¡Ay, ay, ay, no es bueno!
Mea culpa.
Disculpa aceptada.
I think I got that correct. LOL Don't push my Spanish cuz it ain't good. My boys loved the New Jork Jankees. That was their English pronunciation. Jes, it was. Loved those guys. It was a very good team as well.
Our 3rd baseman was Demetrio Alomar brother of Sandy Alomar Sr who played 11 seasons in the major leagues with 4 teams including the New York Yankees who was with in the 1976 World Series. Sandy Sr is the father of Sandy Alomar, Jr a 20-yr major leaguer and his Hall of Famer brother, Roberto Alomar.
Demetrio is their uncle. He played 2 years in the lower minors and was 29 when I joined the team. Great fielder with a rocket arm. The curve ball was, like for so many good ballplayers, his Achilles heel.
Tony Alomar, another relative, but I don't know how, was also on our team. Tony had a much more productive pro career. He had played with the AAA Rochester Red Wings in 1957 and '58 in 2 of his 6 yrs of American AAA pro ball before returning to play in the Mexican League for 3 more. He returned to Rochester and married the girl he met in Rochester when playing with the Red Wings. Fate would have Tony's wife, Daisy, a friend and fellow employee with my mom at the Rochester City Hall. He had been the Puerto Rico 1st baseman from 1965 to 1967. I joined the team in 67 and pushed aging Tony (34) to the #1 pinch hitting role to go along with his roles as hitting coach and 1st base coach.
I forgot another non-Hispanic player because he was in the pitching rotation, Timmy Tyler. He was another ex-pro and fellow youth league pitcher always 1 league ahead of me as kids due to our 2-year age difference. He was a pitcher in the Baltimore chain. He suffered an arm injury and was released after having had 2 very successful minor league seasons at the A and the AA levels. After winter rehab he signed with the Stars for the '67 summer season. Timmy 's deal was rather unique. He signed on with the understanding that he would pitch every other game all summer. Crazy, but he did it and won a **** load of games. The following season Baltimore signed him on as a minor league pitching coach and my high school Jewish pitching ace and good buddy, who was a year behind me in school, took part of Timmy's pitching role, but also played center field when he wasn't pitching because he was that good, but also could hit. Thus, both of those seasons saw only 3 non-Hispanic players on the team.
As Speedy Gonzales said. Arriba Arriba! Andale Andale!
Once we non-Hispanics had been accepted into the fold (and that took 2/3 weeks), we started to break balls pretending to be grasping Spanish and we yelled this out during sprints and base running drills but mostly when a guy was running to score a run or getting more than a single. Luckily, the rest of the team found it hilarious and joined in. Si, No,Hokay, Jes, Senor, Senora, Senorita, chiquita, segunda, tercero, cuatro, taco, tamale, habanero pimentos, Jalapeno, Chile de arbol (the last 3 were offered up raw to prove we belonged, a real teary but hilarious initiation), base (Hah! same in Spanish or English), robar, soltero, doble, triple, carrera, bola, huelga, tachar, cono, mierda, estupido were a large part of our english/Hispanic butchered language. They butchered the English and we the Spanish and it made for a lot of hilarity and camaraderie. Oh, to relive those baseball summers and hockey winters of my early adulthood again.
Best part of all of it is my wife was my lady during all of this and when it ended, we got married and just like in the movies we've lived happily ever after. Looking to enjoy quite a bit more together if we can avoid this virus.
