A tough stretch in Saltillo.

As a rule it doesn’t rain much in Saltillo, Mexico in the summer. But 40 years ago, as I manned third-base for the Saraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League, it was positively diluvian.

As a consequence of the rain, as our long-season limped to its sad conclusion (we were entrenched in next to last place, four games in front of the Sultanes de Monterrey and five games behind the Toros de Tijuana) we had a spate of make-up games to play, forcing us to play 11 games in just one week: two double-headers, three single games, and two more double-headers.

I don’t know what it’s like working in a coal mine with a pickaxe for hours on end, or working on an assembly line, or doing hard manual labor. A ballgame is different. There’s maybe 45-seconds any one individual does in any ballgame. Unless you’re  a catcher or a pitcher, there’s about 45 seconds of running, throwing, swinging.

A lot more time is standing around of course, more, even, sitting around. A fair amount of kibitzing and a giant portion of ragging and scratching. Still 11 games in just seven days fairly ground us to a smooth nub.

Mostly it started the way these things almost always start. Arulfo would be on the bench during a game next to Cespedes and he’d poke Cespedes in the ribs. Cespedes would brush his hand away. Arulfo would redouble his efforts. Before long Arulfo had poked one time too many and the two were rolling in the dust, squaring off trying to club each other with Louisville Sluggers.  

It was like that times the 25 guys on the team. As the youngest guy on the squad, only an ersatz Mexican and Hector’s putative hijo, I was fairly immune from such. That said, at dinner one evening German Barojas, who three seasons after I left Saltillo got called up to Detroit and wound up marrying and divorcing Karmen Rodriguez, hid a baseball in a heap of mashed potatoes and gravy on my plate at dinner.

Usually when ragging stuff like that happened, someone put cockroaches in your bed or Ben-Gay in your jock or glue in your hairbrush, I had enough personal wherewithal to walk away. That mashed potato dinner was different, at least that evening. Like the Hands of Orlac, I found mine gripping Barojas’ neck and threatening to choke him to death.

“Fuck you, Barojas.”

“No, fuck you.”

Generally the discourse degenerated from there.

11 games in seven days meant everyone hated each other. Players hated, coaches hated, batboys hated. Even Hector Quesadilla who was blessed with equinimity the likes of which I haven’t seen since Mother Teresa died, or since that summer 40 years ago, was frazzled to a fine crisp.

I read somewhere that the great Yankee perfesser, Casey Stengel, once said “the secret to managing is keeping the 10 guys who hate you away from the 15 who are undecided.” Well, in this Hector had a lost cause. Everyone hated each other, everyone hated him, everyone hated the stupid league we played in and the game we had dedicated our lives to.

A typical conversation would go like this:

“Their pitcher telegraphs his curve. Watch how his elbow tucks in,” one player would say to another.

“Fuck you,” would be the invariable response.

Soon a gaggle of men would be standing in the dugout, groups of six, maybe, squaring off, teetering just millimeters from a full-blown donnybrook.

11 games in seven days, and we lost the first four, dropping both ends of a double-header twice. My bat had all but vanished and as a rag, someone, I don’t know who, had taken all my lumber from the bat rack in the dugout, hidden my wood and replaced it with an old fly-swatter they had stolen from some down-at-the-heels Holiday Inn in Campeche or somewhere.

We won our next two games, leaving us at 2-4 for the stretch and then proceeded to drop the next four by a combined score of something like 50-10. They were out-and-out slaughters, which only raised the tension and the rancor in the clubhouse.

Our last game, our 11^th, before a day-off started inauspiciously at best. “Brutus” Cesar, our fleet centerfielder was leading off. Adame in the on-deck circle called as Cesar stepped up.

“Brutus, you suck.”

Cesar stepped out.

“Fuck you, Adame.”

“No. Fuck you.”

In seconds, the two were sprawled on the ground and our bench was empty with a dozen guys backing Cesar squaring off against the dozen guys backing Adame.

Hector had had enough. He ran out to the imbroglio grabbing the first thing he could put his hands on, a 10-lb sack of sunflower seeds. He began swatting at the boys with the bag and yelling, “Parada, pollo cabrones.” “Enough chicken fuckers.”

At the exact moment Hector said pollo cabrones, Hector’s bag of sunflower seeds split, spilling thousands of seeds everywhere and sending Adame and Cesar ass over teakettle onto the dirt.

The 4,000 or so fans in the stands were clustered predominately behind home and saw the whole shebang. Naturally, they picked up on ‘pollo cabrones’ and began chanting it in an elongated fashion.

Whatever, the pollo caabrones fight broke the tension of the week. For the rest of the game we were loose again, slapping each other on the back with a hearty greeting of chicken fuckers.

I think we scored 12 runs that last of 11 games, going into a much-needed day off, and we won like a good thoroughbred, going away.

Or rather, we won like a bunch of chicken fuckers, flapping our weary wings away.