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Play ball: B.C. teacher
helps Cuban relive glory
Canadian tries to get
recognition for former major-league pitcher,
94, forgotten by the baseball establishment
By Tom Hawthorn. Special
to The
Globe and Mail. Canada, May 3, 2005.
Ernest (Kit) Krieger, a Vancouver teacher,
speaks un poco espagnol. Conrado (Connie)
Marrero, a Havana retiree, speaks a leetle
inglese. The language they share is baseball.
They both were once pitchers, although
Mr. Krieger's professional career was so
short as to be a sporting oddity. Mr. Marrero
enjoyed great longevity on the mound, as
in life.
The oldest-living member of the old Washington
Senators baseball team turned 94 last week,
an event uncelebrated in the city where
he once bamboozled opposing batters.
Major-league baseball returned to the United
States capital this spring after a long
hiatus. A parade of former players has been
cheered by grateful fans. Mr. Marrero has
not been among them.
Retired baseball players are a close-knit
group who play games for charity, sign autographs
for profit, and retell old stories for the
sheer joy of it. Mr. Marrero lives in isolation
from his baseball comrades, a hero in Cuba
who is all but forgotten in a nearby land
where many once marvelled at his pitching
mastery.
"He lives outside the fraternity,
totally cut off from the world in which
he once lived," Mr. Krieger said.
For seven years, Mr. Krieger has tried
without success to integrate Mr. Marrero
into the baseball community. His initiatives
have been thwarted by a baseball establishment
unable or unwilling to circumvent the U.S.
Treasury Department's sanctions on trade
with Cuba.
The old pitcher lives in a Spartan room
in his grandson's walk-up apartment in Havana's
Cerro neighbourhood. The walls are bare,
betraying no hint of the celebrated past
of one of Cuba's best pitchers in history.
He does not receive a baseball pension.
The apartment is a long fly ball from the
Estadio Latinoamerica, where he once earned
the admiration -- and animosity, depending
on club allegiance -- of his countrymen.
Beneath the grandstand, his image has been
painted on a wall, part of a mural that
includes an image of Fidel Castro swinging
a bat while dressed in green fatigues.
The Cuban leader is often wrongly described
as having been scouted by the major leagues.
He was more weekend warrior than serious
prospect. After the revolution, he did pitch
in exhibition games for a team called Los
Barbudos (the Bearded Ones).
Mr. Castro shows little interest in the
history of Cuban baseball before 1959, an
era of low-paying contracts he dismisses
as "slave baseball."
So, it is left to Mr. Krieger and a handful
of die-hard baseball fans to remind the
world of the achievements of Mr. Marrero.
Conrado Eugenio Marrero Ramos was born
to a poor sugarcane farmer in Sagua La Grande
on April 25, 1911. His country roots earned
him the nickname El Guajiro -- the Hillbilly.
As an amateur, he was Cuba's greatest pitcher,
a national hero in the 1940s known for a
vast repertoire of pitches.
Listed wishfully as 5-foot-7, a measurement
certainly taken while wearing spikes, he
was a pudgy 158-pounder, looking little
like an athlete, not the less for the ubiquitous
presence of a fat cigar. However, he was
blessed with a farmer's large hands, with
long fingers the better to grip a baseball.
Mr. Marrero did not turn professional until
age 35, then became a major-league rookie
with Washington in 1950 at age 38. He celebrated
his 39th birthday four days after his debut.
He was called the "slow-ball senor,"
while his pitching motion was said to resemble
"an orangutan heaving a 16-pound shot."
"Marrero's legs are so short that
to batters he sometimes appears to be buried
up to his waist on the mound," Life
Magazine told readers in 1951. "He
is so old that he creaks like an unoiled
windmill if he has to work more than once
a week. He can throw a baseball just hard
enough to reach the catcher.
"Hitters who have been around the
league a while have a contemptuous word
for what he throws -- junk."
Mr. Marrero had the enviable ability to
make batters look foolish. The great Ted
Williams once said: "He throws you
everything but the ball."
The Cuban recorded 39 wins and 40 losses
in five seasons with Washington, throwing
at an age better suited to pitching horseshoes
than baseballs.
He retired in 1954, returning to his homeland,
where Mr. Krieger discovered him some 44
years later. The teacher found the player's
name in the telephone directory. Mr. Marrero
regaled the visitor with tales of meeting
Connie Mack, of striking out Joe DiMaggio,
of giving up a home run to Mr. Williams.
"He is a shrewd, sharp, intelligent
man," Mr. Krieger said. "If he
lived anywhere else, he would be feted for
his storytelling."
One baseball acquaintance the unlikely
friends shared was Mickey Vernon, a teammate
of Mr. Marrero's at Washington and the man
who gave Mr. Krieger his big break in baseball.
In 1968, Mr. Krieger was a clubhouse attendant
for Vancouver's minor-league team. The Mounties
suffered from poor attendance. Mr. Krieger
pitched a proposal to management -- let
him pitch and he would fill the stands with
his fellow university students.
Mounties manager Mickey Vernon agreed,
and Mr. Krieger took to the mound to face
the Hawaii Islanders on the final day of
the season. The stands were empty as usual,
but the clubhouse attendant fared better
than feared. He surrendered just one run
in three innings of work before being pulled
from the game.
For the past four years, Mr. Krieger has
included a visit with Mr. Marrero as part
of his annual Cubaball Tours. The old player
signs Topps cards and Senators caps in exchange
for a few U.S. dollars. He has been presented
with letters solicited by Mr. Krieger from
Washington teammates, including third baseman
Ed Yost, who wrote: "I caught many
pop-ups that the batters hit from that great
high slider of yours." Pitcher Sid
Hudson sent $50.
Last year, Monte Irvin, a former Negro
League player and a member of the Baseball
Hall of Fame, made a pilgrimage to visit
Mr. Marrero. The two had played together
on Havana's legendary Almendares team in
the late 1940s. An embrace renewed a friendship
in limbo for 55 years.
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