance drops or my arm can no longer work, it will be the time to say goodbye. I have had my bad games. I know myself, I know how I am physically and mentally and I try to show coaches and managers that I can still compete. ”
On May 22 he was deactivated from the Durango Generals' roster, the fifth team he has played with in the LMB. A very high 8.53 ERA with two games lost in 12 and two-thirds innings took him away from a baseball field where he had been uninterrupted for four decades.
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| Diaz pitching for Tijuana Toros |
But Rafael Díaz not only has the steel physique, his will is indestructible. Only in this way is it explained how a little boy who barely walked could grow up without a father, because he abandoned him. Only then is it explained that a child can also resist the abandonment of his mother, surrendered by poverty, to leave him together with his little brother Jorge in the hands of his paternal grandmother. Only in this way can one explain how a person can find comfort in the wastelands of a gray city of Juarez and have the encouragement to play with bats and balls as if nothing bad happened.
His grandmother did not delay in taking her grandchildren to the children's league when the children asked her to. Rafael, nine years old, did not understand the rules, but he played by pure instinct because the baseball comes from the blood of the maternal uncle, Alfredo, who wore the Chihuahua Dorados uniform.
In the summer of 1982, Rafael's father returned to Ciudad Juarez for his kids, putting them in a van under the back seat. The three crossed through the San Ysidro checkpoint in Tijuana until reaching East Los Angeles, the Hispanic neighborhood - populated mostly by Mexicans - where Mr. Díaz was already established for several years. In a house with only one room, perhaps about 40 square meters (or 431 square feet), Diaz lived with the father's new wife, her three children and little Alice, Rafael's half-sister.
The senior Diaz made a living as a furniture assembler. Despite the shortcomings, there was always a little money to go to Dodger Stadium to see Fernando Valenzuela, the winner of the Cy Young Trophy and Rookie of the Year in 1981, who threw complete games and dominated his rivals with his indecipherable pitches.
Nothing more inspiring than seeing a dark Sonoran, the migrant countryman, conquering American territory. Rivers of Latinos turned to the stadium and the Anglo-Saxons also surrendered to El Toro de Etchohuaquila. The pride of being Mexican swelled in Diaz's chest.
Rafael does not forget that his first major league game was the Dodgers against the Houston Astros, a starters duel between Valenzuela and Nolan Ryan. The speed of the Texan's fastball alerted Rafa's senses. He dreamed awake to be like him.
On the fields of the Los Angeles Belvedere League, he spent his teenage afternoons. Thanks to Fernandomania, baseball grew tremendously among the Hispanic community. Rafa did not speak English. In high school, Mexican Americans bullied him.
“They called me Indian, illegal. I was frustrated because sometimes I didn't understand what they were saying, but I knew they insulted me,” Diaz recalls. “They threw my food on my back, my athletic teammates didn't even talk to me and they hid my uniform. I had no friends. I became very fierce because it never left me. The ones that bothered me were the Mexican Americans, unfortunately. Everyone who came from Mexico and did not speak English was caught up.”
And if at school the conditions were unbearable, in their neighborhood they were somewhat worse. Díaz grew up surrounded by gangs. It was the time of the power struggle between Mexicans and Salvadorans. The Mara Salvatrucha reigned.
Afterwards, the elder Díaz's marriage dissolved. The boys and their father moved to Bell, just outside Los Angeles. It's another violent and insecure Hispanic neighborhood, where gang members also wanted to recruit Diaz, but they couldn't.
Rafael enrolled in high school, where he became an athlete. His height and speed served him for baseball, but coach Bob Morony took him out of class for not catching balls with both hands.
“I had to wait until my third year of high school to play baseball. I went with a friend to see if we’d stay on the school team. Now I did grab the ball with both hands in left field and I threw it to second base. The coach was impressed and asked me: 'What's your name? Why didn't you play? 'Because you ran me off,' I told him. He laughed and said: 'Tomorrow you come…' That's how I stayed on the team.”
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| Diaz is only LMBer with 100 wins and 100 saves |
Rafael Díaz's talent put him on the radar of the Montreal Expos. With 6-foot height, 205 pounds and a right arm touched by the finger of God, he was about to graduate from high school. Talent hunters followed prospects like honey bees.
The famous scout Jethro McIntyre phoned the Diaz house. Rafa didn't even know what a scout was. That is why he did not understand why there were some gentlemen in the stands who pointed a radar gun at the games.
Diaz recounts that McIntyre called and said: “‘We got you in a draft round and we want to talk to your parents to sign you’. I said: ‘Oh, yes, thanks,’ and I hung up. My dad asked me who it was and I told him that, well, Mr. McIntyre, because I was signed by the Montreal Expos. I just knew the Dodgers, the Giants and the Angels, the teams in California. Who knew what the Expos and the draft were? My dad didn't know either and he said: ‘Oh, well.’
“McIntyre called again, went to the house and explained. We didn't have money for me to go to college, my future was to work or sign with the Expos. They gave me a 20 thousand dollar bonus and my dad opened his eyes. ”
Facing his idol
It was 1989 when Diaz arrived at the Rookie League in Bradenton, Florida, where the Montreal Expos shared a complex, with stadium and dormitories, with the Atlanta Braves and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
As a player in formation in the Minor Leagues, Díaz earned around $500 a month for those years. He traveled in second-level trucks, slept in the worst motels and ate where he could. In Bradenton he shared a bedroom with nine other young players.
“That year was super bad for me and there I said I no longer do it,” remembers Diaz. “I was in Triple A and they sent me down to Double A. Better that I go now. The pitching coach told me to go home, think about it and make a decision. However, I changed my attitude and said to myself: ‘That it is not for me. Especially because of the place where I came from and for the things that have happened, I will continue to work and I will not give up. I started doing well and finished that year at Triple A. ”
For seven years Rafael Diaz stung stone, but the majors were not in his destination. In 1995 he became a free agent. During the winters he had been playing with Los Mochis in the Mexican Pacific League. Francisco “Chico” Rodríguez had become his friend and suggested playing in the LMB. He recommended Diaz to the Monterrey Sultanes, with whom he debuted in the 1996 campaign. In 2003, he was signed by the Saltillo Saraperos and stayed for 10 seasons pitching to the best catchers he’s had: Noé Muñoz and Jonathan Aceves.
Is he satisfied with his career? Diaz failed to reach the majors, but in Mexico he consolidated a career. “There are many better pitchers than me,” he replies. “What fills my heart is that they have noticed the way I gave myself. That makes me proud. I have tried to be an example of consistency. I don't know if I succeeded. I don't consider myself an idol, just a surrendered player.
“Look at an example: Fernando Valenzuela. I was with him in Navojoa (with the Mayos). It was my second year in the Pacific League. I would be about 19 years old. Out of nowhere on the bus, the man got up and said: 'I will leave it for you'. And me: ‘Why, what did I do to you?’ 'You, pochito,' he told me. He thought I was a little pocho because I spoke English. You know, the Mexican versus the pocho and vice versa. It has always been that way.
“I got up and said: 'I respect him, but I will defend myself.' The veterans told him to calm down because I had done nothing, to leave me alone. But Valenzuela insisted: 'No, no, worthless pocho.'
“And that's when I stopped having idols. I don't like to be considered an idol, nor do I consider myself. Admire the work of the players yes, but do not idolize. We all have negative things. ”
Valenzuela did not cut like Rafael Díaz's mother, but he broke his heart. The player tells this episode while wearing a Dodgers cap. “He was one of the reasons why I wanted to be a baseball player. The root was my grandmother, but I wanted to continue playing for him. In the children's leagues in Los Angeles, we wore the Dodgers uniform. I have never liked to be told a lot. I have told the journalists, the players and they don't understand it. They keep telling me a lot.”
Reunion
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| Next stop for Diaz: Salon de la Fama? |
He was seen again by his mother, Margarita Adame, 20 years after she left that room built with cardboard walls attached with Coca-Cola tacks and corks, heading to her grandmother's house. Pushed by the curiosity of his eldest son to meet his maternal grandmother, Diaz and his wife were encouraged to return to Ciudad Juarez. He walked the same streets in search of his mother.
The cardboard room no longer existed. He approached a woman to ask if she knew where to find Margarita. "Who is looking for her?" He asked. "I am Rafael, her son." She turned yellow. "I am your mother," she replied. And Rafa also turned yellow.
In her second marriage, Margarita Adame gave birth to Julio Daniel Frías, El Maleno, the star striker of the Ciudad Juarez Indio when football fever helped lower crime rates during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón.
When asked what is the best thing baseball has given him, Diaz answered, “Having seen my country. If it had not been for that reason I would not know about the people and their customs. In baseball I have cried and laughed. It has been my escape to my past, to what my life has been.”
Tears interrupt the story. They get stuck in the throat. Rafael Díaz swallows. “On the hill I forget everything. I have always been very explosive. Many people don't know what I've been through, they just know the player, but not the person. My baseball career has been very beautiful, but my personal life very difficult. I still carry my past. Until I break my past, I will not have peace.”
