Who’s Your Vladdy?

 

It was Sunday morning, the last day of my volunteer visit, and we decided to go watch Los Traidores, the eclectic team of former minor leaguers, drunk jokesters, and evangelical sluggers who I sometimes play softball with. Before heading out to the game we were discussing perceptions of race in the D.R., a conversation which brought up controversial comments made by Torii Hunter in which he called out his Dominican teammate at the time, Vladimir Guerrero, as not being “black”, but being an “impostor”. From there we headed out to the game and low and behold I look in the visiting dugout and see … Vladimir Guerrero! “Is that Vladimir Guerrero? What’s he doing here in La Pared???” I ask one of the fans. He tells me that our coach Jonny and Vlad are both from Nizao and that I should go talk to Vlad. As the game was already underway, I figured I would wait until afterwards. This was probably the right decision, as even for an elite pelotero who only a few years ago had played in the World Series with the Texas Rangers, even this game in little old La Pared was important. At one point he came out of the dugout to argue with the local umpire keeping score with chalk on the wall that his team was up 23-11, not 22-11.

As he came up to bat, I commented to Emily, my volunteer visit, how much you would’ve had to pay to be watch Vlad hit from this close up in the states. Johan, the coach’s nephew and neighbor of mine in El Caliche, who also speaks English pondered the price of front row seats at a stadium in the U.S. before asking “How much? Like $5?”

 

Though not connecting for any moonshots Sunday, Vlad still held true to his roots swinging hard and at everything in sight. As Ron Darling once described Vladdy’s approach at the plate: “If it’s round and has got some stitching on it, he’s swinging.” Disappointingly, he was playing third base and thus didn’t show off his absolute cannon of an arm that led him to routinely lead the league in outfield assists with throws like these:

After the game the teams lined up to shake hands, which in and of itself was pretty cool to be high fiving Vlad on a baseball field. I asked my teammate Jhonatan if he could take a pic of us with his cell phone, to which he replies “With who? Oh, Vladdy?”

One of these guys is a 9 time all star, Former AL MVP, with 449 HR’s and a career .318 BA, but the other had 2 HR’s on the day including a grand slam, leading Victor’s wife to ask if they were going to sign him. Victor’s response “Mami, I’m too old. There’s a better chance of signing our son (who just learned to walk).”

From the field, part of Vladdy’s entourage packed up into a huuuuuge monster truck vehicle with “Vlad #27” on the back, (everyone on his team actually wore #27 for that matter) while Vladdy, some fans, and most of our team drove over to a nearby hill for lunch.  As is tradition, the home team is responsible for providing food and drink for the away team. We had some sort of greasy pork stew, as popular local merengue singer Muñeco entertained the crowd with the dirty jokes he is known for telling between his songs. Before heading out to the after-after party Vladdy grabbed back a half full bottle of Brugal from some lambon trying to mooch off of him and explained to Jonny how to get to the campo where they were going to hang out some more.

Having always preferred the city in the states, I definitely see the appeal of the campo in the D.R. The landscapes are beautiful, fruit and food is fresh and unprocessed, and in the case of big name peloteros you can escape all the crowds and people selfy-ing themselves with you.

Whiskey!

Hopefully we’ll play his team again in the future, as it was a fun day as a fan and would’ve be an honor and incredible experience to compete against one of the best RF’s of my childhood in Vladdy.