Photos: Gabriel Dávalos
We talked to Jose Ariel Contreras. It is the afternoon of January 30th, 2013, and we are in Las Martinas, Contreras’s hometown, almost at the western tip of Pinar del Rio province. At the entrance of the town there is an unpainted church, with long bare and gray walls. Next door there is a bank, then another structure, presumably a cafeteria. You have to follow the main road, and two or three blocks past the church, turn right to get to Contreras family house. You will have to leave the asphalt, and get into the dense dust. With that diffuse mentality of city people, you cannot help but wonder how from this place such a perfect pitcher came out. New York is so cosmopolitan that has housed people from Las Martinas. The Martinas can be so universal that has placed its people in New York.
The athletic vigor of Contreras, his neat and sturdy big leaguer body, covered by a fair and smooth skin, does not inspire much fear. The man’s kindness, his courtesy exuding from every pore, is what rocks you. From his eyes ecstasy oozes, from his chin a funny goatee sprouts and from his neck hangs a long chain that ends in a pendant with his number 52 embedded in the center. From his fingers protrude, as stones of the dark earth, his thick World Series ring, along with the one of the American league title.
He sits on the couch in his living room. In the background a Yankees poster in where, along the Cuban, are Jeff Weaver, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, and in front a poster of Pinar del Rio with Contreras in the bench, a gloved hand and the view beyond the photo. You look at his right arm and nothing indicates you what that that arm has done from the box, to make stand the country and cities. One would like to ask him the secret, but it is a silly question, that neither Contreras nor anyone could be able to answer.
– How did you find Cuba, over ten years later?
-Ten years. It is a long time. Unfortunately I had to come because of health problems of my mother, but she’s much better. I had to stay ten days in Havana, waiting for her recovery, and people have treated me awesomely. I thought people had forgotten me, but not at all. They have treated me with great affection. People still love and respect me a lot.
What are the differences between that Contreras that left and the Contreras that returned.
-None. Ten more years older, out of here, without seeing my fans and my people, but still I am all the same. It gives me great joy to see how wherever I went, people would tell me, "but you’re still the same, you’re still the same", and that fills me with pride, gives me energy to continue, to go to the mound soon, because as everyone knows I was out of the season last year with an injured elbow.
‘But what did you learn there that you didn’t take from here?
– It’s not what I’ve learned there what was different, but all these years, the experience, not so much in baseball, but in life. Every day you learn something new and that’s what led me to become a better pitcher.
Your departure from the national team, in 2002, caused a stir. Before that, players had left but Contreras set a time. Your return also opens a way, it somehow starts a bridge. Can you imagine the players that left playing again for Cuba?
-First of all we are Cubans. Wherever we are and whatever what we do. Playing baseball, or sweeping a street anywhere in the world, we remain Cubans. In fact, I have a clause that I signed with the Yankees in 2002, which says that against Cuba I won’t play. If I play in an international event, is with my team. And that’s my dream, to have the chance to play for Cuba before retiring. The same goes for the rest of the players who live outside. But it isn’t up to us. I thank the Cuban government for letting me come back. The other would represent the country. If it happens, then I will retire in peace.
Would you participate in the Third Classic?
Of course. But I want to say the team is good, it is a good team, young and with great desires to play. That is a characteristic of us. Those are the same desires that drove me to keep playing outside Cuba, as they did to El Duque, Liván (Hernández).
How did you live the First Classic?
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. I was in a bar, in Arizona and I jumped on a table to dance, to celebrate it as if i were here. In the Second we didn’t fare to will, but I think this is promising.
Do you follow Cuban baseball?
-I know everything about it. I know all the guys, it’s my baseball, and it’s my life. I watch every game. Now I am suffering a little because Pinar del Rio hasn’t qualified as of yet. But we will, of course we will.
– Do you think, as they say, that Cuban baseball has lost quality?
-Not so, there are times. In the 1970s Cuba had the best team of all time. The 1980’s was good. The 1990’s more or less. And that has changed. But there will come a time when we have a tank similar to the one of the seventies, when Capiró, Marquetti were in it.
– Is professionalization necessary?
-Yes, it would be good. In the first thirteen Caribbean Series, we won eleven, at a time when Cubans were scattered everywhere. I think it makes you stronger. It will mean more players to rise.
The best baseball in the world is in the U.S., but there Japanese, Koreans, Dominicans, Venezuelans play. Cubans would have to be inserted into the baseball. The quality would rise. Unquestionably.
-When you arrived at the Yankee Stadium, what did you think?
‘My father loved baseball. I called him and said: "I signed." My father told me: "Tell me it was with the Yankees." I said, "Yes, it was with them," and he said, "Ah, then its fine."
The Yankees are the American team as it is in Cuba is Industriales and the Tokyo Giants in Japan. It was great to play where Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio played. Then I moved to Chicago and I felt bad. I played twelve years with Pinar del Rio, I was not used to that. But the first year in Chicago was quite well and the other … well, the other we won the World Series after 89 years.
To be continued…
