Cayasso never made it to the major leagues. In fact, he had only one professional at-bat, at age 50 as Nicaragua formed its first pro league in 1956. By then he was a coach. Yet, like at least several of his countrymen before Dennis Martinez made his big-league debut in 1976, he was “an uncrowned king” (to quote novelist Sergio Ramírez).1 In the opinion of Nicaraguan baseball historian Tito Rondón, “The two lost major-leaguers of the ’30s and ’40s were [José Ángel] ‘Chino’ Meléndez and Stanley Cayasso, according to legend (and, I believe, facts).”

That opinion was supported by Cuban pitcher Conrado Marrero, who (as of 2006) was one of the few men alive to have faced Cayasso. That year Marrero told Managua sportswriter Edgard Tijerino, “I am sure that Cayasso would have been a bright light in whatever league. He is the best Nicaraguan player that I have seen.”2 As is true of another Nicaraguan star of that era, Eduardo Green, if that seems faint praise, it shouldn’t.

Oliver Stanley Livingstone Cayasso Guerrero was born on September 17, 1906, in Bluefields. This town is the heart of Nicaragua’s English-influenced Atlantic coast. Its population is largely Afro-Caribbean, thanks to an influx of runaway slaves and free blacks from the British West Indies, Jamaica in particular. Stanley’s father was Wilfred Cayasso, known as “Captain” because he ran a commercial boat business, transporting passengers and cargo along the coast. His mother, Sofía Guerrero, had two boys and three girls. 3

The 2003 book Leyendas del Béisbol Caribeño Nicaragüense (Legends of Nicaraguan Caribbean Baseball) draws on an interview that local baseball writer Julio César Miranda conducted with Stanley’s brother George, who passed away at the age of 96 in 2004. It said, “Those who knew this exemplary family say that they were very religious, belonging to the Moravian Church, and the children were taught values like unity, respect and solidarity. They had some money, as Wilfred owned five boats. . .Four were locally built and the largest one was purchased in the United States.”

Stanley and George (also known as Jorge) both played baseball. Starting in the late 1880s, the Atlantic Coast population (costeños) forged a strong connection to the sport. Eduardo Green (born Edward; father of 1980s big-leaguer David Green) was also from Bluefields. Eventually, three of Nicaragua’s 14 major-leaguers — Albert Williams, Marvin Benard, and Devern Hansack — would come from there or other nearby spots on the coast. Jorge told Julio Miranda that he and Stanley loved to read the newspapers that arrived weekly (several old editions) from Managua. Together with their father, the lads promptly looked up the sports page, especially baseball. They “obsessed about being able someday to play against those clubs, Bóer, Managua, Granada, and San Fernando.”

In 1925, Stanley Cayasso jumped from youth ball to playing against men. According to Nicaraguan author Guillermo Segundo “Kaiser” Uriarte, he played with a team called Hound. Stanley stood 5’11” and weighed 170 pounds as a young adult, though as years went by, he would bulk up to around 200 pounds. He batted and threw left.

Wilfred Cayasso had a team called Nine Strong in Bluefields, which played in the local league against other teams called Acorn, Long Star, Yellow Rose, Zelaya, Titan, and Pirates. The Cayasso brothers and their friend Herbie Carter joined a team called “Navy.” They became the archrivals of Acorn — and the most storied club of the Atlantic Coast’s early baseball history.

In 1930, Navy took Wilfred Cayasso’s gasoline launch Elk to play a five-game friendly series in Puerto Limón, on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica. They made a couple of trips there, possibly the second one in 1931. Then in 1932, a landmark event in Nicaraguan baseball annals took place. The Elk brought the 28-man Navy squad, captained by Jorge, to the nation’s “Pacific” (i.e., western) region for a barnstorming tour. It was the second time that a team from the Atlantic Coast had made this expedition. Some 15 years earlier, another group — even featuring a half-Jamaican one-armed player — came to the Pacific. Little is known about that prior team, though.

The Elk headed south to San Juan del Norte (also known as Greytown), on the border with Costa Rica. It then went up the San Juan River — and its rapids — to Lake Nicaragua, finally docking at Granada. The team took the train to Managua, where the organizer of the tour, Francisco “Pancho” Olivares, awaited them, along with a reception committee and numerous fans. Also aboard was the Navy Jazz Band, which caused a sensation with its music.4 Many of the ballplayers — including Jorge, who played banjo and guitar — doubled as band members.5 On August 16, 1932, the band made its debut at the “Field del Retiro” ballpark, entertaining the fans attending the first game of the final series for the championship between Bóer and San Fernando. On the 20th, Navy traveled to León and beat the locals 8-4; the winning pitcher was Stanley in relief of Jorge. The Elk, meanwhile, received a special permit to work on the lake and earn the keep of the sailors and the boat.

The club had no actual military connection, but the players wore sailor caps to go with their standard baseball uniforms, as seen in a charming photo of the Cayasso brothers from Julio Miranda’s archives. “The cute sailor hats were obviously an advertising gimmick,” said Rondón. “A picture of a game shows Navy wearing normal baseball caps.” However, they did use the sailor hats on occasion to amuse the fans.

Navy was highly successful in the Pacific side. They were even accused of witchcraft and had a “black bat” burned, sprayed with holy water and buried — they still won. Finally, they played a championship series against Bóer. The foremost local historian, Jorge Eduardo Arellano, told the story in his 2007 book, El Béisbol en Nicaragua. After the first two games, the agent for Pan American Airways in Nicaragua, a former Army captain named Richard Price, flew to Bluefields on his own to bring back reinforcements for Navy. One was Allen Álvarez from the team Alert, whom many regard as the best costeño catcher ever. Another was Acorn’s Timothy Mena (born 1897), another longtime national star who had big-league talent.6 The two men were instrumental in Navy’s record of 14-6 with two ties over more than four months.7

It’s worth noting that another of the Navy players was Julián Benard, great-uncle of Marvin Benard, who played in the majors from 1995 to 2003.8 Author George Gmelch (who heard stories firsthand from Jorge Cayasso not long before his death) and Julio Miranda have also noted the ongoing importance of the Navy team on a national level. Gmelch wrote of the costeños’ “elegance, athleticism, and speed.” In early 1933 the Atlantic ballplayers realized the Pacific side was the big stage, and a number of them migrated west, changing the face of Nicaraguan baseball forever.

When Stanley Cayasso arrived in the Pacific in 1932, he was a centerfielder and pitcher. He played the 1933 season for Managua. Late in the year he joined the new “Big Khaki Machine” — the team called General Somoza, after National Guard director (and avid baseball fan) Anastasio Somoza García. Stanley played with this club from 1934 until it disbanded in 1938.

Five costeños became the first men ever from their region in the Nicaraguan national team in 1935. Along with the brothers Cayasso and Herbie Carter, they were John Williams (3B) and Culvert Newell (LF). They took part in the 1935 Central American Games in El Salvador. As a pitcher, Stanley Cayasso established a record by striking out 18 batters against the host nation’s team on March 31, 1935, at Flor Blanca Stadium in San Salvador. The Salvadorans’ manager was former Cincinnati Red Manuel Cueto, the first man associated with the major leagues to visit Nicaragua (1933). Tito Rondón said, “Because Cueto lobbied to exclude Nicaraguan ace Chino Meléndez from the games, Cayasso was overused and blew out his arm. He did not have time to be a frontline pitcher like Babe Ruth because he only played three seasons before he sacrificed his arm for his country.”

Three years later, the Nicaraguan national squad made an epic four-day journey by train, ferry (which caught fire and sank), and horseback through Costa Rica to Panama for the 1938 edition of the Central American Games. As Nicaraguan baseball historian Bayardo Cuadra told George Gmelch, the mini-odyssey formed a long-lasting esprit de corps.9

In 1939, Team Nicaragua took part in the second Amateur World Series (now known as the Baseball World Cup). The pinoleros went 3-3, finishing second behind undefeated Cuba. In its coverage of the deciding game, the New York Times wrote, “A home run, the first of the series, by stocky Cayasso, the Nicaraguans’ first baseman, accounted for the visitors’ lone run in the fourth inning.”10 The only other homer of the tournament was hit by pitcher-outfielder Jonathan Robinson, another of Nicaragua’s “lost major-leaguers” of the time. Robinson was born in 1911 in Puerto Limón. His father was Jamaican (as was Eduardo Green’s) and his mother was from San Juan del Norte. The Robinsons later moved to Bluefields.11

Cayasso remained a star of the national amateur team for years to come. Returning to Havana in 1940, Nicaragua (9-3) again finished second to Cuba. El Caballo de Hierro led all hitters with 19 base hits. He appeared in a total of 11 Amateur World Series from 1939 to 1953, winning another individual honor in 1947 when his 12 RBIs led the tournament. The only older player on the team was the ageless Timothy Mena, still pitching in the 1948 tournament at age 51 (he remained active as a pinch-hitter until 1955). In later life, Cayasso managed Nicaragua’s 1965 and 1969 entries.

Cayasso also participated in the 1950 Central American and Caribbean Games in Guatemala, where Sandy Amorós starred for Cuba. Against Costa Rica, Stanley tried to score from second on a short single; he was knocked unconscious for a while after crashing at home with the catcher. The Costa Ricans won 2-1 but Stanley was hailed as a fearless hero. At the Pan-American Games in Buenos Aires in 1951, Cayasso hit a memorable homer against the United States, represented by Wake Forest College. His three-run blow in the sixth inning provided a necessary cushion as Nicaragua hung on to win, 9-8.12 The 44-year-old finished the tourney batting 16-for-32 with two homers.13

Cayasso’s career at home was even more significant. After the General Somoza team was disbanded — by the dictator himself, who wanted the teams more evenly matched — he was sent to the team representing Carazo, the department where Somoza was born. He pitched for Carazo a little in 1940, and possibly in 1941, though his days on the mound had effectively ended in 1935. The team’s star hurlers were Chino Meléndez and Jonathan Robinson.

In 1941, the Atlantic champions, Zelaya, faced Bóer for the national title. Since Zelaya was the name of the country’s large Atlantic department, in effect this may have been a costeño all-star squad; their best players were already in the Pacific. Stanley reinforced Zelaya; after the series, Eduardo Green, then a shortstop, stayed on in the nation’s capital.14 They joined a team called Olímpico.

Then, in 1942, Cayasso and Green became part of the club that would become the nation’s equivalent of the Yankees: Cinco Estrellas.15 The Nicaraguan National Guard chose the name for Somoza, the nation’s only five-star general. Tito Rondón pointed out something else that sounds logical, though he acknowledged it as hearsay. “I don’t think Olímpico changed names. The new team signed a bunch of people and raided all the best players from Olímpico, making it disappear.”

Cayasso thereafter remained associated with Cinco Estrellas, which won nine national amateur championships in 11 years from 1944 to 1954. He made his debut as the team’s manager in 1944 and was skipper throughout this run of dominance. The players got paid for their service in the army. Fans called them the Presidential Guard.16 Said Rondón, “If you had good seasons, you advanced in grade so that your pay increased, which is why Cayasso made lieutenant.”

As a player, Stanley’s main position remained center field until 1945. He was Terry Moore’s opposite number when the Cardinal became the first active big-leaguer to visit Nicaragua in 1943.17 He then moved to first base. “When he was young, no doubt he was a capable fielder and maybe more,” stated Tito Rondón. “But his heyday was from 1939 to 1953, when he was 33 to 47 years old. By then Cayasso’s fielding was poor.

“When I was growing up, his legend was huge, and I also believed the fielding part. Until one day in about 1976, talking to an old pitcher, I happened to mention that. He looked at me like I was from Mars. ‘Cayasso, a good fielder? Hah! He cost me an international game! A sorry foul ball near the bag and he couldn’t catch it! And then they lit me up…’

“Alberto Miranda, who was a good-fielding first baseman in the ’40s, told me a funny story. ‘One time I made the national team, and as usual Cayasso was named captain. When we were at the hotel at the city where the competition was going to be held, he started to call every player, one by one, to his room for a talk. When my turn came, I entered and said, ‘Good evening, how may I help you?’ He answered, ‘Sit down, we are going to discuss your fielding.’ I said, ‘What? You, discuss fielding with me? You don’t field half as good as me. I thought you were going to give me hitting tips! Good night!’ And I left. And he did not discipline me because he knew I was telling the truth.’”

Rondón added, “Cayasso did not smoke or drink and was very disciplined, so Eduardo Green called him occasionally ‘La Cayassa,’ a woman. Sort of like Lady Baldwin [the 19th-century U.S. player who did not smoke, drink, or curse either].”

Rondón offered yet another memory of the times. “The anti-Somoza daily La Prensa always tried to inflame opposition against the dictatorship from baseball fans by disparaging Cayasso and all of Cinco Estrellas. Then, when Cayasso became part of the national team for some international competition, he would become a hero again.”

By the time Jackie Robinson broke the major leagues’ color barrier in 1947, the Afro-Nicaraguan Cayasso was past 40. The Negro Leagues were little known in Nicaragua, but Puerto Rico and Mexico could have been options when he was younger. Yet he had always refused to turn pro because he felt it was his duty to represent his homeland in international competition.

Cayasso was removed as manager of Cinco Estrellas under unfair circumstances, as Tito Rondón recounted. “Inaugural day of the first pro season was Saturday, March 10, 1956, and Cinco Estrellas debuted the next day. On April 14, the Tigres, under Cayasso, were in first place with an 8-4 record. Cuban Emilio Cabrera landed in Managua, presumably on that day (the newspaper is dated the 15th). Many fans protested the change in managers. The truth was, the owners were cowed by some imported players, as the four Nicaraguan managers were doing a decent job but were fired in order to install imports. The owners thought the star players would rebel at having to serve under people with no experience in tougher leagues.”

Until the first Nicaraguan pro era ended in February 1967, Cayasso loyally remained a fixture as coach with Cinco Estrellas.18 Later in 1956, he got his only pro at-bat. “Coaches and managers were allowed to play in those days,” said Rondón. “One time the Tigres had a runner on third with less than two outs in a close game, and Cayasso put himself in to pinch hit. He grounded to second and the second baseman committed an error, and he was credited with an RBI.” (Apparently the scorer ruled that the runner would have crossed the plate anyway.)

Especially after it joined Organized Baseball in 1957, the Nicaraguan league attracted much talent from the U.S. and Cuba, among other places. Cayasso served under Johnny Pesky, who came down to manage Cinco Estrellas in the winter of 1959-60. He was the American’s interpreter; Pesky recalled him as “a very fine man” in 2004.19 Tito Rondón also remembered how that season, Stanley “put on a show during batting practice that amazed everyone!” In the last season of the first pro era, 1966-67, the manager was a Cuban, Julio “Jiquí” Moreno. Cinco Estrellas won the championship just before a brief but bloody revolt broke out.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cayasso also managed First Division amateur teams, including Cabo Mejía, which traveled to Havana in 1958.20 Three years after the first pro league folded, in 1970, Nicaraguan baseball reorganized in the form of a high-level amateur league. Cinco Estrellas re-emerged, and it’s little surprise that Cayasso rejoined the team as coach. Starting in 1973, Stanley then managed in Matagalpa, which had joined the amateur league. He continued to coach that team in the 1980s, training ballplayers from the farming leagues around the area, and worked with Little League teams there. Outside of baseball, Stanley became an electrician. Even while managing the minor teams, he worked at this craft until an electric fan badly injured his fingers, at which point he retired.

Cayasso was married twice. He and his first wife, Elena Brooks, had three sons: Rodney (who passed away c. 2004 at the age of 79), Livingston, and Stanley. The latter two were aged 83 and 81 as of 2010. One time Livingston won a dance contest; his father remarked, “he won’t be a ballplayer, he is going to become a ballerina.” Livingston actually played a little; he was a very fast runner but never learned to hit. He was with Cinco Estrellas briefly and that was it. Stanley Sr. and his second wife, Guadalupe Castellano (who died in 1978), had three daughters: Francis, Carolina, and Martha. This union apparently began sometime in the 1940s.

In 1984, Nicaragua issued a series of seven postage stamps commemorating baseball stars. The highest denomination went not to Babe Ruth or Roberto Clemente, but to Stanley Cayasso.21 Unlike in the United States, one does not have to be deceased to receive this honor in Nicaragua — Cayasso died of natural causes two years later, on August 5, 1986.22 He had also been a diabetic in later life.

The national hero received the biggest funeral honors of any sporting figure in his country’s history. In the decree it issued to observe Cayasso’s death, the government recognized his importance and said, “Despite his advanced age, he continued to impart his knowledge and experience.”

In April 1986, Cayasso and two other revered old-timers, catcher Julio “Canana” Sandoval and pitcher Francisco “Zurdo” Davila, had received the Orden Eduardo Green Sinclair from President Daniel Ortega. The Nicaraguan government had established this award for sporting excellence in 1982, two years after the death of Eduardo Green. Posthumously, Stanley received credit for helping to develop the young hitters on the team of Productores de la UNAG, which made the First Division national semifinals in 1988-89.

In 1987, Managua held the first annual Stanley Cayasso Memorial Cup tournament, an international event that continued for at least three years (it appears to have ceased after the Sandinistas lost the national elections of 1990).23 One of Nicaragua’s youth leagues is also named for him, and even as of 2010, the Nicaraguan community of New York plays in a Stanley Cayasso softball league. The national stadium in Managua, which has carried the name of Dennis Martínez since 1998, honors its earlier local legend with the Stanley Cayasso room.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Bayardo Cuadra and Julio César Miranda for their prior research and for providing additional detail about Stanley Cayasso’s life and family. In November 2010, Julio César Miranda interviewed Stanley Cayasso Brooks and Bayardo Cuadra interviewed Livingston Cayasso Brooks and Carolina Cayasso Castellano. Continued thanks to Carlos Mena and José Daniel López.

Sources

Genet, Manuel and Edmundo Quintanilla Mendieta, Leyendas del Béisbol Caribeño Nicaragüense. Managua, Nicaragua: 2003.

Arellano, Jorge Eduardo. El Béisbol en Nicaragua. Managua: Academía de Geografía e Historia de Nicaragua, 2007.

Uriarte, Guillermo Segundo. El Baseball y Su Historia. Managua, Nicaragua: self-published, 1960.

Bjarkman, Peter C. A History of Cuban Baseball. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.: 2007.

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Photo Credits

Cayasso as coach, late 1950s: Courtesy of Tito Rondón collection

Cayasso brothers with Navy: Courtesy of Julio César Miranda collection

Notes

1 Ramírez, Sergio. To Bury Our Fathers. First English translation published in London, England: Readers International, 1985. Originally published as ¿Te dió miedo la sangre? Managua, Nicaragua: Editorial Argos Vergara, 1977.

Sources

http://telicamission.wordpress.com

www.steeplepeople.org

www.baseball-reference.com

Photo Credits

Courtesy of the Chévez family and Trading Card Database

This man came from a baseball bloodline. His father, Edward Green Sinclair, was one of the best Nicaraguan ballplayers of his era — or ever. Eduardo, as everyone called him, was an Afro-Caribbean from Bluefields on the nation’s English-influenced Atlantic coast. La Gacela Negra — The Black Gazelle — played from the early 1940s through the early 1960s. He starred in the outfield for the Cinco Estrellas club of Managua (the nine-time national champion from 1944 to 1954) and for the national amateur team. In order to understand David better, one should know the elder Green’s story too.

David Alejandro Green, who was named for his paternal grandfather, was one of five boys and five girls born to Eduardo’s wife, Bertha Casaya. Bertha was a mestiza (of Indian and Spanish descent) from Managua. Although the main language spoken in Bluefields, even today, is an English-based Creole, the Green household spoke mostly Spanish. Nicaraguan journalist and broadcaster Tito Rondón recalled that Eduardo, even though his given name was English, “named his children in Spanish. He insisted his son was called Dah-VEED.”

David was by no means the only athlete in the family. Sisters Isabel and Carlota were two of the finest women’s basketball players in Nicaraguan history. His three other sisters were Sonia, Milena, and Geovanna; his four brothers were Eduardo, Alfredo, Leonardo, and Enrique. Eduardo Jr. also played baseball but was not a true prospect, as Tito Rondón remembered. “Eduardo had the figure and the mechanics, he just couldn’t hit a lick, so in uniform he impressed everyone except those who saw him play a couple of real games!”

Baseball references give David’s year of birth as 1960, but according to Rondón, it was 1959.2 In 2009, Rondón stated, “He took one year off when he signed. He was a member of Nicaragua’s national team in 1978, so he had to produce his birth certificate to get his passport to travel and register at the event [the 25th Amateur World Series, held in Italy]. I was there.”

During Green’s playing career, there was controversy about his true age. In 1985, superscout Howie Haak, who covered all of Latin America for the Pittsburgh Pirates, said he had first seen David in 1973. Haak said, “He was 19, I checked with his mother.”3 If Green had been born as early as Haak suggested, though, he would probably have qualified for the national teams that played in the Amateur World Series from 1972 to 1974. Tony Chévez, who pitched for the Baltimore Orioles in 1977, was on the ’72 and ’73 squads. He stated in 2009 that Green was not there.

Tito Rondón noted of Haak’s story, “That was probably older brother Eduardo, who was the apple of his father’s eye, and who was supposed to carry on the family tradition.” Tony Chévez’s memory supports this: Eduardo Jr. was not on the national team either, but he was an opponent in the Nicaraguan amateur league, playing for his father’s old team, Cinco Estrellas. Rondón continued, “He was light years away from being a regular on his team, never mind the national team (not even 100 hits lifetime). But his dad was obsessed with his being a star ballplayer. It took him a while to realize David was the real prospect.”

While he was a good soccer player, David had not bloomed in baseball as an adolescent, Rondón also recalled. “In 1973, my last year as a young man playing ball, he was in a game in the Centroamerica High ballfield, which my team was scheduled to use next, so we watched the last few innings. He was a stick of a kid, 14 or so, a terrible player. We were curious because we knew who his dad was.”

Young David’s first ballclub at home was UCA Perfecta in the Hope and Reconstruction League (one of two the nation had from 1973 to 1977, following a split in the amateur ranks). He served as batboy around 1975. Eduardo Green Sr. was an assistant coach. This team was affiliated with Universidad Centroamericana in Managua; however, it competed at the First Division level, not college baseball. La Perfecta, a maker of pasteurized milk and other products, sponsored the club for a year.

Eduardo Sr. was also known as Cabo, or corporal. That was his army rank, and it informed his coaching. Tito Rondón observed, “Once he did [recognize David’s ability], he started teaching the younger Green but very harshly. I watched a couple of times as Cabo pitched batting practice for UCA. At [nearly] 60 he still had a great arm. After he finished that he would throw to his 15-year-old son, officially a batboy, and he would throw hard, around 80 mph. David would swing and miss most pitches, and his father would scream at him in his English-accented Spanish, ‘Hit it, maricón, concentrate, bat like a man not a girl,’ etc. Someone once said he was frustrated by Eduardo’s failure and he took it out on the kid.”

By the time he was 16, in 1976, David had stepped up from batboy with UCA. He saw relatively little action, though — the team already had a speedy man in center field named Jimmy Bolaños, whose father Nicolás had played on the national team with Eduardo Green in the 1950s. Jimmy stole 51 bases in 1977, then a Nicaraguan record.

Tito Rondón said, “David was too young to play regularly for UCA; if I recall correctly he had few at-bats in 1976 and did not hit. Then in 1977 he started to do better, but was not earthshaking. But everybody could see his talent, and all teams in Nicaragua wanted him for 1978. When the two warring leagues united, UCA disbanded and Búfalos-Bóer snapped him up. He had played a lot in 1977, but he was not ready to play center. Jimmy Bolaños was fast and very smart (the St. Louis Browns scouted his dad in the late 1940s), but not a great hitter. David was just not ready yet.”

Another mark of Green’s athleticism was how, with little training, he represented his country in track and field in 1977. At the Central American Games in El Salvador, he set a national record (since surpassed) with a long jump of 7.12 meters (23 feet, 4 1/4 inches).4 5 This mark was in line with the era’s best Olympic decathletes.6

As Rondón noted, Nicaragua’s amateur leagues reconciled in 1978, and David joined Bóer, the nation’s longest-running baseball club. The team has gone by various names over the years, but at that time they were called the Búfalos. The young man blossomed, hitting .398 in 392 at-bats, with 20 homers and 70 RBIs.7 He had a 30-game hitting streak, a Nicaraguan record that would last until 1999,8 and his 156 hits are still a single-season high.9

Tito Rondón offers yet another firsthand recollection of Green’s development. “Cabo and I were talking once in 1978, while David was hitting the tar out of the ball for Búfalos-Bóer and running, throwing and fielding like a demon. Eduardo (at that time the best outfielder ever in Nicaraguan baseball history) said to me, very intently, very seriously, ‘David will hit more than me, maybe throw harder than me, he will have more power than me, he might even field better than me, but in one thing he will always lag behind me. He will never be as fast running the bases as I was.’ It turned out to be a very accurate assessment.”

From July 6 through July 22, 1978, the Central American and Caribbean Games took place in Medellín, Colombia. Green was part of the Nicaraguan team that won the silver medal behind Cuba. Later that summer, he also played center field for the national squad at the 25 th Amateur World Series in Italy. He batted .310 as Nicaragua went 5-5.

Various major-league organizations had been observing. The Houston Astros had a Nicaraguan bird dog named René Cárdenas (also a journalist and pioneering Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S.), who asked Eduardo Green for dibs on his son. Cárdenas then recommended David, only to find out later that Houston didn’t believe the young man had what it took.10 “I liked him,” said Scipio Spinks, the Astros’ junior scout on the case, “but Walt Matthews, the senior scout, didn’t think he was good enough to sign.”

Ralph Ávila of the Dodgers recalled that he wasn’t interested because his organization already had five or six good young outfielders.11 Tito Rondón said, “I remember the Phillies’ Rubén Amaro telling me that he had offered Eduardo $27,000 [for David to sign], but $7,000 deferred until he reached the majors.”

The team that wound up signing Green was the Milwaukee Brewers. The tandem of Julio Blanco Herrera (regional scout) and Ray Poitevint (scouting director) was responsible. Previously they had been a team with the Baltimore Orioles, signing Nicaraguans Dennis Martínez and Tony Chévez in 1973. Blanco Herrera, a Cuban, knew Manolo de la Reguera, the Cuban broadcaster who dubbed Eduardo La Gacela Negra. 12 There’s a good chance that he saw Cabo play.

As Blanco Herrera and Poitevint worked, the Sandinista revolution against Anastasio Somoza Debayle was in full swing. The final throes were a year away, but the unrest was still severe. Tito Rondón recalls hearing, “Julio Blanco Herrera showed up at El Cabo’s house during the fighting in Managua in June of 1978 and signed ‘Greencito’ for $20,000, when he pulled out of his pockets ten 100-dollar bills and offered it as an advance. I remember being desperate for cash in those days; the banks were closed, so was your workplace, there was no electricity and the only way to get food was by paying cash.”

In the early ’80s, Poitevint said, “David Green was 15 years old when I first saw him [or so he believed — the year was 1976]. He was extremely gifted, a kid playing in a league with guys 25 to 30, guys who would’ve made a pretty decent Double A club. Carlos García told us about him.”13 García was one of the great organizers in Nicaraguan baseball history. It was he who established the amateur league in 1970 after the local pro winter league went defunct in 1967.

Poitevint added, “David Green is without a doubt the most talented prospect — physically and mentally — I have been associated with in the twenty-two years I’ve been involved in scouting. . .David Green has Willie Mays’s physical abilities and Pete Rose’s mental abilities.”14 As for the second half of that statement, unfortunately David would not always act in his own best interest.

The Brewers signed Green officially on September 24, 1978. One item in his original contract was a three-month course in English at an Arizona college. “When I first got here, it was weird,” David recalled in 1981. “I didn’t know nobody. Nobody knew me. It was tough when I’d get hungry and I’d go to a restaurant and couldn’t order anything.”15

The following year, he started with Stockton in the California League, a “high A” classification. He held his own after a slow start, batting .262 with 8 homers and 70 RBIs. After going to the Arizona Instructional League, he was promoted to Double A for the 1980 season. That February, The Sporting News — talking to a very bullish Ray Poitevint — already tabbed Green as Milwaukee’s best prospect. The article also described him as just 18 years old.16

Playing in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Green led the Eastern League with 19 triples (against only 13 doubles; .291-8-67 overall). He was named to the EL All-Star team. He also hit a key homer in the first round of the playoffs as the Millers became league champions. Mourning soon followed, however, as Eduardo Green passed away after a series of heart attacks on September 13. “I only want to see him wear a big-league uniform,” said Cabo when David signed. He missed that dream by a little less than a year.17

On December 12, 1980, the Brewers finalized a major trade with the St. Louis Cardinals. They sent pitchers Lary Sorensen and Dave LaPoint to St. Louis, plus outfielder Sixto Lezcano and Green. In return they received Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons, and Pete Vuckovich. The talks had started small but mushroomed.18 Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog said, “We think so much of Green that we would not have made the deal if he had not been in it.”19

At first, Green was off the table. Ray Poitevint argued vehemently against including him. In fact, former Brewers P.R. director Tom Skibosh recalled, “It got so heated that Ray Poitevint and Ray Scarborough [then a special assignment scout for the Brewers] almost came to fisticuffs in a meeting. Poitevint was saying, ‘David Green is the future of this organization,’ and Scarborough was saying, ‘Forget the future. We have a chance to get these guys; we want to win now.’ They almost went at it. They had to separate them.”20

When he heard about the trade, David reacted strongly too. “I was mad. I don’t know why. All I know is I was mad. . .My family was mad.”21 At the time, he was playing in the Mexican Pacific League (LMP) with the Obregón Yaquis. He won the league batting title in the 1980-81 season with a mark of .321, edging out local legend Héctor Espino. The Yaquis were LMP champion that year, but there was no Caribbean Series because of a Venezuelan players’ strike.

The manager in Obregón that winter was Lee Sigman, who had been a shortstop in the Orioles system playing behind Dennis Martínez and Tony Chévez. What’s more, Ray Poitevint had also signed Sigman as a player and hired him as a minor-league manager for the Brewers (they would remain close colleagues as scouts for many years too).22 Sigman and Green were already good friends; in fact, the woman who became Sigman’s wife was the sister of Green’s girlfriend. Sigman managed Green at both Stockton and Holyoke, and when he became a skipper in Mexico for the first time, he brought David along.

Sigman’s long history in both scouting and managing gives his opinion weight. “I’m not exaggerating,” he told Nicaraguan sportswriter Edgard Rodríguez in 2007. “The reports on him projected more upside than Barry Bonds. Remember that David was a center fielder because of the ground he covered and his cannon arm. He was perhaps like Vladimir Guerrero, but even better. Vladimir has all five tools too, but David ran even better, with an impressive big stride. We all thought he was going to be a 30-30 player every year. Me, I loved watching him run and throw.”

“The sky was the limit. He could do it all.”23

In 1981, Green rose to Triple-A with the Cardinals’ top affiliate, Springfield. That summer Inside Sports magazine labeled him “today’s best prospect.” Defensively, Redbirds broadcaster Terry Greene said, “I compare him to André Dawson. His range is phenomenal. On top of that, he’s got a cannon for an arm. An accurate cannon.”24

His season was merely good, though, not dazzling (.270-10-67). In addition to a groin injury, Lee Sigman thought that David may already have had troubles with alcohol. The loss of his father was a severe blow, since Eduardo was his mentor. In 2006, Managua sportswriter Edgard Tijerino said, “I have always believed that the key factor David needed to finish growing, maturing, and establishing himself consistently was the presence of his father.”25 (In fact, the weakness for drink may have been hereditary, as Cabo’s contemporary Alfredo Medina recalled in 2005.26) The civil war in Nicaragua also left David unable to see his family and girlfriend. It was all very stressful for a young man alone and saddled with high expectations. Whitey Herzog said much the same thing in 1995, noting that he’d heard from a Milwaukee scout that Green had a problem before the trade was made.27

Nonetheless, the Cardinals called him up that September, making David just the fourth Nicaraguan to reach the majors. He hit only .147 as he had trouble with curveballs. In Herzog’s view, Green was “overawed.”28 His first hit came on September 26, against Pittsburgh’s Luis Tiant. It was his 14 th game and his 16 th at-bat.

Green returned to the Yaquis for the winter of 1981-82. He hit for fairly good average without much power (.274-3-36 with 26 steals in 84 games).

In spring training 1982, veteran Cardinals pitcher Jim Kaat said, “If you look at a group of horses standing around in a pasture, the thoroughbred sticks out. He looks like the thoroughbred.”29 In antelope terms, whereas his father the Gazelle was 5’11” and 155 pounds, David was more an Impala — he stood 6’3” and weighed close to 200 pounds when he was fully grown. The following year, St. Petersburg sportswriter Shelby Strother would echo Lee Sigman’s description: “He ran with an explosion of strength. Long powerful strides, muscled arms churning, veins in his neck bulging, teeth clenched. To see someone his size run so fast stuns the first-time observer.”30

Green excelled in camp and went north with the big club in 1982 as a reserve outfielder. Lonnie Smith would typically start in center field and Dane Iorg in left, but Green would come in for defense in the late innings while Smith shifted over. He also got occasional starts and hit for good average.

In early May, however, Green pulled a hamstring as he collided with Braves pitcher Steve Bedrosian at first base. St. Louis called up Willie McGee from Louisville — and McGee seldom left the center field position until he was traded away in 1990. The Cardinals wanted Green to get regular duty, so they sent him down to Louisville in early June. He hit so well (.345-9-40 in 46 games) that it was impossible to keep him down. St. Louis recalled David in early August, optioning Tito Landrum to Louisville. On August 15, he hit his first big-league homer off Randy Niemann at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium.

Green saw action in two games in the 1982 NLCS versus the Braves, getting a hit in his only at-bat and scoring the winning run in Game Two. In the World Series, he appeared in all seven games as St. Louis beat the Brewers, going 2 for 10 with a double and a triple (both off Mike Caldwell in Game Five). The following month, Whitey Herzog stated, “I think we’ve got to find a place to play David Green every day.” The logjam in the outfield was the manager’s thorniest problem.31 George Hendrick was trade bait that offseason, but other clubs were more interested in Green.32

That winter David played for the first time in Puerto Rico, taking part in 28 games for the Ponce Leones (.296-6-21). He got in a dispute with manager Jim Napier, however, and the club removed him from the effective roster as of January 14. After apologizing, he returned for the playoffs; Ponce lost in the final round to Arecibo.33 34 This would not be the last time Green knocked heads with his bosses, though.

During spring training 1983, the St. Petersburg Times called the Cardinals’ center-field job a “delightful dilemma.”35 The subtitle was “David Green has all the tools, but Willie McGee has the job — for now.” Green got back the position because McGee separated a shoulder running into the fence during an intrasquad game on March 28.36 Once McGee recovered, though, he moved back in on April 30. On June 15, St. Louis resolved the situation by dealing Keith Hernandez to the Mets, moving Hendrick to first base, and putting David in right field. He played in a career-high 146 games; his 34 steals were also a personal best.

That September, David’s mother Bertha and his younger brother Enrique arrived in St. Louis. The Cardinals and parent company Anheuser-Busch had worked for two months to get them out of war-torn Nicaragua. “David wanted it and we wanted it badly,” general manager Joe McDonald said. “The country was in revolt and that was the reason we did have problems trying to get them out.” Unfortunately, other relatives still remained, and brother Eduardo was in jail.37 He had written a bad check and couldn’t pay the fine, so it cost him four months.38

The Cardinals sent Green to the Instructional League to learn how to play first base and third base. He then enjoyed a very strong winter in Ponce (.311-8-31 in 46 games), again helping the Leones advance to the playoff finals. In spring training 1984, Whitey Herzog moved him to first base, in part because he viewed George Hendrick as the best right fielder in the National League.39

Possibly the move was a misuse of Green’s arm and speed, though one should defer to Herzog’s acumen. The manager said, “I can’t believe how fast he’s picking it up. . .I think you’ll find out he was born to play there.”40 Green was positive too, saying, “I feel pretty good because I’ve worked hard and I’m getting used to it. I played the position before in Nicaragua, so I’m getting all the movements back.” He added, “I get more involved. There’s more action.”41

At the start of camp, though, Bertha Casaya Green — the keeper of David’s scrapbook — passed away. This loss too may have worsened his alcohol problem. He started the season hitting well but slumped. As Herzog remembered, things came to a head at Busch Stadium on Sunday afternoon, May 20. “Balls were whizzing past his ears. [Cincinnati broadcaster] Joe Nuxhall called down and said, ‘What’s wrong with your first baseman?’”

Andy Van Slyke replaced Green in the fifth inning. Several days later — the Cardinals were tight-lipped about it at first — Green entered rehab at the Hyland Center. He later said, “I didn’t need to go. But I went anyway because somebody had to do it. There were a few guys with problems on the team, but they pick just one guy. It didn’t hurt me.”42 David didn’t spend the full month there, though, and Herzog also believed that he fell off the wagon soon after.43 In a 1999 memoir, he wrote that Green “might have been the most talented player of his generation. . .but [his] troubles with alcohol were a nightmare.”44

Cocaine was the scourge of the era, afflicting several Cards. Though Green was sometimes tarred with that brush, the worst that is known publicly is his poor judgment in dating the daughter of Luis Martínez, a St. Louis man who acted as an interpreter for pitcher Joaquín Andújar in 1984. According to Lonnie Smith, Martínez (a convicted felon) was a cocaine dealer.45

Green was reactivated in June 1984. He continued to play mainly first base that year, as Van Slyke shuttled between the outfield, third, and first. He hit 11 homers in the second half, including two off Larry McWilliams at Three Rivers Stadium on July 27. He finished with 15, his big-league high. In this regard, Whitey Herzog later made another interesting comparison: Darryl Strawberry. “He was probably faster than Strawberry and had a better throwing arm than Strawberry. They both had raw power but David didn’t know how to use his.”46

Green then returned to Puerto Rico for his third winter season with Ponce, but after 29 games (.242-1-11), he went to the Dominican Republic. His new team, the Licey Tigres, became league champion and moved on to the Caribbean Series in Mazatlán, Mexico. The Tigres won, getting a nice contribution from Green, who batted .285 with a double, triple, and homer and also threw out two baserunners from right field. He was named to the tournament All-Star team.47

The day before that series started, though — February 1, 1985 — St. Louis traded Green, Dave LaPoint, Gary Rajsich, and José Uribe to the San Francisco Giants. They landed a badly needed slugger, Jack Clark, who would help the Cardinals win the NL pennant that year and in 1987. On the other hand, Green started very slowly in San Francisco and had a disappointing year.

Although Green said he felt like he was on the spot, as he also did after the Keith Hernandez trade,48 it didn’t come across to teammates. “All he did was laugh,” [Duane] Kuiper said. “He spent his whole time in a Giants uniform laughing. He didn’t hit at all, didn’t live up to what everybody thought he was going to be, but Greenie was having a good time. You could never tell if your joke was really funny if you told it to Greenie because he would laugh no matter what.”49

What Kuiper did not understand, though, was that the Nicaraguan was still not fully comfortable with English words and phrases. When he was in St. Louis, the Hispanic population was small. Aside from a few bit players, his only Latino teammate was Joaquín Andújar. The only member of the media there who truly understood him was the great Cardinals announcer Jack Buck, who spoke Spanish well.

1985 was also the year when rumors about Green’s age were loudest, thanks to Howie Haak, although a Nicaraguan baseball guide supporting the later year of birth allegedly surfaced.50 His stock continued to plummet. That December, the Giants traded him to Milwaukee for a player to be named later — a Class A utility infielder named Héctor Quiñones.

The Brewers released Green on the last day of spring training in April 1986. “‘I thought I had made the team, but they fell in love with Rob Deer,’ said Green, whose contract was large enough, about $400,000, that the Brewers didn’t want to pay a reserve player that much.”51

Green then began to bounce around the baseball world. His first stop was in Mexico — one of several to come there. Earlier in the 1980s, “the Brewers, angling for talent while battling the budget, established a working agreement with Juárez and two other clubs. Milwaukee would loan the clubs a dozen able farmhands in return for the right of first refusal for their Mexican players.”52 It was Ray Poitevint who worked out the arrangement.53

Green hit tremendously (.391-11-38 in 48 games) with the Monterrey Sultanes, another team in the Brewers’ agreement. On June 24, Milwaukee sold his contract to the Kintetsu Buffaloes of Japan’s Pacific League. Poitevint almost certainly brokered this deal as well, since he had built up a network in Japan over decades and helped many other foreign players land there.54 Though another groin injury diminished the speed aspect of Green’s game (no triples and only two stolen bases), he did a good job there overall (.270-10-39 in 67 games). Even so, Kintetsu signed Ben Oglivie that winter and released Green in January 1987.

Green returned to Mexico, playing 10 games for León (.316-2-10 in 15 games). After again suffering a pulled groin muscle and hurting his throwing arm, he came back to his Missouri home. He stayed in shape with indoor soccer. He even inquired about playing baseball in a local semi-pro outfit, the Mon-Clair League.55

On July 11, St. Louis granted his plea for another chance and assigned him to their Triple-A team, Louisville. He responded by hitting .356 in 50 games. So, that September he earned his last major-league action with the Cardinals. He was not on the postseason roster, though, despite injuries to Jack Clark and Terry Pendleton.56

At some point Green had also endured a knee operation. Still, “there were enough flashes of the old Green to intrigue the Cardinals, and general manager Dal Maxvill kept Green on the winter roster. ‘I wouldn’t do that unless I consider this a good investment,’ Maxvill said. ‘David Green is a good gamble.’”57 David did not win the role with the Cardinals that he hoped for in spring 1988, though. The door was ajar after Jack Clark signed with the Yankees, but then the Cardinals signed Bob Horner (who had returned from Japan as a free agent) to play first base. Jim Lindeman got the backup OF-1B spot at the end of camp after Mike Laga separated a shoulder.

Meanwhile, Green returned to Triple A to play every day — with disappointing results. While Maxvill had seen signs of maturity, the Nicaraguan “was dismissed at Louisville by farm director Lee Thomas when Green reportedly gave Louisville manager Mike Jorgensen some trouble.”58

If he’d been a little more patient (and played better), things could have gone Green’s way. Lindeman’s balky back acted up in late April; Horner’s power went off before a hurt shoulder ended his career that July. After that, Laga didn’t hit when given his shot. The Redbirds also patched things at first base with catcher Tom Pagnozzi before trading for Pedro Guerrero. Even little shortstop José Oquendo filled in here and there.

Green started the 1989 season in Mexico once more. He looked good for the Aguascalientes Rieleros (.313-1-11 in 18 games), but got injured again. Even so, in May, the Atlanta Braves gave him another shot at a comeback. He joined their Double-A team, in Greenville, South Carolina. Future Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, then managing the Orlando Twins, commented. “[Gardenhire], who entered the ’80s as an infielder with the New York Mets, remembers the build-up [Green] had. . .in 1981. ‘He was billed as the next Willie Mays. Talk about putting pressure on a young man.’” 59

Green hit well with the G-Braves — but the effort ended in another clash that July. He quarreled with manager Buddy Bailey on the team bus, questioning Bailey’s authority.60 Later that summer, Green got in a fight outside a St. Louis bar, as four men set upon him (one armed with an ax handle) at 1:15 A.M.61

The Nicaraguan returned to Mexico for the winter of 1989-90, joining the Tijuana Potros. Reportedly he was carrying a good deal of extra weight, and his hitting was nothing special (.243-4-21 in 44 games). Green stayed on for the summer season in Mexico. He hit very well for Tabasco (.322-17-67 in 110 games) and then received still another chance in the U.S., this time with the Texas Rangers organization. He played for their Double-A team in Tulsa at the tail end of 1990 and also in 1991.62 He performed decently at Tulsa and even got some outside consideration for a callup in June ’91 when Jack Daugherty went on the disabled list after an appendectomy. By then he was past 30, though, the oldest player on the Drillers. He did not get a chance even at Triple A, and his pro career came to an end after that season.

In January 1995, the former ballplayer made the papers again, in a way nobody would have wanted — a charge of involuntary manslaughter. While driving in the St. Louis suburb of Country Club Hills at 6:30 in the evening, Green collided with another car in an intersection. An elderly lady passenger in the other vehicle named Gladys Yount suffered a broken pelvis and died of a heart attack two hours later. The following August, he was convicted of driving while intoxicated. The jurors, who deliberated for five hours, recommended that he serve six months in jail and pay a court-assessed fine.63 Newspaper coverage of the story ended there, so knowledge of the actual penalties is lacking, but Green was fortunate that it wasn’t worse for him.

Green continued to live in the St. Louis area, leading a private and peaceful existence. At one time he was involved with a friend’s dog-grooming business, but as of 2010 he was working in security. He was happily married (from a prior union in the 1980s, he had a daughter named Giannina Bertha).

Green also kept in touch with the baseball world. In 2000, he was an assistant coach at Block Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish high school in St. Louis. The head coach was an old teammate from the 1987 Cardinals, Curt Ford. David also offered baseball instruction to children at a school run by the Cards, and he became a regular at the “Winter Warm-Up” autograph show sponsored by the “Cardinals Care” charity. He still got out to Busch Stadium on occasion, especially if his countrymen (such as Marvin Benard and Vicente Padilla) were in town playing.

In 2006, David’s nephew, Eduardo Green III, signed with the San Francisco Giants organization. This young man was much like his uncle, standing 6’4” and blessed with speed and a strong arm in the outfield.64 It does not appear, however, that he ever made it to the U.S. minor leagues.

Green visited Nicaragua now and then over the years, notably in 1992-93. Tito Rondón recalled, “He wanted to play in the Nicaraguan League (Amateur First Division) in order to get in shape to try out for the Marlins. He was not allowed, as you had to promise to have quit pro ball in order to be reinstated to amateur competition. Those rules were actually criminal.”

In June 2009, Green planned to attend a reunion of his Bóer team, but unfortunately he was not able to make it. Ahead of the reunion, he talked with Edgard Rodríguez. “I know that I didn’t reach the level it was believed I could attain,” he remarked. “Now just the memory remains, because life goes on. Even so, I don’t feel bad. I left Nicaragua with the idea of playing in the big leagues and that they’d see me on television, and I achieved it. I have a World Series ring, and winning it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Speaking of his homeland, he added with a smile, “I’m glad they even remember me and that they still support baseball. Nicaragua has talent, and the best thing is that now the kids are smarter.”65

The year 2015 brought an entire book about Green entitled David Green: Un Enigma Descifrado (An Enigma Deciphered). Written by Edgard Rodríguez, it featured the subject’s cooperation.

David Green died on January 25, 2022. A Managua paper, La Prensa, said that he had been suffering from COVID-19 and had also had a pair of heart attacks.66

“He was as talented as anybody I ever played with,” said pitcher John Stuper, Green’s teammate in the minors and with the Cardinals. “There was nothing he couldn’t do on the field.”67

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to SABR member Tito Rondón for his additional research and input. Thanks also to Isabel and Alfredo Green, Edgard Rodríguez, Martin Coco (St. Louis Cardinals), and Mike Rockwell. Continued thanks to Tony Chévez and to Alfonso Araujo (Mexican winter statistics).

Sources

Eisenbath, Mike. The Cardinals Encyclopedia. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1999: 194.

Rains, Rob & Alvin Reid. Whitey’s Boys: A Celebration of the ’82 Cards World Championship. Chicago, Illinois: Triumph Books, 2002.

Costas, Rafael. Enciclopedia Béisbol Ponce Leones, 1938-1987. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editora Corripio, 1989.

www.baseball-reference.com

www.retrosheet.org

www.japanbaseballdaily.com

Bjarkman, Peter C. A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.: 2006. (Amateur World Series information)

Photo Credit

The Topps Company

Notes

One of those men was Eduardo’s son, David Green, of whom Whitey Herzog said, “He might have been the most talented player of his generation.”1 David did not fulfill the lofty hopes that started with his father; Eduardo’s passing was one of the blows that fueled the young man’s personal troubles.

In his own right, though, Eduardo Green deserves to have his story reach a wider audience. When David broke in with the St. Louis Cardinals back in 1981, the great announcer Jack Buck would note that the elder Green had been quite a player in his day. That and a few other passing mentions in books and magazines were about as far as it went in the U.S. — one must turn to the Nicaraguan sporting press.

The statistics are hard to come by, but it is possible to pull together disparate threads of Spanish-language history. Veteran Managua sportswriter Edgard Tijerino, who befriended Eduardo in the mid-1970s, provided much insight over the years. He wrote one of the deepest available stories in 2006. The occasion was the 26th anniversary of Green’s passing, and the title in translation was “The Electrifying Gazelle.” Tijerino offered this description: “He had the soul of a ballet dancer, the vocation of a sprinter, the eyesight of an eagle, the reflexes of a panther, and the sensitivity of a hare.”2

Fortunately, two Nicaraguan broadcasters and journalists who emigrated to the U.S. have also shared much personal knowledge. They are Alberto “Tito” Rondón and René Cárdenas. These men are among the few in the States who saw El Cabo (The Corporal, as Green was also known for his army rank) actually play. Rondón, a premier historian of his nation’s baseball, reminisced over the course of late 2009 and early 2010. Cárdenas even caught Green in his prime from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s. As of 2008, he still regarded the outfielder as one of the three best position players his country ever produced.3

According to the death certificate in Nicaragua’s Civil Register, Edward Green Sinclair was born on August 30, 1920 — although other dates have circulated.4 5 He was the youngest of six children (three boys and three girls) born to David Green and Carlota Sinclair.

Green’s hometown, Bluefields, is the heart of Nicaragua’s English-influenced Atlantic coast. There runaway slaves and free blacks from the British West Indies (mainly Jamaica) joined the native Miskito population. Even today, the main language spoken in the region is an English-based Creole. Everyone began calling Edward “Eduardo” after he moved to the Spanish-speaking part of the country.

Eduardo’s mother grew up in Bluefields, but his father was an Anglican pastor who came from Jamaica. This man was an important figure in the religious life of the Miskito Coast. In 1987, author David Haslam wrote, “Especially remembered is David ‘Daddy’ Green, who in the second decade of the [20th] century established permanent programmes of worship among the Creoles and Miskitos in the Pearl Lagoon area. The work spread north, to Puerto Cabezas, and also out to Corn Island.”6 The Episcopalian had also described him vividly in 1972. “More missions were also planted by the forerunner of present day catechists, a Jamaican named David Green. ‘Daddy’ Green, full of fervor and eccentricities, wore a clerical collar much of the time.”7 Indeed, it is said that Green founded more missions in Nicaragua than any other missionary.8

Starting in the late 1880s, the Atlantic Coast population (costeños) forged a strong connection to baseball.9 Stanley Cayasso, another of Nicaragua’s enduring local baseball heroes, was from Bluefields too. His career began in 1925. In the 1960s, two other men from the town — Duncan Campbell and Willie Hooker — advanced as far as Triple A. Eventually, three other Nicaraguan major-leaguers would come from Bluefields or other spots on the Caribbean coast: Albert Williams, Marvin Benard, and Devern Hansack.

Eduardo Green first played ball in Nicaragua’s Pacific region in 1940 with the team Campos Azules (Spanish for Bluefields). They met Chinandega for the national championship but lost. At that time Eduardo was a shortstop. In 1941, he and that year’s Atlantic champions, Zelaya, came to Managua to face Bóer for the national title. After the series, Green stayed on in the nation’s capital. He joined Olímpico, which would take a new name in 1942: Cinco Estrellas.10

This team was personally associated with Nicaragua’s dictator, Anastasio Somoza García. Tito Rondón expanded. “The team was formed by high-ranking officers of the National Guard, who wanted to name it Somoza (again), but the dictator said that was too much cult of personality and said no. So the soldiers came up with Cinco Estrellas, Somoza being the only five-star general in Nicaragua. He promoted himself, basically.” The players got paid for their service in the army. Fans called them the Presidential Guard.11

On December 4, 1943, Nicaragua enjoyed its first visit from an active major leaguer, as Cardinals center fielder Terry Moore came with a team representing Albrook Field in the Panama Canal Zone. Eduardo played shortstop for the select national nine that day, as Stanley Cayasso was in center field, which would later become Green’s regular position.12 Albrook Field won 2-1 as Moore made a shoestring catch of Cayasso’s ninth-inning blooper and then threw out the speedy Green at the plate to save the tying run.13

Tito Rondón noted that rough baseball humor was common in Nicaragua too. “Cayasso did not smoke or drink and was very disciplined, so Green called him occasionally ‘La Cayassa,’ a woman. Sort of like Lady Baldwin [the 19th-century U.S. player who did not smoke, drink, or curse either].”

The Cinco Estrellas Tigers won nine national amateur championships in 11 years from 1944 to 1954. Green, with his speed and strong arm, was a star in left field and later in center. Tito Rondón offered more color on the ties between Cinco Estrellas and the Guardia Nacional. “If you had good seasons, you advanced in grade so that your pay increased, which is why Eduardo made corporal (cabo) and Cayasso lieutenant. The joke was that in an emergency the payment method became the real thing, and more than one player found himself in the army for real.”

Some accounts depict Cinco Estrellas as a lightning rod for opponents of the Somoza regime, who rooted for Bóer instead.14 In Tito Rondón’s opinion, in later years there was a tendency to swallow “typical Sandinista revisionist history. When the Sandinistas took over [in 1979], they did not disband the team, they just changed the name to ‘Dantos,’ and kept the players and the color of the uniforms.”

The reality is more nuanced. Rondón said, “With the heyday of the Yankees in the 1940s and ’50s coinciding with los Tigres’ own heyday, many fans identified with both [the Bronx Bombers and Cinco Estrellas] even though they hated Somoza’s guts. Conversely, many Bóer fans were ardent Somoza supporters. Somoza was so smart he founded the labor unions and also revived Bóer, Cinco Estrellas’ arch-enemy.

“The anti-Somoza daily La Prensa always tried to inflame opposition against the dictatorship from baseball fans by disparaging Cayasso and all of Cinco Estrellas. Then, when Cayasso became part of the national team for some international competition, he would become a hero again.

“One time at the stadium Somoza García was at the game and they announced that Flor de Caña’s Alberto ‘La Muñecona’ Sandino, right field, was coming to bat. A leather-lunged fan [referring to Nicaragua’s revolutionary hero of the 1920 and ’30s] shouted ‘Long live Sandino!!’ Somoza laughed as loud as anyone else. The same as when playing Bóer and Ernesto Chamorro [a surname identified with La Prensa’s editor] was announced. They were funny moments; they were invested with great political significance 30 years after Tacho [Somoza García] was shot [in 1956].

“I lived those times; it was funny finding out 35 years later that Bóer was brought back on orders from Somoza García. Bóer was the ‘People’s Team,’ of course, and the joke was:

“Who is the people’s team?

“Bóer, of course.

“You are wrong, it’s Cinco Estrellas!

“You are crazy. How so?

“It’s paid for by the people’s taxes!

“But it was the Revolution [of the 1970s] that politicized Nicaraguans; before that most people ignored the subject, though of course, in principle, everybody agreed dictatorships were bad. But at the stadium, you saw Cayasso hit, Green run, Pancho Fletes field, Conejo Hernández catch, Mundito Roberts pitch fast balls and Goyito López junk. Watching Cinco Estrellas was great spectacle always, and having Bóer beat them. . .heaven. Baseball heaven.”

Eduardo Green was not a large man, standing 5’11” and weighing about 155 to 160 pounds in his prime. He did not hit many home runs, but did get a lot of doubles and triples. Catcher Kent Taylor, a fellow costeño, said Green’s weakness at the plate was slow curves.15If one were to try to draw a parallel with a major-league player, it might be Omar Moreno or Vince Coleman; Gary Pettis and Pat Howell also come to mind. Tito Rondón said, “Cabo may not have had the consistent high averages in the Nicaraguan League that his international production suggests. He was known for his speed, base stealing and defense, and of course for being a good, but not great, hitter. Your typical pre-Bill James leadoff hitter.”

Green was also a main cog in the national amateur team, starting in 1944 and continuing into the early 1950s. It was most likely in this arena that Cuban broadcaster Manolo de la Reguera watched Eduardo and dubbed him La Gacela Negra. Nicaragua won the bronze medal in the Amateur World Series (now known as the Baseball World Cup) in 1947. Before the trip to Barranquilla, Colombia, doctors reportedly found a problem with Green’s aorta. They forbade him to make the trip. Eduardo insisted, and finally they allowed him to join the team, but on condition that he sign a waiver absolving the sporting authorities of any blame should he have a cardiovascular problem.16 Green then tied with his teammate Jorge Hernández for the tournament lead in runs scored with 14 while batting .450 (18 for 40).

The next year, playing at home in Managua, the Nicaraguans finished out of the running — but Green was the leader in RBIs with 11. The guide produced for this series shows a dramatic photo of La Gacela Negra, billed as his country’s greatest base stealer (and at just 27 years old), sliding into third against a visiting Cuban team.

Once Jackie Robinson paved the way for black players in the majors in 1947, Eduardo might conceivably have become the first Nicaraguan big-leaguer. He was about a year and eight months younger than Jackie, who reached the Brooklyn Dodgers at the rather advanced age of 28. A few years later another swift center fielder moved up from the Negro Leagues who turned out to be a good deal older. That was Sam Jethroe, 1950’s NL Rookie of the Year.

Cabo spent his prime at home, however; at some level his obligations to Cinco Estrellas, the army, and the national team may have kept him from a shot at the big time. Actually, though, Somoza did not rule the players with an iron fist. His general managers ran the team, and he was rather relaxed about restoring some men’s amateur standing after they had played a pro season or two. It is also noteworthy that the Negro Leagues were little known in Nicaragua.

In Tito Rondón’s view, “The two lost major-leaguers of the ’30s and ’40s were [José Ángel] ‘Chino’ Meléndez and Stanley Cayasso, according to legend (and, I believe, facts). You can also add Jonathan Robinson and Green to the list. Of the early players (1900s), Paco Soriano and John Deshon were almost certainly major-league caliber. I believe that at least two or three players per decade, more or less, from 1890 through 1960 had big league talent. But by concentrating on the Amateur World Series we lost the opportunity to have a pro league. That would have raised our level of play to minor-league caliber.”

Rondón continued, “I believe the defining moment in Eduardo’s baseball life came in 1950, just before the World Cup. Team Nicaragua played two practice games against Nicaraguan pros. In one of them Nicolás Bolaños [father of three men who would later play ball with Cabo’s son David in Nicaragua] was playing center field and Green was in left. Nicolás was fast, but was nothing compared to Eduardo. But he had a sure eye for the ball, the shortest routes, which shows me that Eduardo still was not all he got to be.

“Anyway, Chino Meléndez hit a monster smash, slightly left of true center, to the base of a wall that engineers had measured at exactly 500 feet. Cabo took off like a rocket and ran down the ball with his back to home plate at a spot later measured as 23 feet short of the wall. It was very much like the Willie Mays catch in the 1954 World Series, the ball went 477 feet and Green made the catch! Until the Professional League [in 1956] it was considered the greatest catch in Nicaraguan baseball history. People talked about it for decades, though now they have forgotten. But I believe Green became the center fielder that day, though not literally. Besides, Bolaños (who struck out Earl Weaver in an American Legion game in St. Louis in the late 1940s) was needed as a pitcher.”

The 1950 World Cup took place in Managua again near the end of the year, and Cabo went on another tear. He was the tourney’s leading batter, going 19 for 39 (.487) with seven doubles. Unfortunately, Nicaragua finished fifth. The manager was Andrew Espolita, who came from Tampa, Florida. A few years later Espolita would coach a boy named Tony La Russa, who became a big-league infielder and then gained fame as a manager.17

In February and March 1951, Eduardo played in the first Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Shortly thereafter, the Brooklyn Dodgers gave him a fleeting glance at the major leagues. Nicaraguan authors Manuel Genet and Edmundo Quintanilla thought it was 1947 or 1948, but José Daniel López — the son of a local club owner — heard one version of the story from Cabo himself in the late ’60s. In 2004, López reminisced with Tito Rondón, who had worked at his radio station.

“If I recall correctly, he [Green] said it happened in early 1951, when [Cuban baseball man] Bobby Maduro was trying to sell Brooklyn the idea that they should try Héctor Rodríguez at third base. I think just after he got back from Buenos Aires. Cabo said that when he got to Vero Beach the first thing he saw was Carl Furillo throwing a laser beam strike to home plate from deep right field. ‘I realized I had nothing to do there, so I packed up and came home.’ He was not declared professional, in those days nobody kept a close watch for that sort of thing.”

Rondón later learned what really happened from René Cárdenas. During the 1960s, Cárdenas (then an Astros play-by-play man) was broadcasting in the Winter League in Nicaragua during Houston’s off-season. He interviewed Cabo about his Dodger experience. “What René remembers is that Green was sent to train with the Montreal Royals [in Daytona Beach, Florida], and he was very disgusted with the racism he encountered. He was so mad he quit the Dodgers and came back to Nicaragua. Years later, when René talked to him, Cabo was still so mad about the experience that he used very colorful language to describe it.

“I believe Cabo was kidding with Daniel López, using material other people made up. It is possible that he visited Vero and saw Furillo, but did not wish to speak ill of the U.S. to everybody. The thing is, Green’s arm was not bad, so there was no reason to run away just from watching ‘The Reading Rifle’ unload one. Racism sounds much more plausible.”

It is tempting to think that the trailblazing scout Howie Haak (who spent several years with the Dodgers) might have found Eduardo and that he may already have been establishing his pan-American network. However, Haak — who was Branch Rickey’s man in several organizations — followed Rickey to the Pittsburgh Pirates in November 1950. Howie and one of his bird dogs, Panamanian catcher/manager Calvin Byron, would later sign various players out of Nicaragua. The most prominent were costeños, Duncan Campbell in the ’50s and Albert Williams in the ’70s. Haak also saw another of Cabo’s sons, Eduardo Jr., play a couple of years before Williams.

The 1951 World Cup in Mexico City that November was not Green’s finest hour. According to the newspaper La Noticia, he overslept and missed the game against Cuba — supposedly owing to the ill effects of having smoked a cigar, for which he provided a doctor’s certificate.18

Eduardo turned pro at last, aged 32, in late 1952. He played for Cervecería in Panama’s winter league. José Daniel López said, “Elías Osorio [a Panamanian first baseman] told me years later that Green did not hit in Panama.” The only glimpse of his numbers in The Sporting News that season shows him hitting .264 (14 for 53) as of early January, with no RBIs in the team’s first 14 games.19 

Green then had a brief taste of pro ball in Cuba and the United States. He played 11 games for the Havana Cubans of the Florida International League in 1953, gaining just five hits in 27 at bats (.185). Bobby Maduro bought that club in May, but it is not known why Green departed. That winter, he played for Vanytor in the Colombian winter league, which had a working agreement with Brooklyn. According to López, “Then he was out of baseball except for pickup games until 1956, when the [Nicaraguan] Professional League started. And he came back.” Eduardo then got the chance to hit some major-league pitchers. He was still playing (and batting .247) as late as the winter of 1963-64.

Another factor affecting Green’s career, at least according to Cabo’s contemporary Alfredo Medina, was a possible problem with alcohol. In 2005, “Medinita” recalled that “Green lost himself because of this.”20 This would also be one of the reasons why his talented son David did not achieve his promise in the ’80s; heredity could well have had a bearing.

After Eduardo left baseball, he worked as a mechanic for several years. As José Daniel López observed, Cabo often remained close to the field in his leisure hours. “One afternoon in the late sixties I went to the store, the ‘27 de Mayo Pulpería.’” May 27 is the Army Day holiday in Nicaragua; in many parts of Latin America, a pulpería is a small corner store and local hangout.

“I found Eduardo Green and a friend of his having a couple of beers and talking. ‘How are you, short stuff?’ he asked me. ‘Still have a team in that league?’ He was referring to the Jugos Monarch in the Mayor ‘A’ Bolonia League.” Mayor ‘A’ is Nicaragua’s second division/municipal league system, and Bolonia is a neighborhood of Managua. The distributors of Monarch Juices, Casa Mantica, sponsored the team.

“Several years before we had lost at San Rafael del Sur (a town near Managua), because lefty Antonio Cárdenas hit and pitched a great game. My dad promptly signed him, and when he made his debut in Managua, Green was standing with some fans under a mango tree at the edge of center field. He remarked that he knew the lefthander, that he had played a few games with Cinco Estrellas and so he was a pro. He got kicked out of the league.

“After I called him a snitch we began talking, and he recalled the tryout with the Dodgers.”

Eduardo and his wife, Bertha Francisca Casaya Madrigal, had a family of ten: five girls (Carlota, Isabel, Sonia, Milena, and Geovanna) and five boys (Eduardo, Alfredo, Leonardo, David, and Enrique). The couple were married in 1960 — after all the children had been born! In addition to David, the athletic gene was present in Isabel and Carlota, who became two of the finest women’s basketball players in Nicaraguan history. Cabo had high hopes that Eduardo Jr. would follow in his footsteps as a baseball star, but while the young man looked the part, he never did much in the local amateur league. David then became the focus.

The national baseball authorities of Nicaragua enlisted Eduardo Sr. to scout and develop talent, especially in the Bluefields area. In the mid-1970s, he also served as a coach with Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua and the UCA-affiliated team that played in the Hope and Reconstruction League. (Following a split in the national amateur ranks, Nicaragua had two Division One amateur circuits from 1973 to 1977.) According to Tito Rondón, who watched Cabo throw batting practice a couple of times, he still had a great arm. Rondón also remembered Eduardo “screaming harshly in his English-accented Spanish” as he taught David, then a skinny teenage batboy, how to hit.

When David signed with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1978, Edgard Tijerino recalled hearing Eduardo say, “He’ll make it. With that vitality he has, that drive to improve I’ve instilled in him, and that raw material, he can’t fail. I only want to see him wear a big-league uniform.”21 Alas, that was not to be — Eduardo passed away on September 13, 1980. A little less than a year later, David made his debut with the Cardinals.

Eduardo’s death reflected Nicaragua’s shattered economy in the wake of the Sandinista revolution. As Carlota Green related in 2010, “He had a kidney infection, and there were complications in the hospital. He had three heart attacks, and he died after the fourth one.” In a matter-of-fact way, but tinged by sadness, she added, “This is my country.”

Shortly after Eduardo succumbed, the national baseball tournament in the Mayor ‘A’ division was named for him; the 30th edition was held in 2009. In 1982, the Nicaraguan government also created the “Orden Eduardo Green Sinclair” for excellence in sports.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment to Isabel, Carlota, and Alfredo Green for their help and memories (via e-mail and telephone interviews, March 2010). Thanks also to René Cárdenas, José Daniel López, and Julio César Miranda.

Sources

http://www.manfut.org/museos/sf-GreenEduardo.html

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Photo Credit

Courtesy Tito Rondon

Notes

1 Herzog, Whitey. You’re Missin’ a Great Game. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1999: 158.

Devern Brandon Hansack was born on February 5, 1978, in Pearl Lagoon, a town on the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua. Those who have not traveled in the region may have never heard of the Miskito Coast, sometimes spelled Mosquito Coast and named after the Miskito Indians in the area. It’s an area on the Caribbean coast of Central America, embracing parts of Honduras and Nicaragua. English is the primary language, dating back to days when the region had been colonized by England. Livingston, Guatemala, reflects that historical influence as well, as does the country of Belize (which was named British Honduras until it became Belize in 1973).1

Pearl Lagoon itself is a municipality of under 9,000 people, and lacks roads. Access is by boat, though in 2007 it became possible to arrive by road. It is located about 25 miles north of the larger (around 50,000 people) city of Bluefields, and is the largest coastal lagoon in Nicaragua. In a Spanish-speaking country like Nicaragua, it may seem surprising that there are communities with English-language names like Bluefields and Pearl Lagoon, but that reflects the Moskito Coast culture. 

The Lonely Planet website paints an idyllic picture of Pearl Lagoon (which would be Laguna de Perlas if one were to translate it into Spanish): “At last, you’ve arrived in the real Caribbean. Here are dirt roads and palm trees, reggae music, and an English-speaking Creole community that fishes the local waters for shrimp, fish and lobster, and still refers to Spanish-speaking Nicaraguans as ‘the Spaniards.’ You can feel the stress roll off your shoulders as soon as you get off the boat from Bluefields. And the best part is that despite its obvious charms, this town still sees very few tourists — which means you may well be the only foreigner buzzing through the mangroves and jungle that surround Pearl Lagoon (the bay). The bay is a timeless expanse of black water and home to more than a dozen ethnic fishing villages.”2

The NicaTour.net site explains: “You notice the wooden fishing boats. Fishing is the principal activity of the inhabitants and an important natural resource. The people that live in the villages near the lagoon are busy all day. There is constant activity around the boats and fishing gear since fishing is the primary source of income for these families.” It goes on to point out that Pearl Lagoon “was considered the second capital of the Mosquitia kingdom when the last Mosco king took up residence in the city. He arrived here after Henry Clarence deposed him in Bluefields in 1894.”3

And yet Pearl Lagoon has long had an active interest in baseball, with several local teams. This fairly small community has produced yet another major leaguer, also a right-handed pitcher, Albert Williams. Though originally drafted by the Pirates, Williams (born in 1954) was later released and signed as a free agent by the Minnesota Twins. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound righty played his full big-league career for the Twins, working in 120 games (97 of them as a starter) from 1980 through his final season in 1984. Over the course of those five seasons, Williams was 35-38, with a 4.24 ERA. Between his time in the Pirates’ minor-league system and his signing with the Twins, he played a 1979 season split between Caracas and Panama in the Inter-American League.  Williams was well-known in Pearl Lagoon, of course, but after he made the big leagues, he didn’t return back to Nicaragua and so, while Hansack knew about Williams, he never met him.

Devern has been playing baseball from his earliest childhood. His first baseball was handmade for him by his father.4  “As soon as we grew up, that’s what we would want in our hand — we would make a bat out of any tree, something to have swinging. He made both. You had to have your own little bat and your own little ball. Then you could get in a game.” A glove came later –   “not much of a glove, you know, a little cardboard.”5

Was he a pretty good hitter? “I was a pretty good hitter. I was a center fielder at those times.”6

Devern had nine siblings. His mother is Melissa McCoy, a baker by trade, specializing in coconut bread and meat patties. His father, George Hansack, was a lobster fisherman and also farmed coconut trees.7

Hansack was initially signed by scouts Andres Reiner and Calixto Vargas for the Houston Astros in 1999, for a reported $10,000. They had both visited Bluefields and seen him play for the Pearl Lagoon team. The Astros had him play baseball in Venezuela for the seasons of 2000 and 2001. He’d first been spotted by an Astros scout while playing in an Atlantic Coast tournament. It was reportedly in Venezuela, and not in Nicaragua, where he learned Spanish.8 In 2002 he pitched in 12 games (10 starts) for the New York-Penn League’s Tri-City ValleyCats. He was 3-4, with a 3.60 ERA. The 2003 season, he worked out of Lexington, Kentucky, for the Single-A South Atlantic League’s Lexington Legends. There Hansack was 10-6, with a 4.52 ERA.

At the end of spring training in 2004, the Astros released Hansack. He left professional baseball at the time. In 2005, the Red Sox vice president for international scouting, Craig Shipley, got a tip from the third-base coach of the Nicaraguan national team, Hubert Silva, and subsequently watched Hansack pitch in a World Cup international baseball tournament in The Netherlands.9

Murray Chass of the New York Times said that Shipley liked what he saw. “He was pretty easy to like,” Shipley said. “He was throwing 93, 94 and had a good slider, an above-average slider.”10 Shipley wanted to sign him, but for strategic reasons he let Hansack return to Nicaragua without a conversation.

Chass continued, “After Hansack returned home, Shipley sent Jon Dipuglia, the Latin American scouting cross-checker, to Nicaragua to sign him. ‘We didn’t make contact with him in Holland,’ Shipley said, explaining his strategy. ‘When you make contact, the player starts talking to others on the club and they say, “I know this guy with that team and that guy with that team,” and you could lose the chance to sign him. I also didn’t want scouts who were there to see me talking to him.’”11 A deal was struck and Hansack became property of the Red Sox organization.

ESPN’s Amy K. Nelson wrote that Shipley had signed Hansack for a $3,000 bonus, adding, “Hansack went on to become the Red Sox’s Double-A pitcher of the year while living in a Dominican fan’s basement apartment in Portland, Maine.”12

In 2006 he pitched for the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs, the Double-A Eastern League affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. And he made it to the major leagues. With Portland, Hansack was 8-7 with an ERA of 3.26. He was an older player for a Double-A team, 28 at the time, but Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe wrote in late July that Hansack “has been effective as a starter for Portland since taking a regular turn in the rotation June 17. He’s allowed three runs or fewer in all eight of his starts, with no earned runs allowed in four of those starts.”13

The fourth time was the charm. On September 17 Portland won its first Eastern League championship, three games to two, over the Akron Aeros. Hansack pitched eight innings, allowing three runs, striking out eight and walking no one. He got the win, and was named the team’s MVP. Nelson said that Boston’s Theo Epstein had been at the celebration and took Hansack aside, saying, “Have fun, but not too much, I need to talk with you.”14

Two days later Hansack was called up to Boston. “To me, it was a big surprise,” he said. “To win a championship and get called up, it was amazing.”15

The 2006 Red Sox were in second place on September 19, but they weren’t in contention. They were 11 games out of first place with 11 games to play.

Hansack was given a start — his major-league debut — on September 23 in Toronto. “A Pearl Lagoon boy is here,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m here. … Boston signed me and gave me a second chance. I can tell any young guy who wants to do something, there’s a second chance. Just put your mind to it.”16

Hansack lost the game at Rogers Centre, 5-3, pitching five-plus innings. After pretty much cruising through the first three innings, he gave up back-to-back solo home runs in the fourth inning to Lyle Overbay and Troy Glaus. The Red Sox tied the game, 2-2, in the top of the sixth, but Hansack gave up a double and a single to the first two batters in the bottom of the sixth and Red Sox manager Terry Francona made a move, bringing in lefty Javier Lopez. One of the inherited runners scored. After the game, Francona said of Hansack, “He threw strikes, he threw his breaking ball over the plate. I thought he showed some poise. He left two fastballs back to back, right over the middle of the plate. I thought he represented himself pretty well. Right from the first pitch of the game, he looked like he belonged. Pounded the zone, which was good to see right off the bat. He did OK.”17

Eight days later, there was the “no-hitter.” On October 1 at Fenway Park, the last game on the schedule for both the Red Sox and the Orioles, Hansack waited out a 3-hour, 23-minute rain delay and finally took the mound. He set down the Orioles in order in the first inning, working throughout the game in a continuous drizzle. There was a window that had opened in the weather. “I started warming up quick,” he recalled. Rain was coming off his cap. “It was dripping. It was making it hard for me to throw.”18 Likewise, the O’s pitchers, of course — and they gave up nine runs in five innings.

Hansack faced the minimum 15, walking Fernando Tatis in the second but moments later inducing a one-out double play that took Tatis off the basepaths and closed that inning. No other Baltimore batter reached first base. The game was called after five innings, a 9-0 shutout. It’s in the books as a complete game, a shutout, and there were no hits by the Baltimore batters.

“For the fans there, it was a no-hitter. I was very excited, surprised, because I was out of baseball so long,” Hansack said.19

“What an end of the season for him,” Francona added. “It was fun, wasn’t it? One day he’s pumping his chest down in Portland, a couple of weeks later, he’s winning a game and giving up no hits in a game in Boston. Good for him, and good for us.”20

Sportswriter Gordon Edes dubbed Hansack “perhaps the most improbable of the 14 pitchers who have started for the Sox this season.”21

“I don’t know why it doesn’t come up as a no-hitter,” Hansack said 10 years later. Neither do many fans. Had the exact game been pitched in 1990, it would have been declared a no-hitter at the time. There was, however, a “rules change” in 1991 a new definition was promulgated: To be deemed a “no-hitter,” a game had to go at least nine innings.  It was, nonetheless, quite a way to end a season.

Working with Jason Varitek as his catcher that day was “the best. As rookies coming up, we aren’t going to shake off Varitek, right? Whatever he called, I tried to throw.”22

In January 2007, Amy K. Nelson actually traveled to Pearl Lagoon to see what the place was like. Hansack showed her the house in which he had been born and still lived, just behind the center-field scoreboard.

Come the 2007 season, with the idea of trying Jonathan Papelbon as a starter instead of reliever, the Red Sox looked over quite a number of pitchers during spring training for the open slot in the bullpen. Amalie Benjamin wrote that Hansack’s “stuff still intrigues the Red Sox.”23 It didn’t take long in spring training, however, to come to the decision to keep Papelbon in the pen. Hansack was placed with Pawtucket to start the season.

He had a terrific start with the PawSox, striking out 20 batters in his first 10⅔ innings, and winning his first two games, allowing only one earned run. On May 3 Boston’s Mike Timlin was diagnosed with right shoulder tendinitis, placed on the 15-day disabled list, and Hansack was called up.

On May 8, at Rogers Centre, Josh Beckett pitched seven innings of one-run ball. Francona asked Hansack to work the bottom of the eighth. He did, but he struggled. He walked the first two batters, then induced a grounder to get a force out at second base. A single drove in one run (the Red Sox still led, 9-2), with a strikeout and another walk — loading the bases — following. J.C. Romero came on and struck out the last batter. Hansack was optioned back to Pawtucket, the Red Sox preferring to see him starting there.

On May 17 Josh Beckett tore some skin on a finger, and Hansack was recalled. The next evening, in the second game of a day/night doubleheader against visiting Atlanta, Hansack was given a start. A solo homer by Chipper Jones marred his first inning. In the second inning, a Matt Diaz double drove in a second run. And in the fourth, Diaz homered. An error followed by another double made it 4-0, Braves. Hansack completed the fourth, but had taken a ball hit off his finger and was replaced by Joel Pineiro come the fifth. X-rays were negative. The final score was 14-0, Braves, and Hansack was the losing pitcher. After the game he was sent back to Pawtucket with Kason Gabbard brought in to take his place.

For Pawtucket in 2007, Hansack started in 23 (of 25) games and was 10-7, 3.61.

On September 1, 2007, rookie Clay Buchholz threw a no-hitter in his second major-league start. There had been close ones — notably Billy Rohr, in 1967 — but no Red Sox rookie had ever thrown a no-hitter before — since Hansack’s five-inning no-hitter was deemed not to qualify.

On September 4, after rosters expanded, Hansack rejoined the Red Sox. He pitched three full innings in Baltimore on September 8. The Sox were already down, 11-4, at the midpoint of the game. Hansack pitched the fifth, sixth, and seventh, allowing two hits and no runs. It was his last appearance of the season. The Red Sox had a 5½-game lead over the pack, in first place in the American League East, but it was a fragile lead that dipped to as little as a game and a half on September 19 and again on the 23rd. They held on and won the division, and ultimately the World Series. 

For his part, Hansack had a 0-1 record (4.70) to go with the world-championship ring the Red Sox presented to all who had been on the team at any point in the season.

There had been one curious incident during a Sunday night game at Fenway Park on September 16. The Yankees were in town. While Mariano Rivera was warming up in the bullpen, a ball flew out of the adjacent Red Sox bullpen and struck him on the hand. “It came in hot,” Yankees reliever Ron Villone told the New York Post. “He couldn’t feel his arm; it was numb. We were in the bullpen saying, ‘Oh no.”‘ Blame was pinned on Boston’s Eric Gagne, but he said it hadn’t come from him, that it had come from Hansack, who was warming up beside him at the time. Rivera got into the game, and earned a save.24

Hansack played in the Dominican Winter League, and put in some work in Boston over the winter as well. In mid-March he was assigned to Pawtucket, and started 25 games there in 2008. He was 6-10 with a 4.08 ERA, though after a slow start, at one point in June he threw 25 consecutive scoreless innings and into July and August had made 10 quality starts in a row. After Pawtucket was eliminated from the International League playoffs (Hansack had pitched six hitless innings in Game Two), and with the Boston Red Sox very much still in contention, Hansack was brought up to Boston on September 7.

The Sox were in second place, but only two games back, when Hansack pitched in his first major-league game of the 2008 season, throwing the final three innings (without giving up a hit) on September 13 against the Blue Jays. It was a game the Red Sox lost, 8-1. His next game was on September 17, at Tampa Bay. Starter Tim Wakefield was struggling and had given up five runs before Hansack took over in the third. He got two outs, but was charged with two unearned runs before he, too, was replaced. The loss dropped Boston back to two games behind. Hansack pitched in two more games. On September 26 he was the last pitcher in a 19-8 loss to the Yankees. He was charged with three earned runs in 2⅓ innings. As he had in 2006, he pitched in the last regular-season game of 2008. It was Red Sox against Yankees, at Fenway Park, and the score was tied, 3-3, after nine innings. Hansack pitched the top of the 10th and got the Yankees 1-2-3, with two groundouts bracketing a strikeout. And Boston scored in the bottom of the 10th, so Hansack got the win. He was 1-0 (4.05) in 2008.

Though he’d pitched in three seasons for the Red Sox, had a no-hitter (“unofficial” though it was), and contributed to two teams that went to the playoffs (the Red Sox did in 2008, though they lost in the ALCS), he was not a familiar face to most Sox fans. Keith O’Brien wrote that he “would likely not be recognized if he wore his uniform on the Red Line.”25

That fall Hansack went to the Florida Instructional League for more work. He remained on the 40-man roster. On March 28 he was optioned to Pawtucket. On April 22, to clear room for Jeff Bailey, the Red Sox put Hansack on unconditional-release waivers. He wasn’t claimed so the Red Sox signed him to a minor-league deal, as he worked rehabbing in extended spring training. He did pitch for Pawtucket, but only for one inning — the last of his professional career.

Hansack had to undergo rotator cuff and a difficult labrum surgery, both at the same time. He was unable to return to pitching professionally. He has normal use of his shoulder, and eight years later could still pitch, but not with the same force as previously.

In subsequent years, Hansack spent some time coaching at home in Pearl Lagoon, and was briefly appointed as an assistant baseball coach at the University of Maine at Farmington beginning in September 2013. A year later, on September 5, 2014, he was invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before a Portland Sea Dogs playoff game.

A number of his brothers and sisters work on cruise ships, some docking out of Miami and others out of Europe. Others work in Managua at call centers for businesses like Target. His sister Val works for the mayor of Pearl Lagoon.

At the time this biography was written in September 2016, Devern and his wife, Christine Forsley (a Mainer — they met while Devern was in Portland), lived in Carrabassett Valley, Maine, with their two young children, Ruby and Brandon, near the Sugarloaf Ski resort. Devern returns home to Pearl Lagoon for visits and to get in some fishing, shrimping, and lobstering, particularly during the cold wintertime in Maine. In the early autumn of 2016, he was knitting his own throw net to take to Nicaragua with him, the better to shrimp and fish with.26

Last revised: February 2, 2017

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, Rod Nelson of SABR’s Scouts Committee, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com. Thanks to Chris Bessey, to Christine Forsley, and to Devern Hansack.

Notes

1 “Belize was a British crown colony from 1862 until 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became fully independent from the United Kingdom in 1981. Belize was the last continental possession of the United Kingdom in the Americas.” See sunofbelize.com/en/british_honduras.php.

2 lonelyplanet.com/nicaragua/caribbean-coast/laguna-de-perlas/introduction#ixzz4JfIAFubF.

3 nicatour.net/en/nicaragua/pearls-lagoon.cfm.

4 Email from Christine Forsley on September 22, 2016.

5 Author interview with Devern Hansack on September 23, 2016.

6 Ibid.

7 Email from Christine Forsley on September 22, 2016.

8 Amy K. Nelson, “From Pearl Lagoon to the Back Bay,” February 13, 2007, ESPN.com at http://espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=2762971.

9 Silva had already played a role in the Red Sox signing pitcher Mario Pena from Managua. In later years, Silva appeared in the news packaging a couple of players (Corby McCoy and Luis Garcia) in 2012-13 for the New York Yankees. baseballamerica.com/online/prospects/international-affairs/2013/2614690.html.

10 Murray Chass, “Lobsterman From Nicaragua Could Join Red Sox Cast,” New York Times, January 14, 2007.

11 Ibid. Hansack himself said that Shipley spoke with him personally, and was not aware of the intrigue that Chass detailed.

12 Amy K. Nelson.

13 Nick Cafardo, “Masterson Is a Cape Crusader,” Boston Globe, July 28, 2006: C6.

14 Amy K. Nelson.

15 Nick Cafardo, “A Sparring Session,” Boston Globe, September 20, 2006: F5.

16 Amy K. Nelson.

17 Gordon Edes, “Lowell Unmoved by Offseason Possibilities,” Boston Globe, September 24, 2006: C11.

18 Author interview with Devern Hansack on September 23, 2016.

19 Mike Shalin, “Red Sox Bracket 2006 Season with Wins,” MLB.com, October 1, 2006. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/1693280//.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Author interview with Devern Hansack on September 23, 2016.

23 Amalie Benjamin, “Pitcher Aiming for Spot; Delcarmen Bids for Place on Sox,” Boston Globe, March 20, 2007: E1.

24 Gordon Edes, “Ramirez Will Make the Call; Slugger’s Return Now Up to Him,” Boston Globe, September 18, 2007: D5.

25 Keith O’Brien, “Latino Sox Fans Lost in Lineup Shuffle,” Boston Globe, September 23, 2008: A1.

26 Email from Christine Forsley on September 22, 2016.

El Presidente – as Martínez is often known in the U.S. – was a nickname he first received in 1979 from Orioles teammate Ken Singleton.1 In later years, Martínez’s name was bandied about as a candidate for president of Nicaragua, but only by a fringe party. The U.S. press ran with the idea, and it went mainstream in the States. His countrymen refer to Martínez as El Chirizo, which refers to his shock of mestizo hair. Without dispute, though, he has long been an enormous hero at home. In 1998, Nicaragua renamed its national stadium in his honor.

Denis José Martínez Ortiz was born on May 14, 1955 – or maybe 1954. Journalist Tito Rondón, who grew up in Nicaragua and is an authority on baseball there, noted that the daily La Prensa’s listing of the Nicaraguan team competing in the 1972 Amateur World Series showed 1954. Various other local press sources also show the earlier date of birth, but pending official confirmation, this biography will use 1955, in accord with Martínez’s own belief.

Rondón added, “When he signed with the Orioles, he chose the name José Dennis Martínez. As mother’s maiden name he wrote ‘Emilia,’ his mom’s first name – Emilia Ortiz de Martínez was her complete name. The Major League name became official when Dennis became an American citizen [in 1993]. When the stadium in Managua was named after him and they put up his name in lights, he insisted (and it was done) that they add the second ‘n’.”2

Martínez comes from Granada, a small city on the western shore of Lake Nicaragua and not far from the Pacific Ocean. Doña Emilia was in her forties when she gave birth to Dennis, her seventh child. He followed three brothers (Enrique, Guillermo, and Carlos) and three sisters (Lilliam, Aminta, and Adilia).3 He came ten years after his previous sibling, and this meant that he grew up a lonely child, as he told Bruce Newman of Sports Illustrated in 1991.4

What’s more, Dennis’s father, Edmundo Martínez, became estranged from Emilia while she was expecting Dennis. He too had a drinking problem. Edmundo had inherited land from his father, and Emilia ran a stall in which she sold the products that came from the farm.5 “My dad was. . .the quietest, most lovely drunk I ever saw,” Martínez told Newman. “He was very gentle. . .But when he was drinking, he would sell our pigs to get money for liquor.”6

“Emilia was a wonderful, honest, hard-working woman,” said Tito Rondón. “When Dennis reached the majors, he asked her to retire, and he kept asking her, but she never did. She always went to the market to put up her stall and sell fruit, cheeses, beef and other staples.”

In 2012, Martínez also recalled his childhood in a chat with La Prensa. “I was a rascal when I was a kid [the word he used was pícaro, the root of picaresque]. I grew up in the streets. They called me a bum, but I was a baseball bum.” He recalled using balls made of socks and that he was 13 years old when he held a real baseball for the first time. 7 In sandlot ball, however, he was a third baseman.8

According to Tito Rondón, “Dennis started to play in an organized way as an infielder in a youth league in the area between Granada, Masaya, and Jinotepe in 1971.” He also did some pitching and first attracted national attention that year when he led his team, Prego Junior, to the juvenile championship of Nicaragua. He threw a 1-0 shutout, allowing just a single infield hit and driving in the game’s only run with a homer.

Nicaragua’s first winter professional baseball league had folded in 1967, but an amateur summer league was established there in 1970. Founder Carlos García called it the First Division, and indeed it featured the nation’s best players. In 1972, Martínez stepped up to that level. The skinny 17-year-old pitched for his hometown team, the Granada Tiburones (Sharks). Tito Rondón recalled, “Before the season he tried out for San Fernando from Masaya. Their old catcher ‘Guaracha’ Castellón would say tongue in cheek, years later, ‘My claim to fame is that I fired Dennis Martínez from San Fernando.’

“Dennis then decided to try out for the Tiburones, and manager Heberto Portobanco also told him that he could not make the team. But he liked his strong arm, so he asked his brother, coach Joaquín ‘Chapuliche’ Portobanco, to take the youngster to the bullpen and teach him how to throw so they could evaluate him as a pitcher. He made the Granada team and the national squad.”

Most of the other Nicaraguan big-leaguers (12 altogether as of early 2013) also started in this league. Number two was pitcher Tony Chévez of León, whom the Orioles signed along with Martínez. Chévez was the bigger star at home, and expectations were higher for him.9 Yet after a fine early minor-league career, he pitched just four games with the 1977 Orioles. He hurt his shoulder in the fourth outing and was never the same.

That year, the Nicaraguan playoffs featured star performances from Martínez and Chévez. It was a four-team round robin that came down to a best-of-three tiebreaker between León and Granada. After Martínez won Game One on June 21, the series finished with a doubleheader on June 22 at the National Stadium in the capital city, Managua. In the opener, Chévez won 5-0 – but in the nightcap, Granada beat León with five innings from Martínez in relief.10 “You just took the ball,” said Chévez in 2009. “Everybody was watching.”11

In August 1972, the Torneo de la Amistad (Friendship Tournament) was held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Rookie Martínez surprise got a start against Cuba in a game that Nicaragua won, 5-4 – its first victory over the regional powerhouse in 20 years. 12 Later that year, the 20th Amateur World Series was held in Managua from November 15 through December 3. The hosts, Nicaragua, won the bronze medal with a 13-2 record. Martínez pitched in five games, starting two; he was 1-1, 1.86.

Less than three weeks later, on December 23, 1972, Managua suffered its devastating earthquake. That New Year’s Eve, as Roberto Clemente left for Nicaragua on his mercy mission, his plane went down off Puerto Rico, killing all on board. Martínez had come to know Clemente because Roberto had managed the Puerto Rican team in the Amateur World Series. More than 40 years later, Martínez said, “I had two idols – one as a pitcher, Juan Marichal, and the other, Clemente, as a human being. I took him as an example. He got me to think more about helping your neighbor, helping children, which was his goal and now mine too.”13

In 1973, there was a split in Nicaragua’s top amateur ranks that would last through 1977. Two leagues evolved under rival federations: the Roberto Clemente League and the Hope and Reconstruction League, or ESPERE. Martínez played for the Granada entry in ESPERE in 1973.

When he was nearly 18, on April 29, 1973, Martínez married Luz Marina García, a fellow student from Granada. “She was 15,” said Tito Rondón. “Dennis signed several months later, and left Nicaragua in March 1974. Friends told her to leave him, that in the U.S. he would forget her. But he had told her to wait for him, and she had faith in him. And in 1977, when he returned to the U.S., to the Orioles, she was with him.” They had four children: Dennis Jr., Erica, Gilberto, and Ricardo. Martínez has often credited the support of his wife in helping his life get back on track and remain there.

Owing to a conflict between international baseball organizations FIBA and FEMBA, two Amateur World Series were held in parallel in 1973. The FEMBA event took place (without Cuba) in Managua from November 22 through December 5. Following the quake, the National Stadium was in ruins and the Nicaraguan economy was still suffering. Yet the hosts still spent a precious $500,000 to stage the tourney.14

Nicaragua faced the U.S. in the gold medal game, held in León; 9,000 fans thronged the 6,000-seat stadium. The Nicaraguans had to settle for silver, though, as Martínez lost a 1-0, 10-inning duel to Rich Wortham, who pitched in four seasons in the majors (1978-80; 1983). “I heard Dennis plead with his teammates, ‘Please get me just one run, one is all I need,’” recalled Tito Rondón, who got to sit in the dugout for the first six innings. “But Wortham was much superior to the Nica hitters. Dennis had tougher foes and he tired in the 10th.”

Manager Tony Castaño told Chévez – and Martínez too, one may infer –“You gotta go north. There’s nothing for you here.”15 He tipped off his fellow Cuban, Julio Blanco Herrera, a bird dog for Baltimore.16 Regional scouting supervisor Ray Poitevint then entered the picture. He later said, “Dennis looked like a pencil. But he had natural talent, as much as anyone. And he was hungry. He wanted to be something.”17 When he was signed, Martínez weighed a mere 135 pounds.18 As a scout, though, Poitevint projected how his prospect would look when mature. Martínez filled out to 160 pounds by the time he reached Baltimore, eventually weighing 185 as a veteran. He stood 6-feet-1.

Tito Rondón and a colleague named Hans Bendixen were actually in Poitevint’s hotel room, having an engrossing conversation about scouting with Ray and Julio Blanco Herrera, when Doña Emilia arrived with Dennis. “The signing was cloak and dagger stuff,” said Rondón. “Ray and Julio asked us a favor; not to publish or talk about it.” Accounts vary as to the bonus Baltimore paid, but whether it was $10,000 or as little as $3,000, Poitevint later called it “the best money I ever spent.”19

According to Tito Rondón, keeping the signing quiet enabled Martínez to play for Granada at the beginning of the 1974 Nicaraguan season. At that time, he was also an engineering student at La Universidad Nacional Autónoma – he had a good mind for mathematics. He went there for just the first year, though, before going to the United States – Doña Emilia was not best pleased that he quit school.20

In March 1974, Dennis and Tony started their pro careers with Miami in the Florida State League (Class A). They had traveled the world before with the national team and had pitched in big stadiums, so they were not overwhelmed. Martínez ascended rapidly through the Baltimore system. In his first year with Miami, he was 15-6 with a 2.06 ERA. He struck out 162 men and allowed just four homers in 179 innings. He started the 1975 season with Miami again, but after going 12-4, 2.61, he was promoted to Double-A Asheville. He finished the season with two games at Triple-A Rochester.

Martínez pitched strongly again at Rochester in 1976 (14-8, 2.50). There were warning signs – “Unnamed teammates stated that the pitcher had developed ‘bad night-time habits,’ and enjoyed the party life.” Even so, he was the International League’s Pitcher of the Year, winning the Triple Crown of pitching. It was only the second time it had been done in the league’s history.21

Thus, in September the big club rewarded him with his first call to the majors. Rochester manager Joe Altobelli thought that Martínez would be a better big-league pitcher than Mark Fidrych, who was then enjoying his marvelous rookie year for the Detroit Tigers. Baltimore superscout Jim Russo agreed, saying, “We haven’t rushed Dennis, and our patience should pay off.” (Of course, the Orioles had that luxury back then, since their pitching was so deep.) Russo added, “Martínez and Fidrych have similar styles. They keep the ball down and have exceptional sinking stuff.”22

Martínez later described his repertoire to Orioles historian John Eisenberg. “My stuff was decent. I had a good curveball. My fastball was decent. My curveball made my fastball better. Everyone was aware of my curveball, so my fastball went right by them. But mostly, I had a big heart. . .It isn’t the stuff you have, it’s how you execute it. With desire, determination, that’s how I did it.”23 Looking back in 2011, he added, “As soon as I got a changeup, I blossomed.”24

Martínez’s debut came in long relief against the Tigers at Memorial Stadium on September 14, Ross Grimsley and Dave Pagan gave up seven runs between them in the first four innings. The rookie entered and struck out the first three batters he faced. He didn’t allow a run the rest of the way either, and he got the win because the Orioles scored four in the bottom of the seventh. After that he started three times, losing two of them, including a 1-0 decision to Boston at Fenway Park in the second-last game of the season.

As part of his development, that winter Martínez went to play in Puerto Rico with the Caguas Criollos. Thomas Van Hyning, who has chronicled Puerto Rico’s winter league in two books, wrote, “Martínez was part of the Baltimore-Caguas axis between 1976-77 and 1980-81. During this period he helped Caguas win three titles.” Van Hyning added, “Puerto Rico was a second home to Martínez. . .the quality of play appealed to [him], and he gave it his all, including the 1978-79 championship game when he bested Mayagüez’s Jack Morris.”25

Wayne Garland, who won 20 games for Baltimore in 1976, signed as a free agent with the Cleveland Indians. Martínez therefore had a good chance to crack the starting rotation in 1977. Instead, he wound up as a swingman, starting 13 games in 42 appearances. He was 14-7, though his ERA was 4.10. In those days, four-man rotations were still the norm; Jim Palmer, Rudy May, Grimsley, and Mike Flanagan – who won the #4 starter job – started 143 games among them that year, completing 59. Manager Earl Weaver “was inclined to go with Martínez and Scott McGregor when he had to make a call on the bullpen. . .mainly because both rookies have displayed an ability to get the ball over the plate.”26

Martínez entered Baltimore’s rotation in 1978, along with McGregor. In December 1977, May had been traded to the Montreal Expos, and later the same month, Grimsley signed with the same club as a free agent. Martínez was 16-11, 3.52 in 40 games (38 starts). He had a poor first half, but at the All-Star break, pitching coach Ray Miller asked Dennis’s wife what Martínez was doing differently that he hadn’t done in the minors. Luz Marina replied that he was dipping his shoulder.27 He also addressed how he was tipping his pitches with facial expressions by sticking a big chaw of tobacco and bubblegum in his cheek – it became his visual trademark.28 In the second half, Martínez was 9-4, 2.30. He threw complete games in 11 of his last 14 starts, and in two of the other three games, he went 11 and 8 innings.

When Baltimore won the AL pennant in 1979, Martínez led the league in starts (39), complete games (18), and innings pitched (292 1/3). His results were so-so, though – 15-16, 3.66. After losing two of his first three starts, Martínez reeled off 10 straight wins in 14 outings from April 22 through June 20. He didn’t pitch that badly the rest of the way, but had little to show for it – he didn’t really pitch well enough to win much of the time either.

Some Orioles insiders, according to New York sportswriter Dick Young, cited Martínez’s insistence that Dave Skaggs catch him rather than Rick Dempsey.29 Skaggs joked, “When I die, they’re going to bury me 60 feet, six inches away from Dennis Martínez.”30 Martínez told John Eisenberg, “I had a lot of disagreements with Dempsey. Whatever I was doing, it wasn’t good enough or I wasn’t doing things the right way.”31 Dempsey too acknowledged the battle and the two-way frustrations, but he said, “Earl made sure I knew what he wanted us to do with each hitter. I know Dennis didn’t like it, but we won that way.”32

At least at some level, worries about his family back in Nicaragua may have been a factor too. The Sandinista revolution was in full swing, and amid the civil war, Martínez could not reach Doña Emilia by telephone. Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned on July 17. It was soon thereafter that Ken Singleton said, “You’re going to be El Presidente,” and the name stuck.

In the postseason, Martínez started Game Three of the AL Championship Series versus the California Angels. At Anaheim Stadium, he took a 3-2 lead into the ninth inning, but after Rod Carew’s one-out double, Weaver called for Don Stanhouse, who couldn’t hold the lead.

Martínez appeared twice in the World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He started Game Four at Three Rivers Stadium, got knocked out of the box in the second inning – but the Orioles’ six-run rally in the eighth inning got him off the hook. In Game Seven, he was the fifth pitcher that Weaver used in the ninth inning, when the Pirates scored two crucial insurance runs. Dennis came on with the bases loaded and hit Bill Robinson with a pitch, but then got Willie Stargell to hit into a double play.

The 1980 season was a setback for Martínez. A sore shoulder kept him out of action for most of two months from mid-May through mid-July. He was able to pitch only 99 2/3 innings, with 12 starts in 25 appearances. Bullpen coach Elrod Hendricks made an interesting observation – Martínez had not played winter ball in the 1979-80 season. “A lot of Latin pitchers cannot go without pitching in the winter,” Ellie said. “They simply develop their arms a different way.”33

Trade rumors circulated around Martínez after that off year, but his market value was low, and it turned out to be better for them that he stayed. El Presidente bounced back nicely in the strike season of 1981 – his 14 wins led the AL, and he lost just five while posting a 3.32 ERA. He came in fifth in the voting for the Cy Young Award. General Manager Hank Peters said that June, “We didn’t want to break up our pitching staff and we’ve always felt Dennis had the arm and the ability. It was just a matter of him putting it all together.”34

Martínez signed a five-year contract with Baltimore after the ’81 season. He was a workhorse again in 1982, starting 39 games and going 16-12. However, his ERA was on the high side at 4.21. That September, he had to return to Nicaragua for the funeral of his father.35 “He was walking and a truck hit him and killed him in Granada,” Martínez recalled in 1985, suspecting that alcohol was likely a factor. 36 Despite Edmundo’s grave alcoholism, Dennis still loved his father greatly – though he later regretted drinking together with him when he went back home.37

The year 1983 was when Martínez’s personal problems came to a head. It was reflected in his performance on the mound – 7-16, with a career-high ERA of 5.53. The Orioles did not use him in either the AL Championship Series against the Chicago White Sox or the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. Nonetheless, Martínez is still proud of his championship ring from ’83, even though he thought the ’79 squad was more talented. “This was the year I got help for my alcohol problem,” he said in 2002. “It was a bad year, but I got a new start.”38

After Martínez was arrested for drunk driving in December 1983, the Orioles staged an intervention. He entered rehab in Baltimore’s Sheppard Pratt Hospital. He told UPI sportswriter Milton Richman that he was still in denial at first, but then his counselor encouraged Martínez to find strength in prayer. “That,” he told Richman, “was the turning point of my life.”39 He stayed in control with the ongoing help of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.40

It took more than three years for Martínez to re-emerge as an effective pitcher, though. He was 6-9, 5.02 in 1984. “I was happy to see the improvement in my mental problem,” he told Richman. “That was my prime concern. Baseball was second.”41

As part of his effort to rebound on the field, Dennis returned to Puerto Rico near the end of the 1984-85 winter season, joining the Santurce Cangrejeros.42 Martínez got another chance to be a rotation regular for Baltimore in 1985 after Mike Flanagan ruptured an Achilles tendon. He did post a 13-11 record, but his ERA remained lofty at 5.15. “Physically, he is back,” said Ray Miller that June. “Mentally, he is in the upward direction.”43

Martínez’s stock fell in 1986. He pitched just four games for Baltimore in April and then – bothered again by a sore shoulder – suffered a demotion to Rochester. In mid-June, the Orioles traded him to Montreal with a player to be named later, receiving a player to be named later in return. During the second half of the season, he started 15 games and relieved in four for the Expos, with no particular success (3-6, 4.59). He considered quitting.

After the ’86 season, Montreal refused to offer more than $250,000 to Martínez, who had been making $500,000 in the last year of his Baltimore pact.44 He became a free agent, but there were no takers, and he was barred from re-signing with the Expos until May 1, 1987. He went back to the minors again to get in shape, pitching for the independent Miami Marlins (Class A). He then re-signed with Montreal for the minimum salary. He was just 3-2, 4.46 for the Expos’ Triple-A club in Indianapolis, but when Montreal farmed out Jay Tibbs in June, Martínez got another chance.

From then on, it all came together. During six and a half seasons with the Expos, Martínez was consistently among the best pitchers in the National League. His winning percentage was good (97-66, .595), but that wasn’t all. His ERA was 2.96, including a major-league-best 2.39 in 1991. He was an NL All-Star in 1990, becoming the oldest player to make his All-Star debut, and repeated that honor in ’91 and ’92. He again received Cy Young consideration in 1991.

Along with attaining inner peace, Martínez had become a master craftsman on the mound. In 1988, he told Montreal sportswriter Ian MacDonald, “Before, when I was drinking, I used to think I was good. I didn’t think about pitching. . .I used to just try to throw the ball past the hitter. Now I think. I don’t say it makes it easy, but it makes it easier.” He moved the ball around, changed speeds, focused on the weaknesses of the hitters, and made constant adjustments, setting up batters based on their reactions from pitch to pitch.45 He also hid the ball well with his motion and threw from varied arm angles.

Many insights also come from James Buckley’s book Perfect: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Twenty Perfect Games. Ron Hassey, the catcher for Martínez’s flawless gem, said, “He had to hit his spots; he had to have his command to get guys out. But Dennis had outstanding control, and he knew how to pitch.” Center fielder Marquis Grissom said, “It was like an artist making a painting.” Opposing catcher Mike Scioscia also noted how fine Martínez’s command was, saying, “We might have played 20 innings against him and never gotten a hit.” Tito Rondón, then with La Prensa, said, “Dennis Martínez was already the most popular man in [Nicaragua] before he pitched a perfect game. Now he’s just more popular.”46

In December 1993, the 38-year-old veteran signed as a free agent with the Cleveland Indians. General manager John Hart viewed his club as a contender, and owner Richard Jacobs was willing to open up his wallet. Montreal had been paying Martínez around $3 million a year from 1991 on, but Cleveland gave him a two-year contract for $9 million. This was vast wealth by the standards of Nicaragua, where his needy countrymen already counted heavily on him.

Martínez continued to pitch well for the Indians – 32-17 (.653) with a 3.58 ERA in his three seasons there. He was particularly effective in 1995, when he made the AL All-Star team and helped Cleveland to win the pennant. In his first return to the postseason since 1979, he started once against Boston in the Division Series, getting a no-decision. He was 1-1 in the ALCS against Seattle, including seven scoreless innings in the decisive Game Six against fearsome Randy Johnson, even though his whole body hurt.47 He was 0-1 in two starts against Atlanta in the World Series.

Martínez pitched only once in 1996 after the end of July, though – elbow problems disabled him. He became a free agent again that November, and it took him until late the following February before he landed with a new team, because his elbow was perceived as too risky. The Seattle Mariners finally took a chance, and as he approached his 42rd birthday, Martínez won a spot on the roster.

He was a good influence in the clubhouse and showed initial signs that he was not done yet, but Martínez made only nine ineffective starts for the Mariners. Although his elbow held up, a surprising 29 walks in 49 innings led to a 1-5 record and 7.71 ERA. Seattle released him in May 1997. The following month, he decided to retire, citing the lack of an opportunity to keep pitching.48 He established the Dennis Martínez Foundation in 1997, with the goal of helping children, primarily in Nicaragua but also elsewhere in Latin America.

In the winter of 1997-98, however, Martínez decided to go back to Puerto Rico once more to play winter ball. As he had the previous year, he was again hoping to catch on with the Florida Marlins, since he had made his home in Miami for many years and the Nicaraguan population in south Florida was sizable. Various teams watched Martínez in his playoff showcase with the Mayagüez Indios, but Atlanta was the only one to show serious interest.49

During his 23rd and final season in the majors, Martínez was mainly a reliever, making five starts in 53 appearances. He was 4-6, 4.45 in 91 innings pitched. On June 2, he finally tied his old idol Juan Marichal for most wins in the majors by a Latino pitcher. It came with a complete-game 12-hit shutout at Milwaukee. He went ahead with a victory in relief over the Giants in San Francisco on August 9. His last win, #245, came in middle relief at Atlanta’s Turner Field on September 25. He retired all four New York Mets he faced.

Martínez got into four NLCS games for Atlanta in 1998, getting one of the Braves’ two wins against the San Diego Padres. In February 1999, he announced his final retirement, saying, “There is nothing more to do.”50

A couple of months later, the Nicaraguan Baseball Federation named Martínez coordinator of the national team for the Pan American Games, to be held in Winnipeg that July. He said that he might even join the team if it needed pitching.51 When July rolled around, he was still planning to work an inning or two in exhibition games, with an eye toward appearing against Cuba or the U.S. if Nicaragua made it as far as the semifinals. He was motivated because the Pan Am Games were an Olympic qualifying event.52 It only got as far as an exhibition appearance in Panama, though.53 A bad knee was one reason, but Mexico knocked out Nicaragua in the quarterfinals.

After retiring, Martínez worked for the Nicaraguan Visitors and Travel Bureau. He also helped coach at Westminster Christian High School in Miami. His youngest son, Ricky, was a player there. In the spring of 2005, with all his children out of school except for Ricky, he returned to the Orioles organization as a pitching instructor in camp. Old teammate Mike Flanagan, who was in the Baltimore front office, had kept in touch with him over the years about a possible return.54

Martínez spent six years (2007-12) as a minor-league pitching coach in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He enjoyed helping many young prospects develop; among them was his son Ricky, who signed with the Cardinals as a non-drafted free agent in 2010. However, Dennis was hoping to get a shot at the big-league level.55 In November 2012, he got that chance when the Houston Astros named him as their bullpen coach.

Martínez also remained involved with the Nicaraguan baseball scene. He managed the national team in the 2011 Baseball World Cup, as well as the 2013 World Baseball Classic qualifying tournaments, held in September and November 2012. Son Ricky was part of the squad for the WBC qualifiers.

In 2004, Martínez became eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He received 16 votes from the Baseball Writers Association of America. That level of support meant he was “one and done” – off the ballot in 2005. Five years later, baseball author Joe Posnanski wrote, “When you add it all up he has a very similar case to Jack Morris, who is gaining Hall of Fame momentum.”56 It remains to be seen if the Veterans Committee may eventually consider Martínez. In 2011, however, he became a member of the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame in La Romana, Dominican Republic.

One may conjecture that without the lost years in the middle of his career, Dennis Martínez might be an even stronger candidate for Cooperstown. But the flip side of that argument is that his career only became what it did because of the resurrection. “I never did,” he said when asked in 2002 if he thought he would pitch for 23 years. “I think after recovery I had more of an effort to live life. And the competitor in me wanted to keep going. I did everything that God allowed me to do.

“I think the key to my longevity was staying in shape and changing my life after my addiction. Before that, I did not take good care of myself. . .But I had my family and I had a lot to play for.”57

An updated version of this biography appears in SABR’s No-Hitters book (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.