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beyond
the last star
a
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You can read the first 65% of this story for free; if you like it, you can read the rest for $.75 (payable by paypal or credit card.)
[ Read more about author Efraim Zimbalist Graves ]
This isn't "Damn Yankees," but this little Mayan woman does sell her soul to her god in order to control her knuckleball ("Kukulkanball") and earn her way onto the San Diego Padres roster as the first-ever woman in the major leagues.
The Magician
I turned around, thinking that he was discouraged, but he caught me by the arm before I could leave. He was a tall, blonde and strong man of thirty-something, and I could see the sun going down behind him above the trees, and the Mayan ruins that were all around this hotel gave me a sudden vision of a scene from the recent Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto, and it made me wince. I saw myself at the top of Teotihuacan's giant Pyramid of the Moon. In slow motion, the priest's sword lopped off the head of the sacrificial victim, and this head was promptly handed to me, and I was wearing the colorful robes and feathers of a priestess. I smiled, went into my windup, and threw the head. Instead of rolling down the steps of the pyramid, however, the head flew into the air like a knuckleball, dipping and floating crazily down to the bottom.
* * *
I was born in Oxtapakab, a very small Mayan pueblo almost an hour south of Merida, but my family worked in a tourist hotel on the beach in Merida. As a child and tomboy, I played baseball with my four brothers, who grew-up to play minor league baseball for the Yucatán Leones. I always expected I would one day go along with them when they left to play ball at the Parque Kukulkán in Merida. And that is exactly what I did.
But first, I learned how to throw the knuckleball from an American, Joe Meister, who had dropped out of the San Diego Padres organization because of his drinking habits and moved down south where the rules weren't so strict toward pitchers who liked to enjoy a beer every hour or so. Did I mention that throwing a knuckler is an art form? Yes, it is, and I, Isabel Juanita Perez-Velasquez, or "Dipsie Izzie" and "The Mayan Magician," as I was called in the National League during my season there, became the best artiste of this one pitch that there ever was.
I suppose this is one of the main reasons why I was hated by so many of the major league batters I came up against. First, I was a woman, and I was the first woman ever to be signed to a major league contract. Second, I threw "butterflies," which to major leaguers is the equivalent of a pro soccer player trying to stop another player who can scramble around like a prima ballerina. Or, it's like a basketball player who has to try to shoot into a basket that keeps moving on him.
Joe Meister taught me how to throw the pitch while he was vacationing at the hotel where I worked in Merida. The Hacienda Xcanatun is a picturesque 18th Century Mayan coastal resort with 18 rooms. Joe found out I was a pitcher when I was tossing large bars of soap down the hallway outside his suite to the other maids who would catch them on the fly and put them inside the bathrooms.
"Hey, e'se es un poco de brazo que usted tien," he told me, sticking his head out the door.
"I know. I pitch to my brothers who play for the Yucatan Lions," I said, and that's how Joe found out I spoke fluent English, which I had learned from the British Catholic Priest in my village, Father John Cook.
"That's a coincidence!" said Joe. "I pitch for them."
That's when I told him I wanted to learn to pitch for them also, and I wanted him to teach me. The look on my face was deadly serious, and Joe knew right away that this five-foot-four Mayan female had the courage to learn. "You do understand that the Mexican leagues don't permit women to play?" he pointed out.
"I know that the Lions are in last place. I also know from my brothers that baseball is a business and that if they believe they can win with me on the mound, then they will make an exception," I said. "However, I would like to learn a pitch that will make me an equal with the men. Do you know of such a pitch, señor?"
Yes, Joe knew of such a pitch, and it actually surprised him to think there had been no American woman who had thought of this before. It made sense. Throwing the knuckleball did not require a man's strength or stamina. In fact, power was a liability. Also, a woman's smaller hand would make it easier to grip the ball the way the knuckler required.
"Tell you what. I've got some gloves and a ball in my room. You've got a pretty mean margarita that you serve in your cantina. I'll meet you in the tropical garden in fifteen minutes. It has a long stretch of grass where we can practice throwing. You meet me there with about a dozen of those margaritas, and I'll show you how to pitch the equalizer, the knuckleball."
Joe Meister didn't know it that day but what he was about to teach me was to be officially inscribed on a piece of laminated parchment on a plaque with my picture, inside a glass case, inside the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame. His instructions to me will also forever be emblazoned in the memories of the 187 major league baseball men who went down swinging that year, swatting vainly at Izzie's floating dipster. How quickly I adapted to these instructions to create my unique brand of knuckleball was what made me "the magician":
"To get a perfect knuckleball grip, hold out your thumb, and the first two fingers. Then place your thumb tip and first two fingertips on the ball all at the same time, and not on any seams. Then push the ball with your left hand into the palm of your right hand, leaving your fingertips in place. Your fingers will curl. Then use your ring finger and/or pinky to gently hold the ball so it won't slide out the side of your hand. Some people use only the ring finger; others use just the pinky and place the knuckle of the ring finger against the ball. It's really whatever you're comfortable with and whatever works. Most people try different grips until they get one to work consistently.
"Then rev back and throw it. Remember, don't snap your wrist down (like a fastball) and don't push the ball (like a shotput). It's a relatively normal throwing motion. Let the forward momentum of your arm create speed on the ball (as it rests against the palm), and then let your fingers push the ball out when the momentum shifts to the release point. You'll find that you release the ball a little earlier than if you were throwing a fastball, mainly because of the grip. You'll take your ring and/or pinky finger off of the ball just before you release and just as you start to push the ball out with your fingertips."
By the time the sun was setting over the garden, there were fifteen tourists standing and marveling at the dark-skinned, 22-year-old, in the maid's uniform, who was tossing flutterballs with accuracy to her American coach. In a few hours, I had mastered the grip and had developed a wind-up that I would gradually perfect, in the months to come, until Joe believed I was indeed ready for my audition with the Lions. My future agent was one of those tourists that day, and he introduced himself to me after Joe was exhausted and needed to reinforce his alcoholic constitution inside the hotel cantina.
"Good evening, Miss Velasquez. My name is Andrew Wilmington. I am an agent for professional athletes in San Diego, California. I was watching your progress with quite some interest. Have you ever thought of contracting yourself with a professional women's' softball team? In fact, I am in touch with some very . . ."
"Excuse me, but I am contracting with the Yucatan Lions. I want to play professional baseball," I said. "My brothers play for them, and I want to join them. Come with me to my village, señor. I will show you why I want to pitch," I told Mr. Wilmington, taking his hand as the sun finally sank behind us into the ocean's waves.
* * *
We drove out to my village in the twilight, and I couldn't see anything outside, except the grass and the twin dirt paths made from the many used cars and trucks that had gone before us, which I watched in the headlights' beam. I told Mr. Wilmington a story about a governor of Merida, one Felipe Carillo, who fell in love with an American, Alma Reed, a writer for the New York Times, during the early 1920s.
"We still sing a song about them, and they are my personal patron saints. Carrillo formed ejidos, or communal farms, legalized birth control, gave women the right to vote and had the constitution translated into Mayan. Our people thought we might be saved from abject poverty."
He was curious. "What happened?"
I flashed him a dark look, as the engine in my old Ford Explorer popped angrily. "Reed and Carrillo promptly fell in love, and he nicknamed her Peregrino, or pilgrim. Her articles helped Mexico to recover artifacts Americans had pillaged from the ruins. The lovers planned to marry in January 1924, and Reed returned home to San Francisco to prepare. Days before the wedding, hacienda owners angered by Carrillo's reforms marched him, with Reed's intended wedding band in his hand, to Merida's cemetery and executed him by firing squad. The bullet holes are still visible in the wall near his grave."
"How tragic! I can see why you admire them."
"Yes, the Maya was once a powerful civilization, but the Spanish and now the gringos have taken it over. We work as laborers for their tourist investments. Many people believe we want to bring back our past, but they are wrong. We want modern advancements, just like you have. iPods, cell phones, health care, air conditioning, you name it. But we cannot advance as long as we are conquered to be peasants, just because we are Maya."
We pulled into the hacienda, and it consisted of one main building, where an elderly Mexican family, the Ortegas, still lived, but the main Mayan population, about two-hundred families, lived in small, thatch-roofed huts and concrete blocked houses that faced the concrete strip running down the middle of the road. There were only two street lamps powered by an old gas engine generator that could be heard chugging into the night, and as we pulled in front of the three concrete blocks that I said were my family's home, I couldn't help but again feel sadness for these once-noble natives. Conquered by the Spanish, subjugated by the Mexican Government in cooperation with the North American investment community, we were now banished to the pueblos next to the old haciendas of our colonial overlords.
Inside the largest building, which served as our family's living room, my four brothers, Juan, Pedro, Alfonzo and Ricardo, were watching the Mexican National Soccer Team on the tiny color television set, up above in the corner. There was also a long display of holy articles and flowers on a wooden shrine next to the wall. The rest of the room was furnished with inexpensive chairs and a small couch from Merida's new Wal-Mart, covered with a multicolored, homemade Indian blanket. The mother of our family, Dolores, was sitting on the couch with a bowl of fruit, which she was carefully slicing up for dinner. Our father, Alonzo, had died three years before from a heart attack. His picture was up on the same religious shrine in the center of the room.
"You must excuse my family," I said. "They can merely speak Spanish. I am the only one who finished school with Father Cook. I try to teach my brothers some English, in case they get drafted by the Padres, up north, but they haven't learned much. Es correcto, mi hermanos? Usted es un manojo de burros, no?"
Each man stood up and shook Mr. Wilmington's hand.
"Es un agente para los jugadores del be'isbol en Ame'rica," I told them, and their eyes brightened.
After I explained to my family that I had today learned a new pitch that was going to get me into professional baseball, not one of them seemed to scoff. I have a strange power over my family, as if they believed I was, indeed, a magical creature.
As we ate dinner with him that night, Mr. Wilmington also became convinced that I would succeed in my baseball quest. He told my family that I seemed to exude that spark of desire he had seen in other athletes--mostly males--but it was the same flash which told him I would do anything and pay any price to achieve personal greatness.
"It was the same spirit that harkened back to those boys who pitched against barns in rural America, and the present crop of Caribbean and Mexican players who sacrificed time and energy on the rock-pitted playing fields, playing until dark, playing until their hands were blistered, their knees and elbows were bloodied, and their muscles were sore, playing until they got that call from the men in those offices far above them, who also knew the spark that I knew so well, who also knew the glow that separated these athletes from the masses of others who had neither the talent nor the urgent dream to get them to the top of the heap." He smiled at me as I translated his words, and, one month later, he negotiated my first contract with the Yucatan Leones.
Copyright © 2008 by Efraim Zimbalist Graves . All rights reserved unless specified otherwise above.
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