By Harvey Araton. The New York Times. January 13, 2000
Four decades ago, a Hall of Fame career began in Geneva, N.Y., with a young Cuban immigrant and a coffee shop menu that he could not read.
"I couldn't communicate with people the way I would've liked to," Tony Perez said. "I'd go to a restaurant and just point at the menu. I remember one time, I ordered lunch and they brought me apple pie à la mode."
Perez's timing and expression cued his audience to laugh. Back then, it couldn't have been so funny for Perez, or the five other Cubans with the Cincinnati Reds' farm team in the New York-Penn League. Three of them, Perez said, were gone by the end of their first season, gone home, overwhelmed
by the cultural differences and quite possibly a few inhospitable townsfolk whose idea of apple pie did not include a slice of diversity.
"It wasn't easy those first few years," Perez said. "I couldn't even talk to the players on the field, didn't know what they meant when they said, 'Hit the cutoff man' or 'Throw home.' It wasn't like it is today, with so many players who speak English and Spanish, who can help a
young player adjust. I stayed on the team, though, didn't give up. I wanted to be a ballplayer. It paid off -- for me, for my family. Here I am."
There he was, next to his fellow inductee Carlton Fisk yesterday at a Manhattan news conference, after the announcement Tuesday that he had been voted to baseball's Hall of Fame following a nine-year wait.
Perez always said that if ever made it, his first call would have to be to his mother back in Central Violeta, Cuba. Teodora Regal shouted the good news to the uncles and the many cousins when Perez telephoned her from his home in Puerto Rico. Then she sobbed, blessing the voters and thanking
the heavens that she had lived to 88, long enough to see her 57-year-old son become the first Cuban-born player to make the Hall.
Perez admitted his mother had made him a bit weepy, too, which is no easy thing. One of Perez's two sons, Victor, said he could remember only one other time during his 33 years when he had seen his father emotionally overcome.
It was 1977, the family in Montreal after Perez was traded there by Cincinnati following successive World Series titles by the Big Red Machine, which was, in itself, a devastating blow. In the clubhouse after a game, Victor Perez watched as his parents went off to a separate room, consoled there
by other players.
"They had just received word that his father, our grandfather, had died," he said. "Then they came out and told us, too."
The thing was, neither Victor nor his brother, Eduardo, had met their paternal grandparents. Telephone conversations had been frequent, but it wasn't until 1992 that Victor Perez, who lives and works in New York City, made it to Cuba to meet Teodora, to experience, first-hand, his father's
roots.
Tony Perez had never been one to regale his sons with stories of Cuba, or his struggles from the early 1960's, when his new country seemed as politically and socially roiled as the old one. Perez led by action, by example. He prided himself on consistency, dependability, on his quietly
productive presence in the middle of a family or a lineup.
"It was a culture shock, to be honest, when I finally met my father's family," Victor Perez said. "They treated me from the first moment like one of them, but after all those years, it was like I had all these new relatives. It was very strange."
It was all part of the price Tony Perez agreed to pay for chasing a dream, from Castro's Cuba to the major leagues. Perez played 23 seasons, in five World Series. He won the 1967 All-Star Game with a 15th-inning home run, and briefly got to manage the Reds. He wondered what the point of it all
was when he couldn't be home for his father's death. When Teodora was ill last year, he rushed to Cuba. She recovered. She told him she had a premonition that this would be his year.
"I don't know how she knew," he said.
Perez was proud for not only himself, but also for Puerto Rico's Orlando Cepeda, who was inducted last year. These were men who helped to knock down cultural barriers for the multitude of today's Hispanic major league stars. And no, Tony Perez had nothing much to say about John Rocker, beyond a
subtle contention that psychological testing would not help as much as a good, long lesson in American history, and its culinary delights.
That apple pie à la mode, Perez said, was his dream come true.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |